Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
In The Pilgrim’s Progress, when Christian finally reaches the cross and loses his burden of sin and shame, his newfound freedom brings him such joy that he leaps and sings as he travels toward the Celestial City. So it is for every person who is called in the grace of Christ. We are “called to freedom” (Gal. 5:13). But this freedom can be misunderstood. Someone might argue that if we’re set free from the law, then we’re free to pursue our own selfish desires. But nothing could be further from the truth. When God converts us, Christ’s Spirit takes up residence in our hearts and begins to make us more like Jesus. As we yield to the Spirit, we truly, though not perfectly, grow in godliness. Specifically, Paul tells us that we aren’t to use our freedom for selfish pursuits, but exhorts us to “through love serve one another” (v. 13).
It is striking that Paul tells the Galatians that “the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ ” (v. 14). What about loving God? After all, Jesus told an inquisitive Pharisee:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matt. 22:37–39)
So why would Paul simplify it and stress loving our neighbor instead of loving God? The answer is found in 1 John 4:20–21:
If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
To know whether we love God, then, we must look at how we love others. If we’re honest, we too often “bite and devour one another” and therefore are “consumed by one another” (Gal. 5:15). This, of course, is exactly the opposite of serving one another through love. Notably, not only will we consume the person we’re attacking; we will also be consumed. Therefore, we are not exercising our God-given freedom when we bite others with our words and actions. Instead, we exercise our freedom when we build others up and delight to do them good.
Christ set us free so that we can put to death our fleshly desires and so that we can, by the power of the Holy Spirit within us, love God and others. In Christ’s kingdom, freedom means serving. Jesus said:
“Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matt. 20:26–28)
Whom do you need to stop consuming today and instead lovingly serve?