Galatians 5:1 - Homiletics

The importance of standing by Christian liberty.

"Stand firm, therefore, in the liberty for which Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." The apostle hopefully assumes that the Galatians had not yet surrendered their liberty.

I. JUDIASM WAS A YOKE OF BONDAGE . It might well be described in such terms by the Apostle Peter at an earlier period ( Acts 15:10 ). The bondage consisted in the number, complexity, and variety of its rites and ceremonies, associated with days, and weeks, and months, and years; in the burdensome repetition of sacrifices; in the expensiveness of the old ritual; in the time and labour consumed in purifications and washings; and in the place which every trivial or important transaction of life, such as marriage, burial, ploughing, sowing, reaping, held in the religious economy of a theocratic people. The Gentiles in Galatia had had experience of the degrading yoke of heathen bondage. Were they to be "entangled again" with a yoke, even that of Judaism?

II. THE LIBERTY WON BY CHRIST . The liberty here referred to is exemption from the rites and requirements of the ceremonial Law, including circumcision itself. But that liberty implies a great enlargement in Christian blessing.

1 . It sets the believer free from the terrors of the old economy. "We have received, not the spirit of bondage again to fear, but the spirit of adoption." Christ has freed us from many fears that must have marred the peace of Old Testament saints.

2 . He destroys the physical drudgery of religion. His yoke is easy as his burden is light.

3 . His liberty lifts us out of the state of spiritual childhood in which the Jews dwelt, that we may have a larger comprehension of the mysteries of the kingdom ( Hebrews 6:2 ).

III. THE IMPORTANCE OF STANDING BY OUR NEWLY ACQUIRED LIBERTY .

1 . It would be an insult to Christ , who bought it , if his followers were to surrender it.

2 . A man may bear an unjust burden , but not a burden upon conscience.

3 . It is our interest to stand in the full liberty of the gospel. "As free, yet not using our liberty as a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God" ( 1 Peter 2:16 ).

4 . Our firmness will encourage others to a resolute assertion of Christian liberty against all sorts of ritualistic priesthoods.