Christian freedom from the law does not promote lawlessness

Warm-up: What are the chores that you dislike the most at work (or after work), and why do you still do them anyway?

Read: Galatians 5:1-26

1) vv1-5: Why are those who accept circumcision ‘obligated to keep the whole law’, v3? Gal 3:10; Deut 27:26

• Previously, we saw that Paul defined the ‘whole’ law as the law decreed on Mount Sinai, which was the moral law (4:24). Don’t we need obligations? Why or why not? *
• v5: What prevents Christians from using their freedom as a free pass to do wrong?
  • If tomorrow all state laws were suspended (incl. the good ones that are aligned with God’s ‘natural’ law written on the human heart), how would you expect Christians to behave?
  • How do you recognize someone who instead ‘eagerly waits for the hope of righteousness‘?
• Both v5 and v6 begin with “For…”, as evidence why the circumcisers are severed from Christ. How did their practice of the law prove their separation from Christ?

2) v6: Why does the law (represented here by circumcision) have no power anymore for those in Christ?

• lit. “…neither circumcision nor uncircumcision have any power…” (gr. ischuo, to be strong, have power): Namely to accomplish what exactly?
  • Jesus taught that our righteousness must exceed the one of the Pharisees (Mt 5:20). Where do you look for the power to get us there?
  • Have the Ten Commandments helping you to grow as a Christian?
• “…pistis dia agape energoumene” (lit. faith energizing/effective through love; same word as the one used to describe prayers in Ja 5:16): What distinguishes such love from being motivated by obligation?
  • Why does God desire for Christians more than compulsory obedience? [Hint: Imagine two lovers]
  • How does unbelief respond to that idea? e.g. Mt 25:24

3) vv7-12: What was the root cause why the Galatians drifted from the only faith that saves? v8

• What is ‘persuasion’, really?
• Can also Christians become persuaded by lies? How?
  • How do these lies spread?
  • What makes their spreading in the manner of ‘leaven’ most dangerous?
• The verb phroneo in v10, translated as ‘taking a view’ by ESV, literally means ‘to understand/think’, in the sense of an inner-perspective (insight) that shows itself in corresponding, outward behavior (Thayer): If Paul trusted in the Lord that the Galatians will ultimately stay course, why write a letter at all?
  • What does this say by which means the Shepherd chose to keep His sheep? cf Jn 10:4
• How does the context define what Paul meant by “the offense (lit. scandal) of the cross”?
  • What makes the doctrine that Jesus suffered the death penalty on our behalf so offensive?
  • How does a return to the law and its sense of duty and obligation cover up this scandal of the gospel and make it look more reasonable?

4) How do vv13-16 define whether ‘freedom from the whole law’ for Paul included the moral law, or only its ceremonies?

• v14: Which laws are already fulfilled by loving your neighbor as yourself: The Ten Commandments, or ordinances about ceremonies?
• v15 starts with “But…”: Which kind of laws were broken by the unfolding bickering about ceremonies?
• v16: What are ‘…desires of the flesh’, and which kind of law was designed to restrain or imprison these?

5) vv16-18: Why is the old way under the moral (!) law contrasted to a new one ‘led by the Spirit’, v18? Why not equate them instead?

• Paul didn’t write: “If you are under the Spirit”. How would that differ from being “led by the Spirit”? And why didn’t he say “…led by the law”, but “…under the law”?
  • Read Ro 7:14. If the law is spiritual, why does Gal 5:18 not equate it here with the leading of the Spirit?
• What happens when we mistake the moral obligations of the law for the leading of the Spirit? Mt 9:17
• Read Jn 15:9-12. How do you reconcile these words of Jesus with Paul’s preaching? Hint: Which commandments did Jesus have in mind, and how did he make it clear beyond doubt that only “faith effective through love” is a faith that truly saves?
  • Why are we prone to instead equate our sense of duty with love?
  • Why can we fancy we have loved when we barely did what was the minimum requirement?

6) Personal & application

• What is your own chief conclusion from Gal 5 in what sense Paul considered law preaching to be anti-gospel?
  • How does it deceive people to set their hopes on a false gospel as to how we can become holy?
• In what ways do you find this conclusion may challenge any notions of your own theological tradition about whether and how (and to whom) the law must still be preached until Christ returns?
• Do you find this whole Law/Gospel discussion in Galatians is only peripheral, or rather central to Christian doctrine and practice? Why or why not? When or in what ways has it become important to you?
• What do you think of Paul’s approach to draw the false doctrine of his opponents into the light of public scrutiny?
• Should we refrain from calling such false teachers by name, but still tackle their doctrine?

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* Without question, ‘salvation’ in the Bible always means reconciliation to God and deliverance from our rebellion against His unchanging will of what is good and right. And undoubtedly, the commandment to love our enemies only further elevated the standard of ‘good and right’, rather than lowering it. No one with even minimal Bible literacy can deny this and still consider themselves Christian. The only discussion is about how to find such deliverance, and to what extent Christians may or may not rely on the law for guidance to that destination, and if so, which law(s). The letter to the Galatians shows that the Reformation did not invent this discussion. It only brought back into light why questions about the law will always take center stage in the struggle to explain what the Bible means by justification: Works of the law are always the natural fruit of justification by faith and never its root:

The law is nothing else than the eternal will of God. …For the law “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mt 22:39) will never be abolished. …(This) is proven by what is written in Ro 2:14 about those living without The Law. …the will of God is permanent, so that He is never going to change any part of that law which has to do with the inner man… Then, in Ro 13:19, Paul teaches that all laws can be summarized by the following “Love your neighbor as yourself”. …From this, a very difficult question can be answered of which some persons complain that no one really explained it to them, namely: How does it happen that from the same law we keep some things but sort out others? Whatever is examined by this rule and shows itself to be included can never be set aside. But whatever is not included is already abolished and obsolete through Christ. ‘For Christ is the end of the law’, Ro 10:4, and ‘The end of the law is love’, 1Tim 1:5. Christ and love thus must be the same thing. ‘God is love’, 1Jn 4:8. Therefore, those who serve under Christ are bound to do what love ordains. What love does not ordain, or what does not proceed from love either is not commanded or is unprofitable, 1Cor 13:3.

Huldrych Zwingli, Of True and False Religion, 1525 (emphasis added)

This was written in 1525, in the year before Zwingli’s confrontation with anabaptist revolutionaries. Similarly, in the year before a proclamation of antinomian anarchy by the Zwickau prophets, the young Melanchthon wrote in a first Protestant treatise of systematic theology:

Those who have been renewed by the Spirit of Christ now conform voluntarily even without the Law to what the Law used to command. The Law is the will of God; the Holy Spirit is nothing else than the living will of God and its being in action.

Philip Melanchthon, Loci communes, 1521 (emphasis added)

Only after being confronted with political revolution in the name of Christian liberty, the Reformers strived to clear their preaching of ‘salvation by faith alone’ from slanders that it endorsed the same licentious antinomianism (lawlessness). One of Melanchthon’s measures was to modify his statements to now insist first in his Scholia (1534) and then in the second and third editions of his Loci (1535, 1543) that Moral Law must be preached no less to believers than to unbelievers, at least in his historic context where all citizens were also members of the church:

Furthermore, the Law must be preached to the regenerate to teach them certain works in which God wills that we practice obedience. …The divine order that we are to obey God remains unchangeable. Therefore, even though we are free from the Law, that is from damnation, because we are righteous by faith for the sake of the Son of God, yet because it pertains to obedience, the Law remains, that is, the divine ordinance remains that those who have been justified are to be obedient to God. Indeed, they have the beginning of obedience which we shall now discuss under its own locus as to how it is pleasing to God. These comments suffice to give us instruction regarding the threefold use of the Law.”

Philip Melanchthon, Loci Communes, 1543, trans. J.A.O. Preus, 1992

Threefold, because Melanchthon now added a didactic use for believers, in addition to the two uses that Luther had recognized as God’s purpose of Biblical law to 1) restrain the evil of unbelievers (civil use), and 2) to lead them to recognize their own need for salvation by faith and thus flee to Christ for their salvation (pedagogic use).

Subsequently, similar formulas for a didactic “Third” Use of the Law for believers appeared in Calvin’s Institutio (1536) and eventually in the Formula of Concord (1577) that was signed by a majority of Lutherans, true to the legacy of the late Melanchthon, but arguably in direct contradiction e.g. to 1Tim 1:8-9. In continuing contemporary discussions, the Third Use tends to be advocated as the necessary remedy for a society where even many who profess to be Christians openly advocate antinomianism (L.M. Vogel, Concordia Theological Quarterly 69, 2005). It stands to reason, though whether this supposed remedy confuses the didactic with the civil use of the law, possibly due to an erosion of our ability to articulate what distinguishes Christians as christian (in the sense of the brief Introduction to Galatians).

For an outstanding brief interpretation of Calvin’s position in his Institutio (1536) and a concise comparison to Melanchthon’s threefold use of the law, see Tertius Usus Legis by Prof. R. Scott Clark.