Aug 22, 2018
You were called to be
free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another
humbly in love. Gal 5:13
Sin uses freedom to
satisfy itself, righteousness uses freedom to serve God and others.
In the book of Jeremiah, God tells Jeremiah how disappointed
He is with the people and their behavior.
He says to Jeremiah: I saved these people and rescued them from Egypt,
and brought them into the Promised Land, protecting them and providing for them. But they go out and start living a corrupt
life, living immorally, giving themselves to idols, rejecting my ways, and show
up at my temple to get my help so that they can keep on sinning. Are they trying to turn my temple into a den
of robbers? (Jer 7).
You would think that after seeing or knowing what Jesus
endured on the cross for us, we would become much different than that, but Paul
had to constantly remind the early church world that our freedom FROM sin does
not grant us freedom TO sin! We were not
rescued and cleansed so that we could do whatever WE want, but so that we could
do whatever God wants without guilt or regret.
It is very simple to understand, but so hard to teach these
days because our culture has turned grace into a license to sin. Just speaking about Christians (and not
trying to judge), we all see people who pray and worship on a Sunday morning
but then continue to satisfy themselves with alcohol, sex, or other immoral
behaviors later that week. Many claim to
be Christian but don’t want to give to His Kingdom or serve their church family. So often the behaviors of anger, greed, judgment,
bitterness, unforgiveness, and more are discounted as ‘who I am’ instead of
viewed as sins to get rid of. We want
God’s blessing and protection, but don’t want the change that freedom calls
for.
This is an area that every Christian must wrestle out for
themselves. Is Grace going to be our
personal license or personal calling?
Will we allow God’s Grace to reshape our lives into the Grander Vision
God has for us, or simply try to use the forgiveness to get away with what we
want to do with our life?
Paul spoke and wrote as a Jeremiah of his time, calling
people out of their self-indulgent lives and back to total pursuit of God. He, like Jeremiah, was ridiculed, persecuted,
and ostracized by many. Yet their
stories are the ones we look at today and realize were devoted fully to God and
others as servants. Don’t measure life
by the amount of pleasure or satisfaction WE get from it, measure life by the
satisfaction and pleasure GOD gets from it.
Then we will leverage our freedom for good instead of for our flesh.
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