Set Free to Love
Scripture: Galatians 5:13–15 (NLT)
For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. 14 For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
15 But if you are always biting and devouring one another, watch out! Beware of destroying one another.
Paul has spent most of Galatians making the case that believers in Christ are no longer bound by the religious Law. They have been set free. But freedom, he now reminds them, is not the same thing as license. Don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. The temptation when any constraint is lifted is to turn inward, to use the newly opened space for yourself. Paul says do the opposite. Use your freedom to serve one another in love. The freedom Christ purchased was never meant to be hoarded. It was meant to be given away.
Under the Old Testament Law, even well-intentioned acts of love were sometimes hindered. Touching someone considered unclean, a leper, a bleeding woman, would render a person ceremonially unclean. The Law created boundaries that at times restricted compassion. But through Christ that barrier is gone. Love is no longer limited by ritual or category. Grace has thrown the door open for service, mercy, and unity across every dividing line. And Paul distills the whole purpose of the Law into a single command that now replaces all the rest. Love your neighbor as yourself. That is the law of Jesus. That is what should drive the life of every follower of Christ.
“Christian love draws no distinction between one enemy and another, except that the more bitter our enemy’s hatred, the greater his need of love.”¹
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
Bonhoeffer wrote those words in Nazi Germany, where the cost of loving the wrong neighbor could mean your life. He knew that love across dividing lines was not a sentiment. It was a decision, and often a costly one. The neighbor Paul calls us to love is not just the person who looks like us, believes like us, or lives like us. Think of the Good Samaritan. The neighbor is often the one we are most tempted to despise, ignore, or overlook. And Paul’s warning about biting and devouring one another is a reminder that when love is absent, even communities of faith can tear themselves apart. But when love rules, freedom flourishes, not just for us but for those around us.
We have been set free not to consume but to serve. Not to protect our comfort but to cross the distance toward someone in need. May the love of Christ be so real in us that it reaches further than our preferences, our politics, and our prejudices. That is what it means to live by the law of love.
Reflection:
- How have you been using your freedom in Christ lately, for self or for service?
- Is there someone in your life, maybe culturally, politically, or religiously different, who you have struggled to love?
- What would it look like for your life to be shaped daily by the law of love?
Prayer:
Ask God to reveal any ways you have used your freedom for selfish purposes. Pray for a heart shaped by His love and eager to serve others, especially those who are different from you.
Footnote:
¹ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 164.