Finding liberty in Christ by serving one another selflessly
Khen Lim
Image source: expatchaplain.com
We can credit the Apostle Paul for many of the things he had
said that are recorded in the New Testament. Many of them have become immortal
and inspiring verses. One of them is his declaration, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Gal 5:1, NIV) and these
words flesh out Jesus’ story of freedom as it is widely known to His followers
but also one that, when defined by the Cross, is diametrically at odds with
contemporary and secular ideas of liberty.
In modern society, the idea of liberty is to possess the
uninhibited mandate to choose to live any which way desired without any
conscionable obligations to anyone else or to society at large. Christians are
no different in the way they interpret liberty to suit whatever agenda they may
have in mind. But is this what Paul meant by Christian liberty?
In exploring Paul’s message of freedom in his letters to the
Galatians and Corinthians, Bruce Longenecker, author of ‘Thinking Through Paul:
A Survey of His Life, Letters and Theology’ (Zondervan, 2014)
reveals three meanings in the Apostle’s teachings:
Liberty from moral libertinism
In Galatians 3:15-4:31, Paul says that through faithful
obedience to Christ, all believers were like children of the ‘free woman’ Sarah
instead of the ‘slave woman’ Hagar, implying that they now needed to resist the
enslavement of some of the Torah-based decrees such as the food and circumcision
issues that had unsettled new believers in Antioch. But there was more to it –
the Corinthian believers, in fact, misunderstood that, believing that they now had
the freedom to do anything (1 Cor 6:12, 10:23) to the extent that believers in
Rome even accused the Apostle of saying, ‘The more we sin the better it is’
(Rom 3:8).
Being a libertine refers to a person who lacks a moral compass
or sees no reason for sexual restraint and believes that control in either case
is superfluous. A libertine doesn’t just spurn moral principles and chasteness but
also rejects all standards and virtues to do with religion. In contemporary
lifestyle, classic libertine behaviour could easily find a home in the lives of
today’s ultra-progressives and radical liberals.
In moral libertinism, people abuse the understanding of God’s
grace towards sinners, distorting and bending it into any shape or form they
like. A misconstrued cocktail of divine grace and libertinism often means
anything under the sun, moral or otherwise.
On the other hand, however, Paul counters the abusers who maliciously
twist God’s Word, retorting that none of them deserves anything but
condemnation (Rom 3:8). He warns the Galatians never ever to abuse the freedom
given to them through Christ, by using it for self-indulgence (Gal 5:13).
Liberty from egocentrism
Paul frames his scathing criticism of the libertines in his
letter to the Romans by revisiting the Old Testament, recalling the horrific impact
that the fall of Adam had on the world and in the course of disobeying God, he introduced
both sin (Rom 3:9) and death (Rom 5:12-21). And as they seep into the cracks of
our lives, they wreaked disaster, decay and destruction throughout the ages
till today.
Although such foolish actions have since reduced man to become
‘slaves to sin’ (6:20), through Christ we are renewed and ‘set free from the
power of sin’ (6:7). By no means, however, does that suggest we are now free to
sin with impunity. Rather, Paul calls on us to define liberty wherein we become
‘slaves of righteous living’ (6:18).
Longenecker writes, “Although Christians do not observe the
law, there is a sense in which the law itself is fulfilled in Christians
through the Spirit, who brings alive loving patterns of life within Jesus’
followers.”
Egocentrism – or self-centredness – among the Galatians, Paul says,
will simply ‘bite and devour one another’ (Gal 5:15) because sin has been
externalised, ending up turning God’s law into temptations leading to ‘all kinds
of covetous desires’ (Rom 7:8). Instead, the Apostle says that, in self-giving,
the true Gospel sets us free ‘to serve one another in love’ (Gal 5:15).
Dependence to each other
In mutual enslavement comes Paul’s idea that the Corinthians
can overcome moral chaos simply by becoming devoted to each other. In this
case, being ‘enslaved’ to one another means rejecting the incorrect definition
of liberty in Christ. It means eschewing the kind of selfish individualism that
jeopardises the health of the Christian community. We see examples of that in
the use of spiritual gifts for selfish gains (1 Cor 13) or consuming paganised
meat with callous disregard for those believers with a weak conscience (8:1-13).
In 2 Corinthians 3:17-18, Paul praises the congregation in
Corinth following their embrace of Christ-like selflessness through the Spirit
of freedom. Doing so opened the way for God to work the Gospel into their
practices. And with this change, the Apostle said to them, ‘I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live but Christ
lives in me’ (Gal 2:20, NIV), meaning that by dying on the Cross, the
Corinthians became the means by which Christ would live through them to serve
others selflessly.
Conclusion
Remember Paul saying, ‘It
is for freedom that Christ has set us free’? Now we know that he made this
claim to clarify the relationship between salvation and ethics for the
followers of Christ.
According to Longenecker, we can appraise that verse in
two parts – the part ‘for freedom’ is about the ethical lifestyle while the
latter part pertains to their salvation.
In other words, once we liberate ourselves
from selfishness, conceitedness and self-aggrandisement, we in turn open the
way for the selfless Christ to become incarnate within our own self-giving way
of life.
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