The Only Thing That Counts In Life

Galatians 5:1-6
By Harold Dinsmore, M.Div.
© 2007 Harold Dinsmore

             It has been said that love makes the world go around.  But even deeper than love is the reason we exist.  Love is why we are here and love is the reason that keeps us going.  In our passage this morning the Apostle Paul has been writing to the church at Galatia about freedom and sin.  He teaches them that when a person becomes a believer in Christ Jesus, that he is freed from the burden of the law and in so doing they are free from the belief that they have to work for their salvation.

            In our passage this morning, we find him beginning to address freedom in general as it says this in verse 1. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.”  Which reminds me of the writing to the Corinthians in II Corinthians 3:17 where he writes,  “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”  The people of the early church were struggling over rules and regulations.  In particular, circumcision was the outward mark of God for the Jews that they were his people.  Which was again a “work” of the Law…a requirement to do something that was a part of the Mosaic Code or the Law of Moses as given on Mt. Sinai.