Galatians 5:1-6

Galatians 5:1-6The Message (MSG)

Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.

I am emphatic about this. The moment any one of you submits to circumcision or any other rule-keeping system, at that same moment Christ’s hard-won gift of freedom is squandered. I repeat my warning: The person who accepts the ways of circumcision trades all the advantages of the free life in Christ for the obligations of the slave life of the law.

I suspect you would never intend this, but this is what happens. When you attempt to live by your own religious plans and projects, you are cut off from Christ, you fall out of grace. Meanwhile we expectantly wait for a satisfying relationship with the Spirit. For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion amounts to anything. What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love.

I'll bet it doesn't take much for us to think about what it is that we are slaves to. Not circumcision, no.

But we are slaves, aren't we? Set free by Christ, we still find other masters in our lives.

Masters like time, work, money, status, family, iPhones, other "stuff."

Stuff is a big one in our society where the idea that "he or she who has the most toys wins."

But we've already won.  In Christ we are already winners.

Sometimes we are even slaves to things that seem as if they are appropriate - as circumcision was for the Jewish Christians. 

We can be slaves to traditions in our churches - how we worship, how we organize, how we lead. Who gets to be on which committee. How we decorate. Where we meet.

What music we sing.

What liturgy number we use.

How we get communion.

Are we slaves to any of that?

Christ has set us totally free. And when we lose sight of that prize to focus on our other masters, we forget just how good God's grace is!

Gracious God, set us free from our bondage to sin and to stuff and help us see your freedom with new, clear eyes! Amen