Freedom in Christ
1It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
2Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. 3Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. 4You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. 5But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. 6For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
Dig Deeper
My last year in college I had to do a semester of student teaching, as I was a secondary social studies education major. I was lucky enough to receive a mentor teacher who was a National Geographic Teacher of the Year award winner. Student teaching was a good thing for me because I had much to learn; I was not ready to handle a classroom by myself. As the semester started, I taught with my mentor teacher in the room and I was basically teaching his lesson plans. As the semester went on, he was in the room less and less and I used my own material, but I still had to follow his basic guidelines and structure. It was helpful at the time, but it was also rather limiting. Once I graduated and was hired as a teacher, I no longer needed my mentor teacher nor his structure and guidelines. I had learned valuable things from him, but I was now free to think things through for myself and do things in a manner that was more appropriate with the situation in which I was teaching.
Paul believes the law to have been a necessary but temporary aspect of the old covenant. It was not part of the original promise although it helped Israel to get to the time when the Messiah had come and God’s promise fulfilled. Imagine, though, if while being employed as a full-time teacher I tried to rely on my mentor teacher the way I had while student teaching. That simply wasn’t available to me and I would have been in a bit of trouble if I firmly believed that I still needed him. This is Paul’s point. The time has come for God’s people to go out on their own. The law was a temporary time of both restriction and instruction but now the time had come for their own freedom in Christ. Their mentorship under the law had come to an end and was no longer available. God’s new age had broken in and they simply could not go back to the old age, nor (Paul wants them to understand) should they want to.
Perhaps one of the most misunderstood and misused concepts in Christianity today is the topic of freedom in Christ. Before we can rightly examine what freedom in Christ is, we need to be clear about what it is not. When Paul talks of freedom in Christ he doesn’t mean that Christians have the right to do whatever they want regardless of what others around them might think and with no thought to the impact of our decisions on others. Many have used freedom in Christ as a license to justify whatever behaviors or patterns in which they have decided to engage (1 Cor. 10:23-33 dispels that notion). We will leave that topic for another discussion, but suffice it to say, that is not at all what Paul is talking about here.
In the past, the way to demonstrate that Israel was the people of God was by following the law, the most obvious aspect of which was circumcision. This was their way to God, but what Paul is telling them is that that option is no longer available to them. If they still want to cling to a temporary physical covenant then they are clinging to slavery. God’s ultimate purpose has always been to have a free people that have willingly chosen a relationship with him, thus it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Freedom in Christ is not about being able to skip church when you want or take up your agenda in opposition to what church leadership has chosen (again, those are different topics for a different discussion), it is about being free from the slavery of sin and the present age.
If they continue to cling to things like circumcision then they are saying that the life of Christ is not enough. In that case, Christ will be of no value. If we cling to any aspect of the present age as though it were supreme to the life of Christ, even if it is something as holy as God’s law, then we have missed the whole point of Christ and the freedom that he brings by allowing us to die to our lives and enter into His. If they put even one part of the law on an equal plane with Christ, then they have obligated themselves to obey the whole law.
They were trying to be shown to be the people of God through means other than the life of Christ, which no matter how you work it, means that they believed they could enact their own righteousness. It would be to fall away from grace and believe in the works of the law to demonstrate that they were the people of God. To cling to the law meant to declare that they didn’t want to be people that were recognizable solely by living by faith in the life of the Messiah.
Those who are the true people of the Messiah, wait eagerly by faith through the Spirit for the righteousness for which we hope. When Paul speaks of righteousness he refers to the evidence that we are standing in the right place before God, that we are the true people of God. What he means then, is that there will be a time when God will publicly and unquestionably declare that all those who have been hidden in Christ (Col. 3:3) are His people. The hope for righteousness is confidently waiting for that time when God will vindicate and justify His people in the age to come. We wait for this time not by the works of the law or the flesh but by the Spirit of God. He is the only means through which we can enter in and maintain the life of Christ. We can recognize the status we have in Christ not by a minor surgery or by maintaining the works of the law, but by a life characterized by the presence of the Spirit (something Paul is about to discuss further in the latter portion of this chapter).
In several other places in his writings, Paul has made clear that any status or position outside of Christ becomes irrelevant to that (Gal. 3:27, 1 Cor. 7:17-24; Philemon). He continues that thought in the discussion at hand concerning circumcision. Paul does deal with the matter evenhandedly, though. Circumcision is of no value, but it is not as if those who are not circumcised are at an advantage either. When it comes to the matter of being the people of God, circumcision is simply irrelevant (it is not wrong to be circumcised, only to claim it is necessary for one’s status with God). Physical marks do not make one a part of Abraham’s family; it is faith and faith alone. Faith in the life of Christ that is made available to all by love and continues to express itself through love.
Devotional Thought
What does freedom in Christ mean to you? Have you truly taken advantage of your freedom that you have in Christ? Have you ever been tempted to abuse it and define it improperly? Take some time to meditate on what Paul meant by freedom in Christ and what it means for you.
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