Freedom. The text from Galatians 5 (see below) puts freedom in perspective. Freedom doesn't mean indulgence. In fact freedom grows through serving others.
"Live freely, animated and motivated by God's Spirit. Then you won't feed the compulsions of selfishness." How will we know we are living free motivated and led by the Spirit? There will be Spirit produced fruit. At the same it is something we are to desire and pursue by working "out its implications in every area of our lives."
I pray that today you will "be the day you go free and dance like no one's around" because we have been set free by the Son we are free indeed. You are an original.
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Chris Tomlin | The Way I Was Made to Be
Caught in the half-light, I'm caught alone
Waking up to the sunrise, and the radio
Feels like I'm tied up, what's holding me?
Just praying today will be the day I go Free.
Chorus:
I want to live like there's no tomorrow
I want to dance like no one's around.
I want to sing like nobody's listening.
Before I lay my body down
I want to give like I have plenty.
I want to love like I'm not afraid.
I want to be the man I was meant to be.
I want to be the way I was made.
Made in Your likeness, made with Your hands.
Made to discover who You are and who I am
All I've forgotten help me to find.
All that You've promised let it be in my life.
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The Life of Freedom | Galatians 5 (The Message) | Emphasis added
1Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you. 2I am emphatic about this. The moment any one of you submits to circumcision or any other rule-keeping system, at that same moment Christ's hard-won gift of freedom is squandered. 3I repeat my warning: The person who accepts the ways of circumcision trades all the advantages of the free life in Christ for the obligations of the slave life of the law.
4I suspect you would never intend this, but this is what happens. When you attempt to live by your own religious plans and projects, you are cut off from Christ, you fall out of grace. 5Meanwhile we expectantly wait for a satisfying relationship with the Spirit. 6For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion amounts to anything. What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love.
7You were running superbly! Who cut in on you, deflecting you from the true course of obedience? 8This detour doesn't come from the One who called you into the race in the first place. 9And please don't toss this off as insignificant. It only takes a minute amount of yeast, you know, to permeate an entire loaf of bread. 10Deep down, the Master has given me confidence that you will not defect. But the one who is upsetting you, whoever he is, will bear the divine judgment.
11As for the rumor that I continue to preach the ways of circumcision (as I did in those pre-Damascus Road days), that is absurd. Why would I still be persecuted, then? If I were preaching that old message, no one would be offended if I mentioned the Cross now and then--it would be so watered-down it wouldn't matter one way or the other. 12Why don't these agitators, obsessive as they are about circumcision, go all the way and castrate themselves!
13It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don't use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that's how freedom grows. 14For everything we know about God's Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That's an act of true freedom. 15If you bite and ravage each other, watch out--in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?
16My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God's Spirit. Then you won't feed the compulsions of selfishness. 17For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. 18Why don't you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence? 19It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; 20trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; 21the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.
This isn't the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God's kingdom.
22But what happens when we live God's way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard--things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, 23not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.
Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. 24Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good--crucified.
25Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives. 26That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original.
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