Galatians 5:1-15: Faith Working through Love

Galatians 5:1-15: Faith Working through Love

We’ve been working our way passage by passage through Paul’s letter to the Galatians, and today the next passage we come to is Galatians 5:1-15. It says,

1 For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. 2 Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. 3 I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. 4 You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. 5 For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. 7 You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? 8 This persuasion is not from him who calls you. 9 A little leaven leavens the whole lump. 10 I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view, and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is. 11 But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed. 12 I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves! 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. 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. 

May God bless the reading of his Word.

Let’s pray: Father, we find it written that “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Help us to view your word that way this morning—not merely as an interesting subject for study or as a helpful resource for various situations but as our very life. May we experience it as that, through the ministry of your Spirit. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen. The Bible makes it abundantly clear that we have a responsibility to obey God. After all, God is the one who created us. We wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for him. In fact, we wouldn’t even be able to take our next breath if God didn’t grant that breath to us. So, God’s entirely justified in expecting us to obey his commands. His commands are good and right and should be obeyed. 

However, we might wonder, is that all there is to it? Is there anything else that should motivate our obedience to God—beyond the fact that we have a duty to obey him and, of course, the understanding that we’ll be punished for not obeying him? 

As you can probably tell, I believe there is. You see, when we read passages in the Bible—like the one before us today here in Galatians 5—we discover that we should obey God not merely because we have to but because we want to. 

Think about it like this. When you obey the speed limit—or, at the very least, limit your speed somewhat because of the speed limit—you’re probably doing so because you want to avoid getting a ticket. Your fear of getting a ticket motivates you to limit your speed. In that sense, you kind of “have to” limit your speed. However, for those who have young children at home, I’m guessing that your motivation for feeding your children is a lot different, right? I mean, it’s true that it’s against the law to not feed your children—and you could get in a lot of trouble for neglecting to feed them. So, in that sense, you have to feed your children. But I’m guessing that your primary motive for feeding your children isn’t because you have to but because you want to. You love your children and therefore desire to take care of them.

In a similar way, Christians are called to obey God not merely because we have to but because we want to. We should obey not primarily out of fear of the consequences for disobedience but rather out of love. God wants us to obey him primarily because we love him. 

And that’s essentially the main idea of Galatians 5:1-15. To state it concisely, genuine Christians operate in a mindset of faith working through love. Again, genuine Christians operate in a mindset of faith working through love. And I’ll unpack that statement more as we work our way through this passage. 

Look with me first, though, at verse 1. Paul writes, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” In our society especially, one of the things that people desire the most is freedom. You can see this desire being manifested in many different ways, including in some of the most contentious issues that dominate the political landscape. Just consider how committed many people are to the so-called “right” to have an abortion or how passionate they are about normalizing an LGBT lifestyle. Almost everywhere you look, people desire radical personal autonomy. They want to be “free” from anything that would limit their behavior—such as God and God’s commands. Judges 17:6 says of the Israelites during that time period that “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes”—and that’s exactly where we are as a society today. 

Unfortunately, though, the more we give ourselves to a life of sin, the more we find ourselves enslaved by our own sinful desires and the more miserable we become. As Jesus says in John 8:34, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.” Just as a drug addict is enslaved to their addiction and is eventually destroyed by their addiction, everyone who gives themselves to sin of any kind becomes enslaved to that sin and will eventually be destroyed by that sin. This is why the Bible teaches us that true freedom is found not in personal autonomy but rather in Christ. It’s not a freedom from restrictions but a freedom from sin and the oppressiveness of sin and the inevitable misery sin brings. 

Yet, as we see here in verse 1, it’s possible to be enslaved not only by our sinful desires but also, at times, by our legalistic tendencies. And that’s specifically the way in which the Galatians to whom Paul’s writing were in danger of being enslaved. As we’ve discussed repeatedly in our journey through Galatians, some false teachers known as “Judaizers” had infiltrated the Galatian churches and were teaching that it was necessary to observe the entire Old Testament law in order to gain entrance into heaven. This included the Old Testament food laws, the various festivals commanded in the Old Testament, the Old Testament religious ritual of circumcision, and a nearly endless list of additional rules and regulations. 

So, all of these Old Testament rules and regulations—that were impossible to keep perfectly—are what Paul’s referring to when he speaks in this verse of “a yoke of slavery.” And Paul encourages the Galatians to embrace the freedom found in Christ rather than submitting themselves again to “a yoke of slavery.” So, not only does Jesus free us from the tyranny of our own sinful desires—as we discussed a few moments ago—he also frees us from the tyranny of a legalistic approach to the law. 

Paul then continues, in verses 2-3, 2 Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. 3 I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. As I mentioned, the Judaizers were teaching that circumcision was a requirement for entrance into heaven. Yet, according to Paul, anyone who adopts that legalistic mentality forfeits any “advantage” Christ would otherwise be to that person. If they decide they’re going to try to earn God’s favor through their own moral accomplishments, they, at that point, become obligated to achieve perfection. As Paul states, they become “obligated to keep the whole law”—which is utterly impossible to do. 

You see, God is holy and therefore demands absolute moral perfection in order to enter heaven. So, any failure to achieve such perfection condemns us to eternity in hell. However, the good news of the gospel is that Jesus has already done for us what we could never do for ourselves. Jesus existed as God from all eternity yet became a man and entered this world in order to rescue us from our sins. 

Jesus did that first by keeping the law perfectly. In the words of verse 3, he was actually able to “keep the whole law” and thereby obtained the righteousness that was necessary to enter heaven. Jesus then voluntarily allowed himself to be crucified in order to suffer the punishment our sins deserved. He died to atone for our sins. Yet he was then triumphantly raised from the dead and now stands ready to save everyone who puts their trust in him for salvation. So, we’re saved through Jesus and him alone. Essentially, our sins are transferred to him as if he were the one who committed them, and his righteous status is transferred to us as if we were the ones who obtained it. 

Paul says it like this in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake he [God] made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. It’s a message we call the gospel. Yet according to our main passage, if we embrace a mentality of trying to make ourselves right with God through our own moral accomplishments, this gospel message is of no value to us. 

Paul even says in the next verse—verse 4—that “You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.” We know from elsewhere in the Bible that a true Christian isn’t ever able to lose their salvation. Yet those who merely appear to be Christians can indeed fall away from the state of grace they appear to be in. 

And in the case of the Galatians, they were in danger of doing that very thing by embracing the mentality of being justified—or made right with God—through not only faith in Christ but also adherence to the Old Testament law. You see, it doesn’t matter if you just add one tiny thing to faith as a requirement for justification. The moment you add anything to faith and say that you have to do that thing in order to be made right with God, you’ve just lost the gospel. 

As I said a couple of months ago, it's a lot like a mathematical formula. If there’s a certain mathematical formula that tells you how to calculate something and you insert something extra into that formula, what happens? It ruins everything, right? The entire formula becomes inaccurate and therefore totally worthless. Likewise, the moment you add anything to faith as a requirement for justification, you’ve just crossed the line from believing in justification through “faith” to believing in justification by “the law.” 

Paul then writes in verses 5-6, 5 For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. So, it doesn’t matter if someone’s physically circumcised or not. What really matters, Paul says, is “faith working through love.” And as I said, that encapsulates the main idea of this entire passage, that genuine Christians operate in a mindset of faith working through love. 

You see, we absolutely still obey God, but we do so not because we’re afraid of God punishing us but because we genuinely love God and therefore desire to glorify him. In the words of this verse, our inward “faith” in Jesus manifests itself in outward “love” for God and others. And by the way, genuine faith in Christ will always manifest itself in that way. Inward faith will always produce outward fruit. So, to summarize, the Galatians were in danger of falling into a legalistic mindset of fear manifesting itself in outward conformity to the law. But Paul tells them that the proper mindset is faith manifesting itself in love. 

He then cautions them in this way in verses 7-10: 7 You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? 8 This persuasion is not from him who calls you. 9 A little leaven leavens the whole lump. 10 I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view, and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is. So, Paul’s basically warning them here against the false teachers and the danger of their heresy. 

Then, verses 11-12: 11 But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed. 12 I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves! Wow…okay. So, first, when Paul refers to the “offense of the cross,” he’s talking about how offensive the gospel is to those who pride themselves in their own moral accomplishments. 

Paul then says in verse 12, “I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves.” Now, I’ll admit, this isn’t exactly the most refined thing Paul could have said. But sometimes, extreme dangers require extreme measures. And let’s be clear that the false teachers Paul’s talking about here were deliberately seeking to turn people away from the true gospel and thereby keeping them out of heaven. So, in this verse, Paul essentially says that, if the Judaizers like circumcision so much, why don’t they just go all the way and castrate themselves? Obviously, that’s not the prettiest picture, but it certainly gets the point across. 

Then, moving on to verse 13, Paul continues, “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.” So, yes, Jesus does indeed bring freedom. But, as one commentator says, the freedom Jesus brings isn’t a freedom to sin but rather a freedom from sin. That’s what Paul means when he says, “do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.” In other words, don’t try to turn the grace of God into a license to sin. Instead, Paul says, “through love serve one another.” 

Remember that Paul’s already spoken in verse 6 of “faith working through love.” And he now elaborates on what love looks like. “Through love serve one another,” he says. Serving one another involves praying for one another, comforting one another, holding one another accountable, encouraging one another, bearing with the faults of one another, forgiving one another, and trying to help one another grow in any way possible. These are all ways in which we “serve one another.” And, by the way, it’s hard to imagine these things taking place to any significant degree in our church apart from some sort of context—such as Community Groups—that facilitate meaningful relationships with one another. 

Paul then expounds on love even more in verse 14. He writes, For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” This statement in verse 14 that the whole law is fulfilled simply through love is enormously significant. 

Back in verse 1, Paul told the Galatians to embrace the freedom found in Christ rather than allowing themselves to be enslaved once again by the law. Yet it’s clear from many other biblical passages that Paul still expects his readers to adhere to defined moral boundaries. So, how do those two ideas fit together? How can we avoid being enslaved by the law yet at the same time adhere to defined moral boundaries? The answer is right here in verse 14. God has to change our hearts so that the default mode in which we operate is love. And if love is what fills our hearts and guides our lives, we’ll naturally live in a way that glorifies God—without it being necessary for God to give us hundreds of laws to regulate our behavior. 

And most importantly, we’ll live that way not because we have to but because we genuinely want to. As I explained earlier, it’s a lot like the difference between people limiting their speed on the highway versus parents feeding their children. In both cases, the law requires us to behave in a certain way. But I’m guessing that most people limit their speed on the highway because they have to, whereas most parents feed their children because they want to. 

Hopefully that illustration makes it clear that there are still moral requirements and moral boundaries that God expects us to observe—just as the government still expects parents to take care of the basic needs of their children and has laws that require that and penalties to support those laws. However, I’m sure that the primary principle that guides most parents as they raise their children isn’t what the law says they have to do but rather what love for their children makes them want to do. On any given day, parents make a wide array of decisions about how to interact with their children not merely on the basis of the law but rather on the basis of love. 

And that’s the secret to the spiritual freedom Paul speaks of at numerous points throughout this chapter. Those who have to force themselves to follow the law are enslaved to the law, while those whose hearts are filled with God-given love are free to live as they desire. Because, guess what it is that they desire? Love. You know, it’s sometimes said with reference to your job that if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. Well, in a similar way, we could also say that, if you genuinely love God and others, you’ll never have to make yourself obey a day in your life. 

Now, as those who are guided by love, it’s always important to keep in mind that love doesn’t contradict the law but instead, as Paul says, fulfills the law. So, that means, if your concept of “love” leads you to act in a manner that’s inconsistent with God’s moral requirements, then you need to fix your concept of love. You know, if a guy believes that he loves his girlfriend and therefore desires to sleep with her prior to marriage because he just “loves” her so much, he obviously has no clue what genuine love looks like. Genuine love will always lead us to operate within the moral boundaries of the law. You could even go through the Ten Commandments and say that genuine love will lead us to honor our father and mother, avoid murder, avoid adultery, avoid stealing, avoid bearing false witness, and avoid coveting. And love enables us to live in this way not because of any external compulsion but because of genuine internal desire. 

So, this is what Paul means when he says here in verse 14 that “the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Paul also says something very similar to this as well in Romans 13:8-10. He writes, 8 Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. 

So, in both of these passages, Paul says that all the commandments are summed up in this one teaching: “You shall love our neighbor as yourself.” That’s a quote, by the way, from Leviticus 19:18. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” In other words, look at how you naturally and instinctively love yourself, and that’s how you should love your neighbor. So how do you love yourself? Well, you generally look out for your own welfare, right? 

Just look at the way young children behave. Unless we train them differently, children naturally want every toy for themselves, every treat for themselves, and all attention for themselves. And if they don’t get everything they want, they’ll often make their displeasure known, right? We’ve all seen the kid throwing a temper tantrum at the supermarket because his mom won’t buy him what he wants. So, children instinctively love themselves. And as they grow up and become adults, they may learn to express their desires in ways that are more socially appropriate, but that same impulse of self-love remains. We all naturally do what we think is best for our welfare. We love ourselves. 

By the way, this flies in the face of the popular notion that we need to learn to love ourselves more. A lot of people will say to certain individuals who seem to be struggling that “You just don’t love yourself enough. You need to learn to love yourself more.” But the Bible says the opposite. The Bible says we actually already love ourselves plenty—probably too much. We already instinctively and many times exclusively look out for our own welfare. So, what we need to learn is not to love ourselves more but to love others more and ultimately to love God more. “Love your neighbor as you (already) love yourself.” 

So, a good definition of the kind of love Paul teaches here using Leviticus is “taking a genuine interest in the welfare of others.” That’s a practical, street-level definition of love. “Taking a genuine interest in the welfare of others.” And that kind of love, Paul says, fulfills the law. You don’t need to make the law more complicated than that. 

However, don’t let the simplicity of Paul’s statement here in verse 14 fool you. The idea that love fulfills the law may be a simple idea, but it has enormous implications for our lives. It reaches into every corner of our lives and serves as the ultimate guiding principle for it all. And that includes situations that are sometimes rather complex. 

For example, when it comes to dealing with a difficult person in our lives, we should be guided by love. When it comes to ministering to a friend or family member who has addiction issues, we should be guided by love. When we find ourselves embroiled in a conflict with someone, we should be guided by love. When it comes to dealing with challenges related to parenting, we should be guided by love. When it comes to someone wanting us to use their preferred pronouns, we should be guided by love. There’s no situation you’ll ever encounter that’s too difficult or too complex for your behavior in that situation to be guided by love. You may have to spend some time in prayerful reflection as you consider what biblical love looks like in that situation, but love is always entirely sufficient as a guiding principle for your behavior in any situation you’ll ever face. 

In fact, I’ll even go so far as to apply the principle of love to the decision all of us who are of voting age will need to make this Tuesday. The fact is that our country is in a moral freefall. I truly believe that we’re on a road that leads to judgment and destruction. And to be honest, I’m not sure we can stop it. Apart from a spiritual awakening and revival across our nation, I’m not sure it’s possible to save this nation from the moral freefall that we’re in. But I do believe that those of us who are Christians have a moral duty to at least try. 

Now, of course, the most important way we can do that is by sharing the gospel with people around us. Because the only way our society will truly change is if people’s hearts change. And the only thing that can change people’s hearts in any meaningful way is the gospel. Legislation doesn’t change people’s hearts—only the gospel does. So, if we want to see meaningful change in the hearts of people around us and ultimately in our society, we need to be deliberate about sharing the gospel with the people in our spheres of influence. 

However, that being said, I do believe the results of this election in particular will still have an enormous influence on our society. And I believe a very important way for us to demonstrate love to our society and at least slow down the moral freefall that our society is in is to go out and vote this Tuesday—and to vote for the candidate that most aligns with biblical values and convictions—or at least is most likely to support policies that align with biblical values and convictions. I know some Christians might have a desire to abstain from voting this Tuesday. But even if you personally might be more comfortable abstaining, I encourage you to at least consider whether that’s actually the most loving thing you can do for the society that we live in. And in the end, I encourage you to go out and vote, even if it’s for the lesser of two evils. 

In addition, one final thing I’d like to point out about the idea that love fulfills the law is that our motives for doing something aren’t in any way peripheral but are actually quite central to the goodness of that action. You see, it’s very easy for us to go through the motions of outward obedience to God’s commands without having love in our heart. Yet doing the “right” thing with the wrong motives falls far short of the biblical ethic of love and isn’t at all what God desires. 

Imagine a man taking his wife out on a really nice date. And externally, he does everything right. He drives her to a nice restaurant, opens the restaurant door for her as she walks in, provides enjoyable conversation throughout their meal, and then pays the bill for their food. But imagine that, as the two of them are leaving the restaurant, the man’s phone vibrates with a text message. And the wife happens to notice the text conversation between her husband and one of his friends in which the husband describes to his friend how bored his on the date with his wife and how he wishes that he could have just gone to his friend’s house to watch the football game. 

How do you think the wife of this man is going to respond to that? I don’t think she’s going to be very happy. Even though the husband did all the right things and went through all the right motions on their date, all of that is now meaningless in the eyes of his wife. She now sees the true condition of his heart. 

Now most of us would look at that husband and immediately recognize that he falls far short of what he should be. But how often are we guilty of simply going through the motions when it comes to other things? How often do we do the right things without having the right heart—a heart of love? I don’t know about you, but I fail at that to some degree every single day. You see, we may often be able to keep many of God’s commandments externally, but who among us is able to keep God’s commandments internally? 

In reality, none of us is even remotely successful at doing the right things with the right heart. None of us—in and of ourselves—possesses the love that fulfills the law. That’s why we need Jesus so desperately. So, if you’re here this morning and haven’t yet put your trust in Jesus to rescue you from your sins, that’s the most important thing you need to do. 

The last thing I’d desire for you is to come away from this sermon with the idea that you simply need to try harder to be a loving person. That’s actually just another form of the legalism and slavery to the law that the Galatians were falling into. If you were to do that, you’d still be relying on your own moral accomplishments to get you into heaven. Instead, the critical thing for you to do today is to renounce all confidence in your own efforts and accomplishments and instead put your trust in Jesus. That’s the only way you can have the righteousness God requires to enter heaven—through Jesus and what he’s accomplished on the cross.