30 March 2025
Self-discovery can be a painful process. When we suddenly realize what is the basis for our fear, anger, or selfishness, our heart becomes sore. We realize that we have been enslaved to some memory of circumstance that has affected our entire lives since. Yet, right alongside the pain of the discovery comes a brand-new freedom. The choice is right before us to either continue living in that slavery or to live as people free from the negative influences that we have carried through our lives.
The people Paul was writing in Galatia must have been going through a similarly transformative period. As converts from paganism to a faith in Jesus Christ, they struggled with what we might call a world view that was contrary to the freedom offered in the new association with grace. Paul used the story of Hagar and Sarah as an illustration for them, that they might move away from being enslaved to systems of transactional appeasement to various gods, or for the Jews present, the adherence to the old law. The New Jerusalem was not the tactile and tangible adherence to a set of requirements, it was, rather, living in grace by extending grace, being free from judgment because of Christ, and not judging others. They were told to “drive out” any concept that kept them enslaved, and embrace the new covenant living of the promise of the Lord. God loved them, and all that could possibly be required to ‘appease’ him had already been done. No set of rules could define that relationship anymore, and there was no transactional behavior to be followed. Instead, full reliance on the grace and mercy of the Lord, rejoicing in his inward presence which guides toward the discovery of what enslaves by the Holy Spirit was to be their new life.
A New Jerusalem was to start in the present, in other words. New life was not defined by a conversion experience giving a ticket to some future ethereal paradise. It was the abundant change of life here and now, with all obligations toward rules transformed into expressions of love for the One who made them free.
We cry out in our lack of bread, forgetting that there is an abundance of provision in Jesus. We thirst, forgetting that living water flows within us. We feel powerless, forgetting that the All-Powerful dwells within us. To all these things I say, ‘drive out!’ Cast out the things that enslave, and embrace the things that make free. New life is not marked by waiting for a deliverance later on when one goes to heaven, it is living in the kingdom of our Lord and Savior now.