Freedom, Responsibility, Fruit & Not Giving Up! – Galatians 5 : 1, 13-25

Andrew M first preached this sermon at St Denys in July 2025. Speaking from Galatians 5 he reminds us that true freedom is serving others in love, true freedom means crucifying the sinful nature … and true freedom keeps in step with the Holy Spirit. If we want to enjoy the freedom that God wants us to enjoy, we need to walk in lock step with the Holy Spirit and be imitators of Christ.  The character traits of someone who knows this true freedom Paul describes as the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness gentleness and self-control.

We have already been thinking about how with freedom come responsibilities, but we will now shift gear a bit and think how this is the case not just in a game show on TV but in the game of life.  And it is the Galatian church who we are going to learn from and what their founder evangelist and frequent visitor has to say to them. 

In brief, the Christians in Galatia were beginning to be influenced by false teachers and to slip back into legalism.  They were being encouraged to believe that they needed to follow the Jewish law and traditional rules on top of believing in Jesus … if they wanted to be saved.  But this was a fundamental misrepresentation.  A falsehood.  We cannot be saved by keeping the law and the ten commandments.  The law served as a guide to point out our need to be forgiven.  Christ fulfilled the obligations of the law for us.  He alone can make us right with God.  And that forgiveness becomes ours through believing in Christ alone.  And with that comes true freedom.

Now, crazy as it sounds, the Galatians were prepared to trade this freedom for a return to the strictures of the law.  So in this part of the letter, Paul goes to great lengths to say No!  This is what true freedom means, this is how it is maintained and this is what it looks like in action.

So … v1, Paul says: Everything that Christ has done has been to set us free - free from the penalty of sin, free from the power of sin in our lives and one day, free from the very presence of sin when we go to be with him in heaven.  Don’t go back to a life of slavery and of bondage to sin.

Now, we skip a bit where Paul spells out how they were running a good race but got misled.  He has harsh words for those who had been misleading them, including over the matter of circumcision - v12 “As for the agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!”  Strong words but what they were doing was wrong, destructive and needed calling out.

True freedom is serving one another in love

 So … in v13 we start to see that true freedom is not about doing what we want for ourselves, a life of no constraints, but carries responsibilities for others.  Back to basics, Paul says, it all comes to loving your neighbour as yourself.  We are free to do right and to glorify God through loving service of others.

 The idea of freedom and responsibility being linked is not unique to Christianity.  Albert Camus: “Freedom is not primarily constituted of privileges but of responsibilities”.

 Charles Kingsley: “There are two freedoms.  The false, where man is free to do what he likes: and the true, where he is free – and desires – to do what he ought”.

 But for the Christians the motivation is to glorify God and the key to success is doing this not in our own strength or as an act of will, but with the inner resources that God supplies … through the Holy Spirit.  Paul tells the Christians in Galatia what character the Holy Spirit is working in us to produce (we’ll come to that in a minute).  But these character traits are almost all – if not all – about our relationships with others.

 In their context in the letter, they are set in contrast to a list of behaviours which nearly all hurt other people in one way or another, v 19-21, including sexual immorality, hatred, discord, jealousy and fits of rage. The same is true in all the ethical passages in Paul’s letters.  Godly living has everything to do with how we treat those around us.

True freedom means crucifying the sinful nature

 So, that’s simple then - just stop doing these bad things.  How I wish it was as simple as that!  Because I know and we all know as Christians, that our former sinful nature clings to us and isn’t easily shaken off.  Paul describes the two forces conflicting within us – the Holy Spirit and the sinful nature (our evil desires or inclinations that stem from our bodies).  Paul is not saying these forces are equal – the Holy Spirit is infinitely stronger.  If we try to follow the Holy Spirit by own human effort we will fail.  Our only way to freedom from our evil desires is through the empowering of the Holy Spirit.

 We must deal with them decisively.  We still have the capacity to sin, but we have been set free from sin’s power over us and no longer have to give in to it.  In v24 Paul say that those who belong to Jesus, those who are his friends and followers, have crucified the sinful nature.

 That’s a very strong word.  Crucify is not electrocute, hang, or shoot.  Crucifying is a slow death.  So it means that these things are gradually dying.  We say: I set my will against it each morning - against my capacity for anger, against my capacity for lust, against my capacity for pride … I set my will against it.   I am going to be in step with the Spirit.  We must daily commit our sinful tendencies to God’s control, daily crucify them, and moment by moment draw on the Spirit’s power to overcome them.

True freedom keeps in step with the Holy Spirit

 I have left the best to last in finally getting to v 22 where Paul spells out what the character traits are of someone who knows this true freedom that he has been talking about.  He describes them as the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness gentleness and self-control.

 Love means not having favourites but serving everyone and sacrificing yourself. 

  Joy is delight in God for who He is and not just for what He gives us. And it is recognising that God is in control. 

  Peace is the ability to trust in God and that He is in control … and so you become less anxious and less worried and more able to focus on others. 

  Patience is the ability to suffer and be wronged without melting down and becoming bitter.

 Kindness is generosity as opposed to envy.  It is a generosity of spirit.  It delights to see others doing well and being lifted up, so there is no smallness of spirit here. 

  Goodness really means in the Greek sincerity or integrity … as opposed to hypocrisy.  It’s being the same person in private and public. It’s being transparent.  You are not spinning everything. You are the same person with everyone. 

  Faithfulness is being dependable.  It’s being absolutely whole-hearted as opposed to half hearted, so you are reliable and dependable.  We make promises and keep them, however much it costs.

 Gentleness is a poor translation and the word is humility.  It’s not thinking less of yourself – it is thinking of yourself less.  It’s self-forgetfulness  You are not self-obsessed and thinking about what others are thinking of you.  It’s the opposite – we forget ourselves because our identity is in Christ.  

Self-control is the ability to make the right choices.   Self-control is to pick the important over the urgent, to not gratify the flesh, to just not go there.

Notice that the word for fruit is singular not fruits.  They are like the multiple facets of a beautiful cut diamond.

 The fruit of the Spirit is the spontaneous work of the Holy Spirit in us.  The Holy Spirit produces the character traits that are found in the nature of Christ,  If we want the fruit of the Spirit to grow in us we must join our lives to him.  We must know him, love him, remember him and imitate Him.  The fruit of the Spirit are the by-product of God’s control  - we cannot obtain them by trying to get them without his help.

So … True freedom is serving others in love, True freedom means crucifying the sinful nature … and True freedom keeps in step with the Holy Spirit.

So what does this mean for us in practice today.  Tim Keller, an American pastor, once said this : “Hearts can never be unlocked from the outside, only from the inside.  Only God’s Spirit can go there”.  If we want to enjoy the freedom that God wants us to enjoy, we need to walk in lock step with the Holy Spirit and be imitators of Christ.  We must read the bible, pray, and be in fellowship with other Christians.  These are the practical things that nourish us and equip us to serve others and bring glory to God.  For many, this will not be things we haven’t heard before, but we need to remind ourselves and encourage each other to keep on keeping on in the Christian life.

Not Giving Up

The final thing I want to share with you in finishing is that, as I look at the freedom I experience as a Christian and long to see others experience the same - sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the world we live in and events going on around us.  I know in my heart of hearts that I can be a light wherever it is that God places me but it seems so little when there is so much darkness around us.  So much heart-break, inequality, loneliness and despair.  A world in which wars rage, innocents are being slaughtered, tyrants rule mercilessly, climate catastrophe haunts us, economic forecasts are increasingly gloomy.

There are times when it’s as if I am beginning to lose sight of the sovereignty of God – I cannot see that He is still really in control … in these dark times.  This week I received an email from CMS, one of our mission partners, promoting what they are calling Not Giving Up Day.  2^nd July, pretty much the midpoint of this year that seems so bleak humanly speaking, is when we are encouraged to join an online event and make the #NotGivingUp pledge.  And I thought I would read this in finishing.  These words may be helpful as we reflect on the responsibilities we have because of the freedom we enjoy in Christ, and to recommit to being light in the world and to serving others for God’s glory and that His kingdom might come.

Not Giving Up Pledge (see more from CMS here)

I’m not giving up.

I acknowledge that there might be many reasons to give up. On people. On hope. On the idea that things can ever change.

Yet, as a seeker or follower of Jesus, I know I am called to trust him through the storms.

Tough as that might be, I will persist in hope.

No people are beyond his reach. No place or space is beyond his love.

And so, at the midpoint of this turbulent year, I will look to him.

By God’s grace, I will choose curiosity over cynicism.

I will take risks.

I will turn my anger into action.

I will be generous.

I will love.

I will look for God at work at the edges.

I will join with other Jesus-followers and stubbornly love this world back to wholeness.

I can do this because I know Jesus never gives up.

Neither should I.