“You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But, do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.”

Galatians 5:13

As we just celebrated the Fourth of July, much focus has been on freedom. We have a lot of freedom as Americans and I’m very grateful for that. I think sometimes though, that freedom can be lived out as just “doing whatever we want” when it actually is so much more than that.

A few months ago during a study on love, I came across Galatians 5:13 and that last part of that verse stood out in a different way than it ever had before. Don’t you just love when God does that? He lights up His Word like a neon sign sometimes and I am all for it. I’ve kept pondering, studying, and meditating on this scripture and specifically how it can apply to marriage.

The Call to Love

Just like our freedom as Americans was purchased, so has our freedom from the Law been purchased by the blood of Jesus. In Galatians, Paul is talking about the freedom from the Law we have as believers. He encourages them not to use their freedom to indulge their flesh but rather to serve one another in love. It sounds sort of like a contradiction: freedom and service to others don’t seem like they go together. But what is so amazing is that they truly do.

“The command to love in Galatians 5:13 is a command to have the kind of free and confident heart that by its very nature has to love.”

John Piper, Desiring God

The truth is that we can be doing all the good things, sacrificing, helping and serving one another and our hearts can be far from love. These actions can still be fulfilling the flesh. This is so crazy to me because I am an acts of service kind of person. This is totally my love language but the question I still have to ask myself is “Why?” Why am I serving my husband in our marriage?

God had a little talk with me one day when I was upset about these acts of service I was committing. I was keeping score. You know what I mean, right? Keeping a tally of all the things I was doing and how little my husband was doing. I could tell myself I was the better spouse, heck maybe even the better Christian because I was serving. God, in that way that He does, reminded me that my heart was not right. I was not serving in love. I was actually gratifying my flesh because my pride was reaping all the rewards and feeling pretty good. It got to be the winner on this scorecard that I had created.

That’s the subtle flow out of freedom that service can take. We assume service will make us servants to others, but it in fact makes us a servant to our own flesh. The flesh is never free.

BUT, when we are filled with love, filled to the brim and overflowing with God’s love, that’s when we are free. That’s when we can pour from that abundance of love and serve freely. Our service is no longer to gratify our flesh, to feel good about ourselves, to check something off our list, or to come out the winner in our own mind.

How to Love

In the next verse, we learn how we are to love. “For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: Love your neighbor as yourself.” What does that look like? Is it simply having nice feelings towards them? Is it having a great love for ourselves and using that to measure the love we have for others? Well, yes and no. This is not really calling us to love ourselves, because we already do. We care about our happiness. We care about how we’re treated. We care about how we are taken care of. The idea is to use this amount to measure how we care about others. Specifically in our marriages, it’s a question of “How would I want to be treated in this situation?” Do I need grace? Then I should give grace. Do I have dreams I want him to support? Then I should support his dreams with the same amount of passion. Would I want those dishes washed, those clothes folded, those items done for me? Then I should do them with a heart that’s not keeping score. So in loving in freedom, it isn’t about doing what we want but about taking the same level of love that we would want to receive, and showing it to others. It’s not an easy command, but it is one that will change our lives and change our marriages.

Empty of Love

If we’re not full with love, Paul warns us in verse 15 that we’ll be destroyed by each other. “If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.” In other words, we become like starving animals who bite and devour, because we are empty. If there is only emptiness, there is nothing to give. There can only be taking, never giving. In regards to our marriages, I take it that biting and devouring is when the nitpicking, being snappy, talking down to one another, the judgement and mean words come forth. This should be a sign that we need to be filled. God in His abundance never runs out of love. We can go to Him and be filled so that we can love and be free.

That’s why we love when we are free. We’re not a slave to filling our emptiness. We can be motivated to serve in love because we are free to. There is no longer a scorecard. There is no longer a desire to fill anything. We become full pitchers pouring out of the abundance of love. This is how we are free.