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At various points in my life I have had the opportunity to tutor a few people in High School maths.

I did well at Maths and so it was something I enjoyed, but there is a question that invariably gets asked, particularly as you get to the more advanced mathematics - and that is: what’s the point?

Why do I need to know how to differentiate x squared?

Or why would I ever have need to use the quadratic formula to find the value of x?

It’s actually a very good question.

But the answer I generally give is that this sort of background knowledge can help better understand how many things work.

The truth is, a similar thing applies for theology.

If you’ve ever studied much theology at depth, you’ll begin to think that it all seems so detached from reality.

But like higher order maths that helps you to understand some of the more complicated things of life, having the deeper understanding of theology helps understand much of the world.

Today we come to what is perhaps the more practical part of the book of Galatians.

It is going to give us a much clearer picture of what the expectation is for how we should live.

Now sometimes it can be tempting to think that we want to jump over all the boring preamble and just get to the point.

It can be like when you are a young driver, and your mum is trying to tell you to be safe on the road, but in doing so she has to tell you countless stories of things going wrong.

As she goes through her lecture, you just want to say, yes I know, get to the point.

Well the truth is, that background information actually is important and so this morning as we come to the action bit of the letter, my aim is to explain what Paul is saying, but also show why this is what should follow naturally from what Paul has just said.

After all, I think we can all see the value in the basic maths taught in primary school.

Things like addition, multiplication, and division will have real world significance for all of us, such as building things and buying things.

But unless you are building or designing something very complicated why would you want anything more complicated?

The truth is, you actually don’t need to know that advanced maths to get by in life, you can live life quite well without it.

But what I tell people who ask the question, is that by training your brain to understand this sort of mathematics, you are actually exercising your mind to being more creative in various problem solving scenarios.

I’ll tell these students that since leaving university where I studied engineering, I don’t think I have ever used calculus, even once, and that includes the nine odd years I worked as an engineer, yet it has provided me with a way of thinking that has helped me on many occasions.

Now, there is something similar that happens in theology.

For anyone who has spent some time near a Bible College or has read books that explore theological themes at some depth, you may wonder why these higher order or discussions even need to take place.

As an example, there is something called ordo salutis which academics love to discuss.

That’s just a fancy way of saying the order of salvation, which I’m not going to get into now - if you want a discussion on it, I suggest use google.

Now as with the higher order mathematics, the higher order theology can seem a waste of space, and if just kept in these theoretical categories, it essentially is.

But like the higher order maths, when we let it shape our minds to see the world from a different angle, the theology can shape our world view in a way that has very important implications.

Structure of Galatians

But if that’s the case, it’s probably worthwhile summarising what has been said in the letter to this point.

After the initial greeting, Paul noted his deep concern about how the church of Galatia had been deserting the true gospel, because the were adding things to it, in particular things like circumcision, and other Jewish things.

Paul however, wanted it to be quite clear that none of these mattered, rather all that mattered was faith in Christ, and this only.

So the first two chapters then, Paul spent considerable time trying to establish his authority, with the point essentially to be that this message of faith only was a reliable one.

As we get into chapter 3, he digs deeper on the argument of why it is only by faith that we are saved, even taking us back to Abraham to show us how this was always the case.

The argument continues into chapter 4, where he begins to show that by faith we move out of slavery and into freedom, and so finally moving into chapter 5 we see what freedom truly is, which is what we looked at last week.

In case you weren’t here last week, the quick summary is that the type of freedom Paul is talking about is freedom from the bonds of sin and freedom to live the way God has set before us.

Like in Romans, he describes the theology of sinful humanity being saved by Christ.

In Ephesians he describes the reconciliation.

In Colossians, he builds a theology of Christ.

And then after he builds his theological case, he then turns to the practical implications.

The reason Paul uses this pattern is because he obviously found it important that his instruction were based on important truths.

He could have come straight out and just said things like, live good lives, pray continuously, avoid idolatry.

But he understand that when we recognise what God has done for us first, suddenly these commands are not just some onerous condition from an overbearing religion, rather it is the natural response that comes from a truly loving God.

And so, this is exactly what we also find in Galatians.

We’ve been in this series of Galatians for some time now, and we’ve gone over and over the fact that salvation comes from faith in Christ alone.

You might have thought that the concept didn’t really deserve as many sermons as it got - but the truth is we really need to embed this into our way of thinking, so that when we come to living out the freedom that we find in Christ, we don’t think it’s a lisence to do what we want, but instead understand it in terms of our response to what Christ has done for us.

For those who were here last week when we began chapter 5, we looked at what it means to have freedom in Christ.

In case you did miss it, the summary is that our freedom is the freedom from the bonds of sin, and the freedom to live God’s way.

Well, today, as we look at the second half of chapter 5, we get a much deeper picture of what this freedom looks like.

This passage is perhaps best known for two lists.

The first being the acts of the flesh, which we’ll see as a list of ungodly behaviour, and the second, the fruit of the Spirit, which is of course how we should be acting.

The important thing to remember though is that living like this comes as a result of what God has done for us.

It is displaying characteristics that is in line with who God is and what he has done.

It’s about love

Well, last week, we actually only looked up to verse 12, and so before we get to the real clear picture of what to do and what not to do, we have verses 13 to 18 which I want to suggest give us somewhat of a principle that will help us link the previous part of the letter with what we’re told to live like.

The other thing we will find as we move into the passage is that Paul introduces for us a very important principle right at the start of this passage, so let’s take a look at that now.

You see, in verse 13, Paul gives us a clear warning not to indulge in our freedom, but gives us this principle I just mentioned instead.

In the last half of verse 13, it says: “rather, serve one another humbly in love”.

It is this that I want to suggest is the most important factor in all of this - love.

It is love that connects all the dots together - in fact, I’d even suggest it is love that can provide a common link throughout the entire Bible.

But I say this with a very important clarification.

You see, when I say love, I mean the love shown by God, not love like the world generally understands it.

He starts in verse 13 by reminding us of this freedom that he had introduced for us at the start of the chapter - “You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free.”

But Paul is well aware of how this freedom can easily be abused and so he adds a warning: “But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh (or sinful nature as some of the other translations have)”.

And this is where the principle to follow comes in, you see he then adds “rather, serve one another humbly in love”.

You see, I’m going to argue that it is this love that is the essential ingredient for freedom.

If you can imagine two hypothetical families.

The first which has no love and as a consequence cares nothing for any boundaries, thereby, with a lack of expectation not putting any pressure for anything.

The second a family with a lot of love, but with that a lot of expectations.

On the surface the first family with no expectation might seem to be the more free, but I’d suggest it is the family with love where the family members would be much more free to reach their God-given potential.

Now before we continue it is certainly worthwhile clarifying what we mean by love.

Unfortunately the world has to a large degree trashed the true meaning of love.

Love has come to mean this feeling of infatuation to another person which can come and go for any number of reasons.

The truth is, this type of ‘love’ is actually self-focussed and can be quite detrimental to society.

The love that we are talking about in this situation is the love that God has shown us.

The Apostle John actually gave us a good definition of love, which we can find in

This is the love that Paul has been speaking about right from the start of the letter.

In fact if you take that definition from , you’ll see how closely it links with Paul’s opening statement back in when he describes Jesus as the one “who gave himself for our sins to rescue us...”

The whole basis then of the message that we are saved by faith in Christ only, is completely predicated on the fact that God loves us.

That nothing can stand in the way.

This is the only way that that makes sense.

You see, why would God want to save us when we are utterly useless, when we have done things that are so abhorrent to him?

It is only because he loves us.

Nothing in return

But this is where we need the opening chapters.

You see it is so easy to fall back into our understanding of love, where we love someone as long as we get something in return.

I mean, how much do we see this in marriage breakups - I’ll love my spouse, but only while I feel I’m getting something in return.

But understanding the first half of the book, we realise that the love God shows, does not expect anything in return.

This is after all why it is by faith only.

If he did expect something in return then it would be faith and something else.

This becomes so important than as we will move on shortly to the lists about how we should and shouldn’t act.

It needs to all be on the basis of love expecting nothing in return.

Now before we get into the two lists, I want to highlight verse 15, because this describes what happens when we don’t let this kind of love take control: “If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other”.

It’s the Christian love where we give and expect nothing in return.

It is anything but the self-absorbed love that seems to be more prominent today.

Now it seems clear that Paul really wanted to highlight this idea of love being the essence of true freedom because he reminds us that it is through love that we can summarise the whole law.

And in verse 15, just in case there is any doubt, he states it in the negative - “If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other”.

It’s quite clear, and to be honest, quite obvious when you think about it.

When you allow your freedom to indulge in your own sinful desires, this is just going to destroy one another.

What might seem like freedom initially is anything but.