The Fellowship of Freedom | Galatians 2:1–10
What holds us back:
Religious traditionalism is not the same thing as tradition itself. Tradition can be a good gift. It hands down to us the faith of those who came before us; it roots and grounds us. Their problem was, they were being handed traditionalism — when tradition stops pointing to Christ and starts substituting itself for Him. The historian Jaroslav Pelikan put this about as well as it’s ever been put: “Tradition is the living faith of the dead, while traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” You see, healthy tradition remains alive because it’s still pointing you to Jesus. Traditionalism, however, is dead because it’s asking you to trust in some religious practice instead of trusting in the Person of Christ.
If we’re honest, some “ism” — some religious performance, the Jesus-plus some extra religious requirement, the invisible scorecard — still holds a lot of us back today.
How Christ sets us free:
This wasn’t a power struggle that Paul happened to win. It was possible because Paul wasn’t fighting for himself. He wasn’t protecting his ego or his reputation. He was contending for the glory of Christ and for the integrity of the gospel message. That’s what gospel freedom does — it takes the fight out of our hands and puts it in service of something bigger than us.
Where we can stand:
As we come to believe the good news of God’s grace, offered as a gift through the finished work of Christ, we’re brought into a fellowship of freedom — and that fellowship keeps returning, again and again, to the grace of God in Christ. Not to our performance. Not to tradition. But to God’s amazing grace.
And standing there, in that grace, we are set free — free from the penalty of sin, because Christ has already paid it in full at the Cross; free from the power of sin, because His Spirit lives within us and is constantly reforming and reshaping us. And although we’re not fully there yet, we’re looking forward to the day Christ returns to set the whole world right, and when we’ll be free even from the presence of sin. Penalty, power, and one day, presence. That’s the ground we get to stand on — not earned, only received.
How we should walk:
What would being part of the fellowship of freedom — God’s truth believed and expressed in love — actually look like in your life?
How would it change the way you understand God’s grace, mercy and forgiveness have been at work in you? How would it change your attitude toward other believers — especially the ones who annoy you, the ones who see things differently than you do? And how would it change the way you look at people who haven’t yet even come to faith in Christ?
May the Lord give us eyes to see ourselves as totally loved and forgiven in Christ; to see others that same way; and may He make our hearts a mirror — reflecting that same heart of Jesus toward everyone we encounter this week.
Sources referenced: Jaroslav Pelikan, quoted in The Christian Tradition, Vol. 1 (University of Chicago Press) and The Vindication of Tradition (Yale University Press). Scripture read: NASB 1995, © The Lockman Foundation.
