Paul on Christian Liberty in Galatians 5:1

The Following is taken from “For Freedom,” my exposition of Galatians prepared for listeners to the Blessed Hope Podcast (scroll down to the link under the Blessed Hope tab)

If anything is worth defending it is Christian freedom. In the face of the threat to such liberty posed by the Judaizers, Paul issues a stern warning to the Galatians– “for freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). Anyone who seeks to be justified by obedience to the law of Moses, through receiving circumcision, through the keeping of Jewish dietary laws, or in observing the Jewish religious calendar, will fall from grace and come under God’s curse (Galatians 5:4).[1]

Paul has already pointed out that those who seek to be justified on the basis of works of law (Galatians 2:16), or who place their confidence in what Paul identifies as the basic principles of the world (stoichiea) will find themselves in eternal danger. In Galatians 5:1-12, Paul contrasts the Judaizing campaign of enslavement to the law with Christian liberty in Christ. This is yet another important plank in his case against the Judaizers.

In the first four chapters of Galatians, Paul issues several responses to Judaizing legalism. In chapter 5, we move into what some identify as the “practical section” of Paul’s Galatian letter, when the apostle takes up the practice of Christian liberty and exhorts the Galatians to defend it.[2] While Paul does change focus a bit from those redemptive historical events which culminate in the death of Jesus and justification through faith, here he describes the Christian life in light of the gospel revealed to him by Jesus Christ.[3] The apostle continues to set out sharp contrasts between opposing positions. Readers of Galatians are now well aware that Paul is fond of antithesis (contrast) as a rhetorical critique and he uses it repeatedly.

Following up his analogy between Hagar and Sarah in Galatians 4:21-4:31, when Paul turned the Jewish understanding of redemptive history on its head, in Galatians 5:1-12, he contrasts faith and works yet again, proving that they are diametrically opposed to the other when it comes to the justification of sinners. To seek to be justified by works of law or through observing of dietary laws, feast days, or circumcision, is to return to slavery to sin and bondage to the basic principles which characterize this present evil age. This is a very serious misstep since Jesus Christ came for the purpose of setting us free from bondage to sin and the law. The gravity of this misstep is identified in verse 1 of chapter 5, when Paul challenges the Galatians with the uncompromising declaration, “for freedom Christ has set us free.”

This is where the Christian life begins for the Galatians and the readers of this epistle–with freedom from the guilt of sin and its enslaving power. Christian freedom is a central concept in terms of our standing before God, as well as a major theme in the Galatian letter.[4] The agitators in Antioch and Galatia deplore Paul’s stress on Christian freedom and see it as the chief sign of a low bar of entrance for Gentiles and an affront to the traditions of their fathers.

If obeying the law of Moses as the means of seeking justification is “bondage,” because doing so places one under the law’s demand for perfect obedience thereby making the person subject to the law’s curse upon violation of any of its commands, then, it is justification by grace alone through faith alone on account of Christ alone that Paul has in mind when he speaks of freedom. To be justified (given a “right” standing before God) is to be free from the curse of the law because Christ became a “curse” for us (Galatians 3:13). We are also freed from the yoke of slavery to which law-keeping subjects us. Jesus came to set us free, not enslave us to the law. All of the Protestant Reformers agreed upon this point and spoke of its importance. This is the doctrine by which the church stands or falls.[5] If Christian liberty is not the defining characteristic of the Christian life, then the doctrine of justification is not properly understood.

The Judaizers were insisting that Gentile converts take upon themselves the “yoke” of the law of Moses as a means of demonstrating their full commitment to the religion of Israel. It is likely that Paul is throwing their own words back at them when he describes obedience to law as a means of justification. In the second half of verse 1, Paul commands the Galatians, “stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” The Rabbinic description of the law as a yoke which the children of Abraham must take upon themselves may also be behind the meaning of our Lord’s words of comfort in Matthew 11:30, “my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” The freedom of which Paul is speaking is “the freedom belonging to the heir, the natural son, the child of the free woman.”[6] Paul made this point in the preceding analogy when he took the proof-texts the Judaizers were using regarding the Abraham story, and showed these same texts actually support Paul’s doctrine of justification. He is doing the same here.

What, then, is Christian freedom? John Calvin contends that Christian liberty is an appendage to justification by faith.[7] The one (justification) necessarily entails the other (Christian freedom). Calvin describes Christian liberty as consisting of three things. First, our consciences are clean before God because we are exonerated from the guilt of all of our sins. The blood of Jesus Christ has washed our sin and guilt away. Second, since we are not bound to the law as a means of justification, we are, for the first time, free to obey the law since it no longer condemns us. Third, since we are free from slavery and now free to obey the law, this means that we are also free from things “indifferent,” or the so-called adiaphora. As Calvin puts it, “we are not bound before God by any religious obligation preventing us from sometimes using [things indifferent] and other times not using them, indifferently.”[8]

Essentially then, Christian freedom is freedom from works of law as a means of justification. This entails realization of freedom from the law’s curse and the yoke of slavery brought about by human attempts to earn God’s favor through obedience to God’s commandments. If we are free in Christ, then anyone who attempts to bind our consciences to the law as a means of justification, or to the rules of men as a means or proof of our justification, are echoing the ancient Judaizers. All who do so risk coming under God’s curse which Paul pronounced upon the Judaizers in the opening verses of the letter.

Christian freedom as defined above is a reality only because our consciences are clean before God. Christ died to remove the guilt we have accrued for all of our infractions of God’s law. Furthermore, Christian freedom includes the new desire and ability to obey God’s law as the fruit of gratitude (the so-called “third use” of the law), knowing that God accepts our flawed efforts at obedience as good works, since we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. Since we are free from law as a means of justification, we are now free to obey the law out of gratitude since we know this pleases God, and that these efforts are the effect of our justification, not the basis for it.[9] This guilt, grace, gratitude, is the genius of the Heidelberg Catechism reflecting the categories given us here by Paul.

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[1] Wright claims this approach characterizes “the old perspective” which sees Paul as combating Jewish legalism. The OPP view, says Wright, is “shallow and hopeless” when it comes to properly understanding Paul. See N. T. Wright, Galatians: Commentaries for Christian Formation (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2021), 310-311.

[2] Betz, Galatians, 253; Ridderbos, The Epistles of Paul to the Churches of Galatia, 186.

[3] Moo characterizes this shift as a change in vocabulary from freedom/slavery to law/faith/Spirit/justification. See Moo, Galatians, 318.

[4] Betz, Galatians, 255.

[5] See J. V. Fesko, Justification: Understanding the Classic Reformed Doctrine (Phillipsburg: P & R Publishing, 2008); and Horton, Justification, 2 Vols.

[6] Fung, Galatians, 216.

[7] Calvin, Institutes, 3.19.1.

[8] Calvin, Institutes, 3.19.1-7.

[9] Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 4.541-460.