Set free for others

Today's texts: 1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21; Psalm 16; Galatians 5:1, 13-25; Luke 9:51-62.



Western society will tell us that freedom means being fully and completely unfettered by any sort of boundaries or limits to the choices we make in life, able to make whatever choices our hearts desire. (No such freedom exists: the very “free” decisions we make limit our freedom to make other choices.) Paul understands freedom differently. According to him, freedom is being who God intends us to be. You might call it “living with the grain of the universe.”

In Galatians 5, Paul identifies this freedom. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free,” he says in in verse 1. When we are freed from something, we are freed for something else. Free for what? Not to do whatever we want (verse 17), but free to serve, to live for others in love (verse 13).

Few of the things listed in this chapter, in either the “acts of the flesh” or the fruit of the Spirit, are are internal things of the heart. They mostly have to do with how we relate to God and others. In Eden, humans lived in harmony with the Creator, with each other, and with creation. It is how humans were designed to live, and it is these relationships that sin broke, turning us away from others to ourselves.

Paul tells us that Jesus sets us free from our sinful selves and frees us for others, just as Jesus was. By the Spirit of Christ we can live an authentically free human life in right relationship with others.

This week's readings: Isaiah 66:10-14; Psalm 66:1-8; Galatians 6:(1-6), 7-16; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20.