It 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.
Galatians 5:1 (NIV)
The Yoke They Went Looking For
His friend covered something for him in a bad year and told him at the time, in those words, that it was not a loan. Three years ago now.
He sends forty dollars on the first of every month. The friend stopped depositing them about a year in and has told him twice to stop, once gently and once not. The checks keep coming. They see each other about half as often as they used to, and neither of them would tell you it’s because of that.
The churches in Galatia had been taken out from under a yoke already, and some of them were lining up to take it back. It 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. The yoke here is a religious one. Paul names circumcision, and behind it the whole law taken up as the way to get right with God, and he puts his own name in it: Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you.
They were trying to do better. Paul says what they were after, to be justified by the law, and being right with God that way looked like rules a man could finish. That pull is easy to feel. A debt you are paying off is a debt you have some standing in. A gift leaves you with nothing to do.
He tells them where it goes. Anyone who takes that step is obligated to obey the whole law, all of it, the parts nobody brought up while they were being recruited. Those trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ and have fallen away from grace. The security they were adding took the ground out from under them.
What a man does with forty dollars he does with more than forty dollars. Paul isn’t writing about manners between friends, and he doesn’t keep the stakes low: alienated from Christ, fallen away from grace, about people who were only trying to be sure.
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free, and the freedom was the point of the freeing. There were people reading that letter with the paperwork already half filled out.
The first of the month comes around. He writes it out and puts a stamp on it.
A Prayer to Remember
I’m carrying a list again, God. Half of it is work you never asked me for, and I keep it because a list makes the freedom feel like something I had a part in earning. Show me the lines on it that came from me. I can put down what I can see.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
