Galatians 5:13-15 - “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. [14] For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." [15] But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.”

Verse 13 opens almost as a clone of verse 1. Look at the two back to back: “It was for freedom that Christ has set us free....” (5:1). Then in 5:13, “For you were called to freedom....” Both verses outline the call to freedom, and both verses describe a threat to freedom. But the threat isn’t the same threat in these two verses. In 5:1 the threat to freedom is legalism under the laws of ethnic Judaism. In 5:13 the threat to freedom is the self-life expressed as independence of the life of the Spirit and holiness unto our Lord.

This latter caution will be Paul’s emphasis for the rest of this letter. He cautions these Galatian Christians against thinking that, because they are free from the law, they are free to live life however they please. Of course, he has already confronted this danger in general, sweeping terms in Galatians 2:20 - “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

1) CHRIST’S CALL TO EVERY CHRISTIAN IS A CALL TO RADICAL FREEDOM, AND FREEDOM CAN’T BE MAINTAINED THROUGH THE EMPTY HABIT OF LIVING FOR ONESELF

Galatians 5:13 - “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.”

As surely as the condemnation of the law will destroy your freedom in Christ, so will the casting aside of restraint in the pursuit of personal pleasure. The pattern of our deliverance in Christ is perhaps best seen in the deliverance of the Israelites from the bondage of Egypt. The people were truly freed from the bondage of Egypt, but they were freed to go somewhere. It was freedom to be what God wanted them to be. It was freedom heading somewhere.

2) FREEDOM CAN ONLY BE PROTECTED AND SAVORED IN CHRIST AND THROUGH LOVE

Galatians 5:13-14 - “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. [14] For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

Having described the danger of losing our freedom and Christ, Paul now offers the antidote - “Do not use your freedom as an opportunity to the flesh, but (or “rather”) through love serve one another” (13b). The question we need to consider is how does loving service to others preserve our own freedom in Christ? And the answer is loving service to others shares out of our fullness in Christ, while the cravings and works of the flesh are generated out of a desire to fill up our own emptiness.

Each loving act of service, performed out of my love for Jesus Christ (2:20), demonstrates my own satisfaction in God through Christ Jesus. I no longer have to use people or accumulate things. There is nothing I am scrambling to fill in the center of my life. In this sense, only loving acts are free acts.

The Christ-filled life is a fountain, overflowing in its fullness toward others. The life of the flesh is a vacuum, constantly sucking and sucking, trying to fill up its own painful emptiness. This is why Paul says “love does not seek its own” (1 Corinthians 13:5). It doesn’t have to. Love is always the truly free choice. Only the life of the flesh is dominated and driven.

3) HOW SPIRITUAL PEOPLE FULFILL THE LAW OF GOD

Galatians 5:14 - “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

A Spirit-controlled life is not under the law as a means of earning righteousness before God. Nor is it bypassing the law in an attempt to fulfill life independently of God’s will. Rather, the Spirit-controlled life fulfills the law through a passion for Christ and for others. See 2 Corinthians 5:14-19 for an excellent explanation of this - “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; [15] and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.[16] From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. [17] Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. [18] All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; [19] that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.”

4) WHERE UGLY LIVING COMES FROM

Galatians 5:15 - “But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.”

Notice how, when Paul wants to wrap of his teaching on the emptiness of life lived from the flesh rather than the Spirit, he gives us this violent picture of what animals do when they are empty. This is his closing picture of the desperate life, driven by the desires of the flesh. The pursuit of self-interest is the cruelest way of all to live - to oneself and to others.

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