On Friday, I was talking to Bertie Roberts and Marjorie Crisman about today’s message.

This journey through Galatians has been really good for me. The freedom and the joy that Paul is talking about, even the fierceness with which he battles the tendencies to make rules and rituals and laws the center of our faith…all of it speaks to me and encourages me.

It’s not always easy to figure out how to communicate that joy and freedom to others. I told Bertie and Marjorie, “It’s not like it does any good to stand up there and say, ‘Come on!!! Be joyful!!! Now!!!’”

But it’s Paul’s little line in Galatians 4: 15 that keeps creeping into my thoughts.

“What has happened to all your joy?”

As Paul watches them from afar, as he sees this slide into new teaching that moves them away from freedom and grace and good news because of Jesus to law and ritual and will power…as he watches the change, what he notices most of all is that it has killed their joy.

What has happened to all your joy?

What has happened to all MY joy?

A couple of disclaimers here. First, I’m asking that question honestly, not assuming that you and I don’t have any joy. Many of us do live in joy, and nothing has happened to it at all! But if I start thinking deeply about Galatians, if I start to look for ways to measure or evaluate whether I am truly living in the freedom and “rightness” of Jesus Christ, this question seems like a good place to start examining.

What has happened to all my joy?

Second, “joy” in the bible is not the same thing as “happiness”. Or peppiness. Or optimism. Joy is not so much an emotional state as it is a deep contentment that comes because we are a part of God’s family, a state of being that does not have to be defined by our circumstances.

Joy comes because we know “whose” we are. Joy comes in knowing we can call God “Abba, Father,” as it says in Galatians 4:6. We are his children! His dearly loved children! And that state of being is dependent not upon our actions, not on living out the correct moral code with the right amount of will power. It is dependent upon God’s constant choice to love us, showed powerfully in Jesus, “who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age.” This is what Paul says so beautifully in Gal. 1:4.

What has happened to all my joy?

I asked myself that question a lot one summer during college. I spent that summer as an intern at a church, doing a lot of work with their high school youth.

Just a few years before this, I was a high schooler myself. “Joy” is a word that I think lots of people would have used about me in high school: I laughed a lot; I dressed up for sporting events and yelled my head off; I enjoyed life.

That summer in college? Not so much. My guess is that some of the youth had complained to the pastor that I was a little too serious and intense, because the pastor had a conversation with me.

And it was a good conversation. He handled it really well. I remember him saying, “You’re a serious young man, and it’s because you’re making some serious life decisions: who you will marry, how you will serve God with your life. Just don’t take yourself or the time with youth TOO seriously! ‘The joy of the Lord is our strength.’”

That caused me to think.

I could see how joy and freedom, the big theme words of Galatians 4 and 5, joy and freedom had gotten a little bit swallowed up by the words “duty” and “obligation.”

I wanted to be an example. I wanted to serve God faithfully. It’s not a very big divide between “duty and obedience” and “dry obligation and legalism.”

And here’s the thing: I haven’t exactly licked this problem over time. When we moved to Boise to be senior pastor at age 31, I struggled again with that constricting pressure of making sure I did the right thing, always.

Coming back here to NFC, wanting to serve faithfully, not wanting to make mistakes…some of that same duty and obligation has grown so large that at times joy and freedom have not been easy to find.

So this is what God is doing in me as we’re working through Galatians.

God is inviting me back to the start, to what’s true, to what I know but so often let circumstances and stress and obligation squeeze out of me.

God is inviting me back to joy and to freedom! A joy and freedom that is centered not in what I do for God, but in what Christ has done for me. A joy and freedom that calls to me from the ultimate freedom and peace of God’s heart, God’s heart that knows purity and joy and sees no separation between the two.

Joy and freedom, Paul says, are not found in pursuing a harsh obedience to a moral code with its slavery-producing rules. I’m not adding on inflammatory language here…I’m using Paul’s OWN inflammatory language.

This is a big deal! Life with God does not have at its heart work ethic and moral code and legalism. Life with God has freedom and joy at the heart.

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Gal. 5:1

Now, some of you who are shifting in your seats and uncomfortably waiting for the “but…” I promise that I am NOT saying our actions don’t matter. I am NOT calling us to live however we feel like, to simply pursue what makes us feel good. That is not the center of life with God, either.

In fact, next week when we begin with Gal. 5:13, we’ll carefully cover the cautions that are needed when we have freedom and joy at the center. In 5:13, it clearly says, “do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature,” because that’s simply a way to another kind of slavery.

No, Christ calls us to freedom and joy that walks the difficult road between slavery to will power/law/moral superiority, and slavery to our unbridled, sinful passions.

We’re called to freedom, not slavery!

Years ago, I was part of a committee that developed the children’s curriculum that we use.

We used to meet as a committee in Kansas City, at the Nazarene headquarters; in fact, that’s where I met LaNeal Miller, back when she and Dana still lived in Ohio.

I remember vividly one of the best examples I’ve seen of good-hearted slavery. You know what I mean? People with really good hearts and intentions, but when you boil it down and wrestle with the book of Galatians, all that good-heartedness is still slavery.

The women who worked at the Nazarene headquarters had a strict dress code that didn’t allow them to wear pants. It was always dresses, and we had grown used to it.

So picture our shock when one morning during a January meeting, the women editors show up in slacks!!

We couldn’t believe it. Somebody asked, “I thought you all had to wear dresses? What happened?”

And one of the editors said, “Well, anytime it’s under 20 degrees, we can wear pants. They don’t want us to freeze.”

I remember thinking, “Oh, my, this has got to be bordering on legalism if not way over the line.”

One of the other editors then said, “Yeah, this morning I got up, and I kept flipping channels on the tv until I could find one that had the current temperature at 19 degrees!”

Then, I confess, I couldn’t help but poke a little bit of fun. It was just too much for me. “What happens if it warms up over 20? Do you have to bring a dress with you just in case?”

And the tv channel flipping editor, the one who so good heartedly was trying to abide by the rule of law but find a way around it at the same time, looked at me with deep sincerity and all seriousness and said, “Oh goodness no! It’s not like they are legalistic or anything.”

Ahh….what has happened to our joy?

Where is our freedom? So many of us who would proudly say to anyone who can hear, “We are not saved by works, we are saved by God’s grace”….so many of us who would easily say that and live by it, still find all kinds of ways to make rules and expectations and lists to keep ourselves on the right path.

And it slowly and subtly sabotages our joy and our freedom.

Paul could see it so clearly in the Galatians.

Their fascination with these teachers who promised them a deeper spirituality if they followed Jewish law, if they observed seasons and festivals, if they took on circumcision and a Jewish lifestyle…Paul could clearly see what they couldn’t: this was destroying the very faith that had changed their lives!

For Paul, this wasn’t a “sort of bad thing.” This was in danger of ruining their entire faith!

[READ 5:1-6]

What do you suppose are the “circumcisions” of our day?

Maybe you want to shout some out, maybe you just want to think about it.

What are the things we want to add to our faith with a good heart, for good reasons…but these are the very things that could entirely ruin our dependence on the good news of Jesus Christ? What are the “circumcisions” of our day? [ASK]

Remembering that next week we will address the “buts” and the cautions, I want to invite us to dive into the radical-ness of verse 6:

“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value”

Our outward signs, our behaviors, our moral codes, even, dare I say this, our obedience…in Christ Jesus it doesn’t have any value.

What does have value?

Continue with verse 6

“The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”

In the wider church today, there are a lot of battles being fought between two supposedly opposite camps. On the one side are those upholding truth, obedience, and holiness. On the other side are those upholding love and grace.

Which one is right?

In one sense, they both are…and in another sense, they both lead to slavery.

When we get freedom and joy right…when we get Jesus and who we are because of him at the center of our faith, as we’ll see next week, the fruit the Spirit creates in us is the fruit of truth and holiness. God’s love relationship with us leads to freedom and joy that produces love and fruit and holiness. In that sense, it’s not a battle, it’s a both/and.

I think the reason we get into arguments between truth and love is pretty simple: both can lead to slavery if we get it wrong.

If we get so wrapped up and consumed by defending truth and condemning wrong behaviors, we run the risk of being so enslaved that we not only lose our joy, we destroy our relationship of grace with Jesus that is our center.

If we get so wrapped up in loving everyone and not condemning and saying everything is ok, we run the risk of becoming so enslaved to our own desires and passions that we use our freedom as a cover up for evil.

And so we fight these battles, because it is always easier to see someone else’s slavery than it is to see our own.

But friends, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.”

“By faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope.”

With joy, with hope, we eagerly anticipate God’s Spirit birthing new fruit in us. We don’t want freedom for freedom’s sake. We don’t want freedom as an excuse or a cover up for our own evil and selfish desires.

We want the freedom that comes from a loving Abba Father relationship. We want freedom that brings righteousness, holiness, a different way of living.

We want to be rescued from this evil world we live in, and shine like stars in a broken world.

Here is our reminder, in Galatians, our reminder that holiness and joy and freedom don’t come by us mustering up will power and buckling down to do it right!

We trust God that his love will never end! We trust God that his power exerted in raising Christ from the dead can free us, too! We wait, eagerly, with hope, longing for God to produce in us the fruit that comes from repentance.

I don’t know about you, but I’m longing for that in my life! How great if I didn’t have to ask myself again, “What has happened to your joy?”

So without pounding the pulpit and yelling at you to have joy…I want to invite myself and invite you to live in the freedom and joy we have been given by Christ.

Perhaps you have some work to do with God right now, asking forgiveness for wrongs you’ve done, or for taking matters into your own hands legalistically. Perhaps you want to be one to stand and tell us all about the joy God has given to you, the contentment that has come not from your circumstances or what you have done, but has come because of who God is and what Jesus has done.

Perhaps the closing of our worship together is a chance to share with each other the joy and freedom that is found in Christ!