Gentle Reader,
A brief reminder: We are thinking about holiness right now. Together we have asked, “what is holiness?” and “do we want to be holy?” What better way to slide into the long, hot days of summer than with a little existential and theological pondering?
Now, a word from a friend of mine:
For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
– Galatians 5:1 (NRSV)
I love the Apostle Paul. So many think that he’s anti-women, but he’s not. (See the work of Dr. Lucy Peppiatt, Dr. Michael J. Gorman, Dr. Beth Allison Barr, Marg Mowczko, or Dr. Scot McKnight – among many others – if you’re unconvinced). Paul’s nerd energy and intense personality come through the words first written so long ago. That’s one of the (many) beautiful things about Scripture. God doesn’t just dictate words to the authors. God and the authors work together, weaving in and out and around each other. The heart and mind of God is expressed brilliantly through the pens of human writers who are not asked to check their minds at the door. God invites them to engage in the writing process with everything they are and everything they’ve got.
Anyway, Paul. He’s great. He is the master of run-on sentences. He constantly interrupts himself. He is just so excited! He wants everyone to know Jesus! I love that. He also packs quite the punch when he wants to, which is less than all of the time but more than rarely. I also love that. The Church needs people who can call a spade a spade, whether we like it or not (and most often, we don’t).
These brand-new communities full of brand-new Christians, they’ve got problems. The believers in the Galatian region of the Roman Empire (a chunk of modern-Turkey) are no exception. They’ve gotten themselves twisted up in knots. So Paul sends them a letter. He asks them what their problem is and how they even got to have that problem. And then he writes the two sentences quoted above, which make up the key verse of Galatians. This is the thesis statement. This is the point.
But it’s not freedom from. It’s freedom to.
Paul will expand on that idea a little later in the letter, using his famous “fruit of the Spirit” metaphor. (Or analogy. I get those confused. What I know for sure is there’s not literal fruit). The freedom that Christ graces us with is not freedom to do whatever we want to do, but the freedom to submit to and cooperate with God.
This is an essential aspect of holiness.
Submission to God.
Not out of fear. Not because we’re trying to earn God’s love or sneak into Heaven. Not because God is controlling. We submit to God out of love. Out of immense gratitude for all that God has done, is doing, and will do for and in and around us. We know exactly how deep our need for God goes, and we don’t fool ourselves into thinking that need is somehow shallower than it is.
We were slaves before we knew Christ. Slaves to sin, both personal (your individual choices) and cosmic (the brokenness and systemic troubles of this world). Slaves on a trajectory to nothing but chaos and death. God intervened. In the greatest act in all of history, God came to this broken world. Lived the life we could never live. Died an undeserved death. Did a kick mightier than Chuck Norris has ever done to move the heavy stone out of the way and walked right out the tomb three days later.
That’s the best news ever!
That, and that alone, is what makes us right with God.
And so we submit to God because God loves us.
So what feels so intrinsic and right and natural to us, when it buts up against that overwhelming and endless love – the right choice is to let it go. To not go back to being a slave. To open our hands, give it up, and slip our palms into the nail-pierced hands of our Creator.
Holiness may not begin there. It may not end there. But it is sustained there.
GRACE AND PEACE ALONG THE WAY,
MARIE
Image Courtesy of Gabriel Benois