Re:Verse passage – Galatians 5:1-15 (day four)
Paul has made it clear throughout this letter to the Galatians: Christ brings freedom. Subjugation to anything else will inevitably bring us back under the yoke of slavery. Now, though, we get a picture of what this freedom is meant to look like.
This message of freedom doesn’t promote the post-modern idea that “anything goes” and that we all ought to “pursue our own truth.” It isn’t a license to do or believe whatever we want. Rather, this freedom from Christ allows us to live in such a way that we can love one another with the very love of God. The freedom that Christ offers isn’t just an absence of shackles, it is the presence of divine grace. It is a perfect freedom.
The certifiable stamp of real freedom, then, is love. When we love our neighbor as ourselves, we are living in true freedom. The only yoke worth submitting to is that of Christ, because mysteriously, it is under this yoke that we experience perfect freedom.