Chuck Larsen

Galatians 5:13 ends with a clear reminder: freedom in Christ is not freedom to sin—it is freedom to love. Paul writes, “through love serve one another,” and in the very next verse he shows what that looks like in action: “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Galatians 5:14). Paul quotes Leviticus the same way Jesus did—highlighting love as the ultimate fulfillment of God’s moral will. He has spent most of Galatians smashing legalism to pieces, insisting believers are free from the Mosaic Law as a means of righteousness. Yet suddenly he uses the word “serve,” the very word used for slavery. Freedom and servitude? How can both be true? Martin Luther captured the tension perfectly: “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.” That is not a contradiction—it is a revolution. In Christ, we are freed from earning God’s approval so we can freely give His love to others.

The world thinks freedom means doing whatever we want—following our appetites and chasing self-fulfillment. But that kind of “freedom” always ends in bondage. Paul warns believers not to let the flesh—the old self-centered nature—take over, because when it does, sin reigns like a dictator. What begins as “freedom to indulge” becomes slavery to addiction, lust, selfishness, anger, pride, and eventually despair. True freedom is not the removal of responsibility but the embrace of righteous responsibility. Leroy Lawson quotes historian Edith Hamilton, who observed that when ancient Athens pursued “freedom from responsibility,” it collapsed from within. That is exactly what Paul is saying. When people live only for themselves, they are not free—they are prisoners chained by their own appetites.

Paul gives the grim result of self-centered living in verse 15: “But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.” When self-interest rules a church, marriage, family, or community, destruction always follows. Love does not bite. Love does not devour. Love does not compete—it serves. Love builds, heals, and blesses. Jon Courson offers great advice to anyone who thinks a life of holiness sounds boring: “If I am not going to party anymore… what am I going to do? Serve one another! Pour yourself into people… You will find that talking to them about eternal issues will be more exciting than anything you have ever done.” He is right. Love is not just the fulfillment of the law. It is the pathway to joy. The world defines freedom as living for yourself. God defines freedom as loving others. One leads to loneliness. The other leads to life.

Paul does not mince words when it comes to legalism. In Galatians 5:12, he drops what may be the most shocking statement in the entire New Testament: “I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves!” That line would get a preacher fired from most churches today—and probably banned from Christian radio forever. But Paul is not being crude for shock value. He is deadly serious. Legalism was not just a theological nuisance—it was soul poison. These false teachers were insisting that Gentile believers had to be circumcised in order to be truly saved. Paul’s response? If cutting a little makes you holy, why not go all the way like the pagan priests of Cybele in nearby Phrygia who castrated themselves in religious frenzy? Maxie Dunnam notes that the Galatians knew exactly what Paul was referencing. His sarcasm was not subtle—it was a scalpel, cutting deep to expose the absurdity of salvation by ritual.

Yet, almost as if he realizes how sharp his tone has become, Paul shifts immediately in verse 13. He softens his voice with a pastoral word: “Brothers.” You can almost hear him take a breath. His goal was never to embarrass the Galatians but to rescue them. “You were called to freedom, brothers,” he continues. That is the heart of Galatians—freedom in Christ. But Paul quickly clarifies: freedom is not a license for selfishness. “Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh,” he warns, “but through love serve one another.” Legalism enslaves the soul. But libertinism—using grace as a hall pass for sin—corrupts it. Grace frees us from the chains of performance, but not so we can turn around and live like rebels. Real freedom is not the ability to do whatever we want—it is the power to do what pleases God.

Some people panic at the idea of radical grace. “Won’t people just go sin crazy?” they ask. But here is the truth: people sin whether they believe in grace alone or grace plus works. Adding rules never cures the heart; it only hides the disease. Sin does not flow from too much grace; it flows from too little dependence on the Holy Spirit. During our failures, we are not “carried away by grace”—we are carried away by self. That is why Grant Richison wisely says, “The Christian life is freedom from sin, not freedom to sin. If we use grace as an excuse to sin, we do not understand the essence of freedom through grace. God never issues a license to commit sin.” Grace does not make sin safe. Grace makes holiness possible. And that is a truth Paul would defend—even if it took a shocking sentence to get our attention.

In Galatians 5:10, Paul pauses from his intense warnings and offers something surprising—confidence. Not confidence in human nature, not confidence in religious systems, but confidence “in the Lord” that the Galatians would return to the truth of grace and not fall for the trap of salvation by works. He writes, “I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view, and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is.” Paul knew exactly what legalism does—it preys on sincere believers and slowly steals their joy. But he also knew that God holds false teachers accountable. The gospel counterfeits who preach “Christ plus works” may look impressive now—respected, disciplined, and polished—but Jesus warned that some very religious people will hear the most terrifying words in eternity: “Depart from me, you workers of iniquity. I never knew you.” It is not works-based people who know God—it is grace-based people who know God.

In verse eleven, Paul points out why legalists hated his message: he did not preach a politically correct gospel. He preached the cross. “If I still preach circumcision,” he asks, “why am I still being persecuted? In that case, the offense of the cross has been removed.” The cross is offensive—not to sinners looking for forgiveness, but to religious people looking for credit. Legalists love ladders—steps to climb, rules to follow, standards to achieve. The cross kicks over the ladder and says, “You cannot climb to God. God came down to you.” That is why legalists persecuted Paul. They were allergic to grace because it shatters the illusion of self-righteousness. The gospel does not flatter human pride; it exposes it.

We often try to compromise to avoid conflict. We tell ourselves that a little mixture of grace and works can keep everyone happy. But mixing grace and works is like mixing gasoline and orange juice—it ruins both. Grant Richison explains it clearly: “Christ’s cross plus anything is legalism.”Christ plus tears, Christ plus communion, Christ plus catechism, Christ plus charity, Christ plus moral effort—all of it is religious math gone wrong. Legalism is not just wrong—it is a direct insult to Christ’s sacrifice. It says His cross was not enough. Legalism is pride wearing religious clothing. Grace, on the other hand, makes no room for pride. It brings us to our knees, empty-handed, where the only thing we can say is, “Jesus paid it all.” The cross will always offend legalism because grace will always offend human pride. But it is at the foot of that offensive cross that sinners find freedom.

Paul told the Galatians that they had been running a good race and making great time. But something happened to them, so in Galatians 5:7, he asks, “Who tripped you up?” Why did they let themselves get hoodwinked away from Christ and back to the law? It seems that there aren’t a lot of Judaizers, just a few very persuasive ones. Verses 8-9 say, “This persuasion is not from Him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump.” I’m confident that these legalists came in the guise of friendship and wooed the Galatians by expressing their concern for their welfare. “We only have your best interest in mind,” they might say as they turn young Christians away from grace and freedom in Christ toward the binding chains of legalism. You’ve heard the saying, “Lord, deliver me from my friends; I can take care of my enemies myself.”

We know where that kind of persuasion comes from. Or better, we know where it doesn’t come from! It certainly isn’t from God. It’s just a bit of “yeast” in the lump causing all the problems. Where does this yeast come from? In 1 Corinthians 5:6, Paul also refers to yeast. He speaks of its penetrating power. Jesus also warned His disciples to watch out for the “yeast” of the Pharisees (Matthew 13:33). Boice says, “The point is simply that the doctrine of salvation by works is not of God but rather proceeds from that which is hostile to God’s grace.” The UBS handbook for translators says, “The meaning of the proverb is fairly obvious: evil, no matter how small it seems, will always in the end result in great harm. Paul may be applying the proverb either to the teachers, who obviously were only a handful or to their teaching, especially to their possible insistence on circumcision as only a small thing.”

I like the way Richison applies this passage. He writes, “It only takes a little false doctrine to ruin a local church. A speck on the telescope will distort the heavens. Benjamin Franklin said, ‘For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the rider was lost; and for want of a rider the battle was lost.’ Any teaching that adds to Christ’s work on the cross, no matter how small, does damage to His work of grace. Grace plus any work, no matter how small, is evil leaven.”

Paul reminds us in Galatians 5:5 that believers “by faith” eagerly await “the hope of righteousness”—our future perfection when Christ returns and completes what He began in us. Then, in Galatians 5:6, he brings that truth down to street level: “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.” There it is—Paul dismantles both legalism and spiritual laziness in a single sentence. Whether you wear a badge of religious achievement (“circumcision”) or a badge of proud non-religion (“uncircumcision”), neither means anything to God. External religious status does not impress Him. Spiritual resume? Irrelevant. The only thing that carries weight with God is “faith working through love.” Not faith talking through religion, but faith acting through love. But if faith is what matters, then we must ask—faith in what?

That question separates the apostle Paul from a lot of sentimental spirituality floating around today. In 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower famously said, “Our government makes no sense unless it is founded on a deeply felt religious faith—and I do not care what it is.” That may work for civic speeches, but it does not work in Scripture. Paul cares what your faith is in. God cares what your faith is in. Faith is only as strong as its object. Faith in faith is pointless. Faith in tradition is powerless. Faith in ourselves is suicidal. True faith is faith in Christ alone. Anything less is an empty slogan. I once heard of a liberal pastor who preached the resurrection every Easter, even though he privately did not believe a word of it. When asked why, he said, “I do not preach my personal faith but the faith of the Church.” That may sound sophisticated in a committee meeting, but Paul would have called it spiritual nonsense. You cannot preach a truth you do not believe. You cannot outsource faith. As theologian Steven Lawson puts it, “What matters is honest faith in Christ. The outward paraphernalia of religion—circumcision, dietary laws, Sabbath observance, or the mere mouthing of doctrine—cannot save us.”

Paul is not dismissing obedience or holiness. He is exposing the futility of religious performance as a substitute for faith. Gary Richison gives a great summary: “Christians who work and struggle in hope that somehow they will gain merit with God ultimately end in futility. They never arrive because they cannot live up to perfection. Religious rites cannot produce spirituality, for only God can take us to perfection. However, God’s love working in our faith will produce what we need. God does the providing.” That is why Paul says faith must work—but not through rituals, formulas, or self-effort. Faith works through love—love empowered by the Spirit, rooted in Christ, and poured out in real life. Religious rituals fade. Spiritual posturing collapses. But faith that loves? That is the mark of someone who truly belongs to Jesus.