Sunday 2nd February – Set Free to Live Free – Pastor Adrian Kitson

Galatians 5:1-6 13-14, Home Text 2025, pastor adrian kitson, Set Free to Live Free

Galatians 5:1-6, 13-14

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.

²Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. ³Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is required to obey the whole law. ⁴You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. ⁵For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope. ⁶For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

¹³You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. ¹⁴For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’

If you’ve been around St Petri for a while you would have noticed that we have a ‘home text’ for a year and we engage in this thing called ‘Dwelling in the Word”.

We employ this spiritual practice on the same text through the year for one reason:

We believe that our health, effectiveness, faithfulness and future as Christians in a rapidly changing landscape, with all the challenges and questions raised, will not be founded on finding a ‘fix-all’ program or system or software or funky website or better sound system, or even our very best behaviour and the hardest work we might do.

No, the only foundation that will sustain any Christian; any church in faith, hope and love is God – his Word.

Our present and future depends on listening.

Our ‘home text’ or ‘centring text’ for 2025 is from Paul’s letter to the Galatians.

Galatians 5:1: ‘It is for freedom that Christ has set us free’

We have shortened it for the memory:

“Set Free to Live Free”

For many, of all Paul’s letters, Galatians is the one most clearly laden with what freedom is – what the gospel is – what the core of our faith is – that we are freed from sin, death and the evil one only be the grace of God given to us in Jesus.

Everything else is founded on this core reality called ‘justification by grace through faith for Christ’s sake’.

Going to Galatians is ‘getting back to the basics’.

Why do this now?

Because we always are wise to centre on the basics: We will hear Luther tells us that it is essential for long-lasting faith to always do this – to never leave this core; to always preach it, teach it and live it because it is easily lost. Things are stacked against us. The ‘unholy trinity’ constantly conspire against this core truth – our own internal wayward heart, a world dismissing Jesus and the Evil one….

We stay in this core truth to stay clear and anchored in freedom hard won for us.

Michael Horton is a Biblical scholar and author and who reads our culture well. He has taken the challenge of producing an up-to-date translation of the difficult-to-read commentary we have from Luther. The commentary we have is an assembly of student notes (that Luther highly approved of) on lectures that Luther gave on Galatians in 1531. Horton has done a great job of using scholarly skills to produce a much more readable version.

Why Galatians now?

Nobody ever drifts toward the gospel. On the contrary, self-trust is the religion of the fallen heart. It is exhibited in every religion, every self-help program, and in the daily lives of all who work feverishly to climb ladders to make it to the top. Instead, God has come to the bottom, to a manger and a cross …

But we do not like this God. If we will have a god at all, he will be no more than a source of inner empowerment, or a facilitator of our personal growth.

Survey after survey indicates that even those who profess to be evangelicals – [the name given to the first ‘Lutherans’] – have little knowledge of this doctrine. Worse, these studies show that evangelicals are as likely as non-Christians to say that human beings are basically good and that, with a little encouragement and instruction, they can gain sufficient righteousness to appear before God on the last day. Jesus has become for many a mascot for whatever political, social, moral or financial cause that people have in mind. He is here to help us achieve ‘our best life now’ or to ‘become a better you’ … This diet leaves disillusionment and despair in its wake, as the majority raised in evangelical backgrounds are unchurched by their junior year in college” (Michael Horton, Galatians, 2024, p2)

Add to that our new scene in Australia: Some are saying we have ‘lost our way’ and no longer upholds the truth of Scripture or our Lutheran Confession of those Scriptures. Heavy charge!

We can get all steamed up about this. There is a better way to respond. Check it. Examine ourselves, or rather, invite the Holy Spirit to examine us by attending to his Word.

Truth is that any Christian and any church is always able to depart from God’s Word on all matter of fronts.

So, let’s check. Let’s go to the heart of faith. Let’s go to Galatians. Let’s go to the beautiful gospel that is our only reason for being, and the inspiration to live our faith in Jesus nowhere more clearly and more beautifully attested to than in this little letter.

For a long time, many have called this little letter the ‘Magna Carta’ of Christian freedom.

In medieval England powerful barons and royalty were trying to find a way to live in peace. In June 1215, a document drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, was agreed to by King John of England. It was called Magna Carta (Latin) meaning ‘Great Charter of Freedoms’.

It promised to safeguard the rights of the church, protect those agitating for reform from prison sentences, access to timely and fair judicial process and limitations on how much tax the King could demand from people.

Even though it had a rocky start, those tenants lasted and form democratic government. This was the first ever agreed document outlining these freedoms – The Magna Carta.

This is Galatians, in Christian terms.

Galatians is often named the ‘Magna Carta’ of our freedom in Christ – freedom from the accusing Law of God, our own internal old Adam and the death it brings, and freedom from the Evil One always on the prowl relentlessly accusing us into shame and fear hoping to lock us up in ourselves again.

Would you enter this Magna Carta with me? Would you seek the freedom that is already yours but know it more and be more confident in living it?

Would you check yourself as to where your heart is – on this core of our freedom or somewhere else, truth be told?

Would you enter this Word and pray? Pray for the Spirit’s illuming truth to speak; to say what we need to hear so we stay free and strong and grounded in this freedom gifted to us?

I want this freedom that enables me as Paul says to;

‘Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery’ (Galatians 5: 1b).

I want to stand firm amid all the changing of the world; all its politics, and robots, and energy wars, culture wars, actual military wars, poverty, injustice, dismissal of this Jesus, dislike for this Christian church, and yet hunger, searching, seeking for roots, foundation, meaning, purpose, joy….

I don’t want to lose my way or us to lose our way but stay centred, firm, sure and confident, reliant – not in myself or in ourselves, but only in Jesus; only in God’s Word; God’s truth; God’s freedom that his grace has created our hearts.

Here’s the gist of Luther’s introduction on the whole book. It sums up the logic of this Great Charter of our Freedom in Christ.

There is raging bull always trying to dismember the church. At its core, we know that our solid rock upon which we stand is the truth that we are made right with God not by our works and achievements and intelligence and moral hard work, but through a relief that is from outside us, which is none other than the Son of God himself.

He has paid full price to recover us, revive us, purchase us for himself and gifted us a life – a full and free life in his grace, here and now and later on.

But the bull rages on. It is the opposite of gift and grace. It is the teaching that God’s gracious work in the world all depends on our human virtue, religious observances, hard work, internal powers, secret mysteries, intelligence, understanding, skills, giftedness and etc….

Luther tackles this raging bull and draws us into the freedom from it.

He likens us to the land at the moment – parched! Like parched land we need only receive the longed for rain. We cannot make it rain by any effort. We can only receive the wonderful life-giving restoring rain when it comes.

That rain we need for full life is the gospel of Jesus. He is simply to be received passively, not worked for diligently.

The diligent working only comes as a result of a passive receiving.

Friends, let’s receive him before we ever try and achieve for him! That might be freedom!

Let’s get a handle on that raging bull at work within and at work without. This may be confronting. We may find that we are our over-reliant on ourselves or mere human ideas. But only then we might also find this freedom – this faith in and how the gracious human Jesus is our protector, saviour, grace-filled hope for a sure now and tomorrow.

Get Galatians out. Have read – in one sitting and then in numerous little sittings.

Here’s how Luther cheekily hooks you with his sarcastic title of his work:

‘Let’s hear it for self-righteousness and its fifty select virtues resulting from works! As penned by the Apostle Paul to the Galatians’.

Great title! If we are brave, we will listen. As we do we will hear that Man of Grace doing his one work – saving, giving, setting free for us to passively receive with joy.

We will focus on it here on Sundays – a bit now and more later. We can focus on it in groups and personally all year.

We hope to have opportunity to gather together this year to study this little Magna Carta of freedom too.

“Set free to live free”.

That is us.

Set free to live free so that others can find the freedom for which they long.

Sounds like a good year!