Galatians 5: 1-6
Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which God has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage. Indeed I, Paul, say to you that if you become circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing. And I testify again to every man who becomes circumcised that he is a debtor to keep the whole law. You have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace. For we through the Spirit eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love.
Paul tells us here to stand. To stand and not to submit again to slavery. What does stand mean? The definition online says that it means “to have or maintain an upright position or to be positioned”. Some synonyms of stand are attitude, belief or determination which are all beautiful depictions of what standing can look like in the natural. We are to be firm and not let ourselves get tied back up under the law. Christ has set us free. What have we been set free from? We have been set free from bondage. We have been set free from sickness and disease. We have been set free from all the cycles that may have occurred in the past. We have been set free from enslavement to the devil. We are new creatures in Christ. The old has passed away and all things are new! Romans 6:22 says: BUT NOW, that you have been set free from sin and become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life! Why would we go backwards when Christ came to release us from it all? John 8:36 says “Therefore if the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed.”
We no longer have to prove anything, look back or try and earn our salvation. We don’t have hindrances or restraints because we are now DEAD to the old Man and made new IN Christ. We have to stand firmly in that and not be tossed to and fro. One thing that the Israelite's did back in the wilderness was look back. They were so comfortable with being in bondage that they couldn’t even handle the fact that they were released from Egypt and heading to the Promised Land. They weren’t able to stand. They were free and they didn’t even know it. We see the Israelite's complain here in Exodus 14:11-12 : “They said to Moses, Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Isn’t this what we have told you in Egypt? Leave us alone so that we may serve the Egyptians? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” The Israelite's here were not standing. In Verse 13 we see Moses’s response: “But Moses said to the people, “Don’t be afraid. STAND FIRM and see the Lord’s salvation that He will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians you see today, you will never see again The Lord will fight for you, and you need only to be still.”
Moses instructed the Israelite's to stand, just like Paul did as well. How exactly do we stand? We stand still and allow the Lord to fight our battles knowing that we already won the war when He sent His only son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins, was buried for three days, and is now risen and sitting at His right hand. We become sober-minded by setting our hope completely on the grace brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ and allow ourselves to not be conformed to the desires of our former ignorance like it says in 1 Peter: 13-14. Romans 12:2 says, “Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may approve what is the good and acceptable, perfect will of God.”
We are now joint heirs with Christ and don’t need to carry any religious obligations. We now can live in faith and not out of duty. We are No longer bound or tied to the past but free to serve Christ out of love as we are perfected in His love.
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