Sunday, May 15, 2016

Liberty, Not Libertinism



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.
From Paul’s correspondences with the churches of Corinth and Galatia, it became clear that there was great misunderstanding concerning liberty. While he reminded the Galatians that they ‘have been called to live in freedom’ (Gal 5:13a), they in turn misconstrued the message just as many Christians today do as well.
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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