a little more freedom…
“Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear;
Break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor!
For the children of the desolate one will be more
than those of the one who has a husband.”
(Galatians 4:27).
What is freedom? Sean has been batting this around in his last two posts. We are looking at the book of Galatians for answers since Paul states: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm them and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). Did you know Jesus cares the most about your freedom? More than you do?!
Freedom is something other than living by the rules. Christians have debated this ever since the first church was formed! Paul writes, “To the churches of Galatia: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ… I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the grace of Christ!” (Galatians 1:2,6) This church had been born by faith, not by keeping the rules, but now went back to keeping the rules because they weren’t sure if faith alone was enough. Peter, Jesus’ close disciple, joined them in this (Galatians 2:11-14)!
This book was written down because Christians always struggle with this. I have. In the Protestant evangelical church it goes something like this: Jesus saved me! Yay! It was a total miracle. (In my case, it was since birth). I did nothing to deserve or earn it (especially since I was a small child). But now, my Christian life focuses on all Christ’s commandments. I choose to follow him every day. Before I know it, I am back under the Law, focused on all the good stuff I’m supposed to do, even want to do, but without the life to do it.
tangling God’s two words: law and Gospel brought exhaustion
This well-meaning Protestant focus comes from a couple sources. I needed Reformational teaching to untangle me from them. Growing up under this focus, I gave lip service to grace. It got me into God’s family. But from there on, I subtly (and not so subtly) focused on what I do for Jesus. The perfectionist in me loved this, but it also brought me into total exhaustion and burn out. Simple phrases such as, “you just need to surrender,” or “submit,” to bigger ones such as, “pray unceasingly,” really snagged me. I actually tried to do them. My quiet times became heavy as I tried to remember all the things I needed to do.
The Christianity I knew confused God’s two words. He speaks in Law and in Gospel. To me, they were muddied. At the moment of exhaustion, of failure, I would hear the Law. It was as if Jesus snuggled up to us in our favorite chair and whispered into our ear, “I just want you to love a little better today, okay sweetie?” That is the law. It always convicts us. It binds up our old, our sinful, fleshly nature. The Law binds the slave. The Gospel frees the child.
The Law does not give life. It speaks to the old nature in us, not the new one. In seminary I heard for the first time that the Law convicts; it does not guide, it does not help. That came from Galatians. The law is a “guardian,” a “manager” holding our sin captive, imprisoning it until Christ comes (Galatians 3:22, 23, 4:1,2). This is not a picture that I had growing up. It’s so common in Christianity to think the Law convicts, the Gospel saves in order to get you back to the Law. I certainly did. “But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith” (Galatians 3:25. Thus our Christian life is not centered around “doing the law,” as if we could. Rather, it is celebrating and sharing what the Spirit is doing to us! He is putting to death the old and raising to life the free you and me.
The Law imprisons the old nature; the Gospel, awakens the new nature. Christ’s promise frees our new nature, the child in us that cries, “Daddy! Abba, Father!” (Galatians 4:6). The Law cannot feed the child of God in me. She comes to life by faith, not by Law, by hearing God’s promise to her. The Law rips off the band-aid. The Spirit applies the balm: “I forgive you; I am with you; I will lead you through this.” It would be lovely if God could say to us, “Follow me,” and we did! Simple as that. Sin over. Satan smushed. But then we would go swiftly back to living by the Law and not depend on him. He knows what he’s doing. He uses the Law to expose our sin and drive us back to him. He is jealous and zealous for us. Every time we hear the “good” that we should do and get convicted he is giving us godly sorrow to turn us back to him. He loves us in doing it. He is our freedom; he saves us from all that is not.
God’s promise is so strong that it comes to us in the exact opposite situation and creates life. He finds us in death and births freedom. Faith says I am Sarah (Galatians 4:22). What?! Who’s Sarah? Well, she was Abraham’s wife (not the U.S. president, but the ancient patriarch to whom God promised a son.) However, God didn’t give Abraham and Sarah a son until he was 99 and she was 90 years old! So to “be Sarah” means: I am unable to do what God promises. But God is. I am barren and desolate (I know this because the Law has convicted me of my sin), but I have a Savior! He knows my name! He is my Father. He brings life from death. He will redeem this problem. That is faith. It is a gift. Its boldness comes from the Spirit in you saying, you are His child! Stand up and stand on his promise! He has welcomed you, washed you, and prepared a way for you. The Law will say to sinners, you don’t belong here. The Spirit will say, yes you do! Jesus brought you here. You are my son. You are my daughter.
Let’s pause to talk about Sarah and sonship. Paul is not promoting patriarchy. Paul says God has adopted us as sons (Galatians 4:5) and made us an heir through God (Galatians 4:7). Now before all the females in the room cry sexism! Paul is saying both men and women enjoy the same status. He is speaking to a Middle Eastern patriarchical crowd. He is using language they can understand. He is using primogeniture (the rights to inherit the Father’s estate go to the oldest son) language to apply to both men and women, slave and free, Jew and Greek (Galatians 3:28). This is very counter-cultural for the time! Furthermore, he is not only expanding this concept to all people but redeeming its use. He also balances what he says about sonship by what he says about Sarah. All the women in the room get to imagine themselves as a son inheriting all of God’s kingdom because of faith in Christ. Next all the men in the room get to imagine themselves as Sarah’s child, a child of the promise (Galatians 4:26). Sarah’s child represents freedom, which comes from faith in God’s promise. Finally, Paul describes faith as birth from barrenness (Galatians 4:27), which is another way to speak to us in a language we can understand and also honor women. Interestingly, our Father in Heaven births faith in us, as only a mother could. He is the creator of both. He loves us with the distinct love of both genders, neither melding nor confusing nor erasing them, but honoring their distinctions and showing us what real motherhood and fatherhood is: Loving His child.
Freedom comes from faith in Christ’s promise. The law cannot bring freedom nor create it. It convicts the slave in us. Jesus’s promise frees the child in us. Christ has fulfilled the Law; he has freed us from its demands. He tunes our ear to his promise and awakens freedom where we were imprisoned. A free child does not need the Law. She needs her Dad. The child feeds off of her parents’ love. Children grow with every promise Jesus speaks to them. Jesus says to us, “I forgive you; I am for you; I will make a way.” The promise does not bank on our choice… we were imprisoned and barren, remember? It banks on the promise-giver. He will create life! He will redeem! “A necessary promise is confessed as true with full assurance since the promise depends not on the maker but the giver. Such faith is precisely the creation of that promise; it is not a free choice of a human will but the hearing that is the attribute of the Holy Spirit” (Steven Paulson, Luther’s Outlaw God, 100). The child lives off the second word: God’s promise.
I watched this happen in our last Creative Salon on Comfort. People gathered on Zoom because they carried loss. They needed a community based on God’s promise to comfort. We could not have gathered around the Law. It exposes the wound. It does not comfort. We shared God’s word of comfort through Isaiah 40 and Daniel 10. Then we all created in our own ways as Sean sang songs. After twenty minutes or so, we gathered together to share our pieces. One woman shared how she felt the pain of loss, sometimes overwhelmingly so. Yet she also felt hope and joy, even in the act of painting that night. She knew the companionship of the Lord in it. Her painting showed this juxtaposition through the opposite colors. God gives his promise in the exact opposite. In the midst of her loss, he gathered her with others around his promise. He spoke to her through a language she loved (painting and the promise). He was carrying each of us through grief, through forgiveness, through hardship in grief, in tears, in color. It was all his work. Faith in his promise to overcome death surged through the group. It was freedom. It was Him.
a participant’s painting from our recent Creative Salon: Comfort May 2021
“Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear;
Break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor!
For the children of the desolate one will be more
than those of the one who has a husband.” Galatians 4:27
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