Serve One Another Through Love
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
The Apostle Paul wrote - "For you, brothers, were called to freedom. Only don't use your freedom as an excuse to gratify the flesh, but serve one another through love" (Galatians 5:13). Two main ideas are expressed here: Freedom and Serving. Let's take a look at them:
The Greek word "eleutheria" is translated in English as "freedom" or "liberty," so these two English words mean essentially the same thing. Christ told His disciples - "If you remain in My word, then you are truly My disciples. You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free" (John 8:31-32). The Apostle Paul wrote - "Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" (2 Corinthians 3:17).
Truth brings freedom, it sets people free, it liberates us! Jesus Christ said - "I AM the truth" (John 14:6) - so He is that which sets us free. Christ is present with Christians today through the Holy Spirit, and where the Spirit is, there is liberty or freedom.
Conversely, lies and deception bring un-freedom, that is, slavery and bondage. The Apostle Peter wrote about such liars and deceivers - "For, uttering great swelling words of emptiness, they entice in the lusts of the flesh, by licentiousness, those who are indeed escaping from those who live in error; promising them liberty, while they themselves are bondservants of corruption; for by whom a man is overcome, by the same is he also brought into bondage" (2 Peter 2:18-19).
This is what St. Paul meant by writing - "Only don't use your freedom as an excuse to gratify the flesh" - true freedom doesn't mean that you're free to eat and drink as much as you want: that's gluttony and drunkenness, not true freedom. It doesn't mean that you can have sex whenever and with whomever you want - that's libertinism, not true liberty.
So a pseudo-freedom leads to actual bondage. How? By saying that freedom means you're free to do anything you want, to gratify your fleshly desires, drives, and lusts. Then you're trapped in compulsive-addictive behaviors that you can't break free from. That's phony freedom, a liar's liberty that is actually libertinism. The English word "liberal" in the past meant one who believed in the form of liberty that came from the moral and spiritual values that accompany faith in Christ: honesty, purity, and charity: love your neighbor as yourself. But then things changed:
The article "Liberalism Is Failing Because It Rejected Orthodox Christianity" aptly describes the devolution of Liberalism into libertinism because it has rejected its foundation in the Christian faith. What is "Orthodox Christianity"? It is traditional Christianity, the faith of the Church when it was one, united Church, the Christian faith of the first ten centuries, the faith expressed in the Nicene Creed, "That which is believed everywhere, always, and by all" (St. Vincent of Lerins).
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When the meaning of "liberty" has devolved into libertinism, it signals that society's values have degenerated into gratifying the lusts of the flesh. Mateen Elass is a Christian who converted from Islam. He writes - "Two of the questions I am most often asked are, 'Why does Islam seem so attractive to converts?' and 'Can Islam be defeated?' Not surprisingly, these two questions are interrelated." He goes on to explain how Islam promises in lofty-sounding words to gratify fleshly desires. Christianity can only overcome it by returning to its ideals of diakonia-serving and selfless agape-love.
Now we've come to the second half of our key Scripture verse: "Serve One Another Through Love." What do you think of when you hear the word "serve"? Do you think of a pretty waitress in a restaurant bringing you food? Or a soldier fighting to preserve your way of life? Or a nursing assistant changing a patient's soiled bedsheets? That last one is most likely closest to the New Testament idea of diakonia-serving. The first deacons were selected to care for the poor widows in the Jerusalem Church. Later, deacons and deaconesses were sent out to "minister" or serve the sick in their homes and in early hospitals. It's strange that today we think of a "minister" as a man wearing horn-rimmed glasses, sitting behind a big desk, with walls covered with seminary diplomas and bookshelves of hefty theological tomes.
Our serving must be motivated by love, not merely by a paycheck, or by hope of recognition, or by a guilt complex - doing some grungy work to pay for our sins. How much do we love ourselves? A good yardstick for this might be how much time and money we spend on ourselves. But the very next verse, Galatians 5:14, states - "For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, in this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'" If we loved our neighbors as much as we love ourselves, wouldn't we be spending about as much time and money on them as we spend on ourselves?
That phrase "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" comes from Leviticus 19:18 and is one of the most quoted phrases in the New Testament: Matthew 5:43; Mark 12:31; Romans 13:9; and James 2:8 all refer to it. How do we do that, love our neighbor? How do we serve one another through love? In the next chapter, Galatians 6:2, we read - "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." What is the law of Christ? It's to love our neighbor! So helping each other, bearing each other's burdens, is how we love our neighbors. We serve them in love by bringing them food and/or helping with housework when they are sick, helping them with money and with finding them a job when they're out of work... washing their hair, giving them a haircut (and a shave, if they're male) when they're bedridden.
Do you have any neighbors who are mobility-impaired so that it's hard for them to carry in groceries or take out the garbage or clean their home? They're someone who needs to be loved like you love yourself! Are there home-bound elderly people in your congregation who can't drive to church? You can pick them up and give them a ride to church... or take them shopping, or to the doctor, or simply to the park to smell the flowers! Or it might simply be listening to and weeping with and praying for a distressed person when their relative is dying.
When we begin to think like this, all sorts of new ideas, new ways to serve one another in love, will pop into our minds. The whole world is full of opportunities to visit the sick and elderly in hospitals and nursing homes, to call and send get-well cards to the sick and those recovering from surgery, to mow the lawn or shovel the sidewalks of our handicapped neighbors... the list can go on and on!
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!
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