Free to serve. Galatians 5.

For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity to indulge your flesh, but through love serve one another. (Gal. 5:13 NET)

It's our delight today to read through one of the richest chapters in all of Paul's letters, when it comes to devotional ideas, and passages to meditate on, and then apply to our lives. Even if this is your first time to read the book of Galatians, you've probably heard about the "fruits of the Spirit." And I would love to read anyone's thoughts about Galatians 5:22,23. Likewise, you may want to write about "living by the Spirit", which leads to the fruits.

I want to take a quick look at what Paul had to say about freedom. Freedom is a scary word. For those of us who grew up in the U.S.A., that may sound wrong. But if you think about it for a while, you'll realize that even in this country, there are forces that act as restraints against freedom, or liberty. Take, for example, the idea of free speech. In theory, we believe the right to say what we want is a good thing. On the other hand, there are certain kinds of speech that we may find so offensive and harmful, that as a society we prohibit them. Or we may prohibit their use in certain places, like schools. The classic case of this is, of course, yelling "fire" in a crowded building.

I don't want this post to be about the limits of free speech, so let me give you a more personal example of the scariness of freedom. Driving. More to the point, teaching a son or daughter to drive. For me, this turned out to be one of the scariest set of moments of my life, superseded only by letting a daughter go out on a date. There I sat, helping a daughter so that she could take control of 3,000 pounds of steel, glass, and plastic, and learn how to send it hurtling down the freeway at speeds no one experienced in all of history until the twentieth century unless they jumped from a cliff more than a mile high. What's at stake when your child learns to drive? Life? Limbs? Big-time damage? Money? And, more freedom? Yikes. And really, all of parenting is about building the skills, abilities, intelligence, disciplines, and moral values so that another step of liberty can be taken.

We express our concern about freedom by saying things like, "with increased freedom comes increased responsibility." The historian Will Durant said, "When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near."

Paul too, understood that unrestrained freedom is not a good thing. But the restraint he proposed to the Galatians was not one of rules and regulations. He did say don't indulge yourself in all the fleshy stuff, but primarily as a contrast to how we are to use our freedom -- serving one another in love. He's quoting God's word, both written (Lev.19:18) and living (Mark 12:31). Paul says we do that by living in the Spirit which produces all that good fruit. I hope we can talk about what it means to live in the Spirit. Add a comment. Or if you're in class, bring it up next week.

But even if we have a hard time defining or grasping what it means to live in the Spirit, we do have good ideas about serving one another in love. So here's something I can do in response to what Paul has taught us today. Find a quiet place, and spend some time asking who I might serve today -- who really needs it today. And then ask for His help in spending the day in every interaction as a loving servant. We'll see what happens after that.