Watch as Len Finn unpacks Galatians 5:26-6:5 and shows us how the Gospel + Nothing = Freedom in Christ.
No Limits
The ever-growing, lived-knowledge, that God’s love and forgiveness for you in Christ has no limits or strings attached, will push out self-destructive patterns of behaviour and will produce the fruit of the Spirit.
“God doesn’t need your good works, but your neighbour does.” Martin Luther
Your salvation doesn’t depend at all on your good works, but the physical, and spiritual health of your neighbour might. The dynamic of the Gospel changed life involves not just helping your neighbour, not just fixing their problems, but bearing your neighbours burdens. And that is categorically tougher and messier.
The Law of Christ is Love
The law is quite simply the will of God. Christ is the will of God found not in a written legal code, but in a person. In Him, the true nature of the will of God for His people is made absolutely clear – it’s unstoppable love. The heart of the will of God is love. And if you want to see the will of God perfectly accomplished, look to Jesus. Jesus is the flesh and blood image of God’s loving-will. The law of Christ shows you God’s will for you on the cross, and it creates God’s will in you through the Spirit. The law of Christ is the Gospel, which means there is nothing for you to do.
Adding to the Hurt
The logic of Christ is a love that is all about forgiveness and sometimes at a very high cost. It is really easy to add to the hurt of a person who is drowning in their own problems. In your own sin, you are as much nothing as your drowning brother is, and in Christ your brother is as much something as you are. You can’t serve your brother or sister in need if you are standing over them – if you think you’re better. It is not you who can help your drowning brother or sister – it is Christ working in you. Apart from Christ you can’t do jack.
The Greatest Gift
Christian love is about shouldering the pain of our neighbours. It requires listening, hearing, understanding and genuinely caring. To bear someone’s burden, you need to stand with them – in their place, hurt, and nothingness. Christ came down for us, but we don’t come down for anyone. We stand with our hurting brother and sister as fellow sinners – fundamentally no better or worse. And all because of Jesus we stand with them as our fellow saints. The greatest gift you can give them is a reminder of who they are in Christ. That, in Him, there is no condemnation for them. They are loved even in their unlovability.
An Invitation
Sunday mornings are not the focus of the Christian life. What you do on Sundays is meant to fuel you for all the rest of your week – to nourish you in order to love. The Christian life is an invitation to discovering again and again an unstoppable love for ourselves in Jesus and to let others discover it in us because of Jesus.
The Universal Struggle
The universal struggle every Christian will have is loving the people God has put in their life the same way Christ would and does. This struggle will remind you of your sin. The Christian life’s life-long wrestling match is between the old dead sinner in you, and Christ being formed within you. Christ has shown us how reckless, forgiving and self-sacrificing His love is.
A regular inventory of how Christ-like you are should keep you pretty darn humble. If you are honest about yourself, you aren’t going to have much time for judging other people.
The good news is that there is no condemnation for you either. In Christ, how well or poorly you love your neighbour doesn’t change how infinitely God loves you. It is really hard to fully and vulnerably love your neighbour if you feel like God’s love for you is on the line.
Your Worth
When you put your self-worth in what you do, you will feel either superior or inferior to those around you. But when you know your real worth – that because of Christ you are perfect in the eyes of God, things like comparison, judgment and condemnation simply don’t make sense anymore. You can’t feel inferior to anyone because you are the beloved child of the Almighty God ransomed by the shed blood of His beloved Son. And you can’t feel superior to anybody, because you owe it all to the work of the Son for the glory of God the father. All comparisons and judgments get leveled at the foot of the cross. The cross makes you gratefully humble without a shred of inferiority, and it makes you truly proud without a shred of superiority. Because it’s not about you, it’s about Christ.
He Bears Your Burdens
Christ not only bore your burdens, He is still bearing your burdens now. You can now love without needing to be more than you truly are – a redeemed sinner and a child of God in Christ.
