TANSAATFL

Text: Galatians 5:13-18

Focus: Grace

Function: To help the congregation see how freedom from the Mosaic law is accomplished through living by the Spirit of God.

Form: Bible Study

Intro:

TANSTAAFL! Robert Heinlein coined that phrase early on in his prolific writing career. He writes a large series of books that envision a future without God. His books are political science fiction novels. In his future, there is only one political party. It is similar to the Libertarian party and its premise is simply this: If you do not work, you do not eat.

And again, as he imagines this future without God, this future that has grown out of the belief that there was no Creator that humanity has to answer to for the way they govern themselves. In this future, survival of the fittest means exactly that. If you are sick, weak, stupid, emotionally broken down, or handicapped in any way, not merely lazy, then you died because you couldn't fend for yourself.

So, he coined the phrase: TANSAATFL (SPELL IT OUT), it is an acrostic for: “there ain't no such thing as a free lunch!”

I tried to teach that principle to my own children. I told them if something seems too good to be true, then it probably is (too good to be true).

There is a great amount of character behind the concept of earning what you get by your own effort.

But again, that flies in the face of grace. Because Grace isn't grace if we have to earn it. It means that we do indeed get something for nothing.

At the beginning of Chapter 3, Paul uses some very strong language against the Galatians. He calls them foolish, he tells them that this spirit, this attitude, this heresy that you have to finish your salvation by your own efforts instead of grace is actually a bewitching spell.

It means, that the tendency that we have to reject the idea of grace comes straight from hell itself.

Hear the words of this verse: “You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? Let me ask you a question, did you receive the Holy Spirit by your own effort, or by grace through faith in Jesus? Did you start out your Christian journey with grace and now do you think you can to better that God and try to earn it after all?”

Paul uses some very strong words against those who think that you need to add something to grace in order to be saved.

In Englewood, there is a church with a sign that says: “Have you received the Holy Ghost since you were saved?”

Do you remember that Jesus died to set us free from our sin and our shame?

Let me try to list the ways that different believers have tried to add to grace with their own doctrine.

I have been told that if I am not involved in casting out demons, they I am not really a believer. Of course, the person never asked me if I had ever done that kind of spiritual warfare.

I have been told that if I haven't been “sanctified” then my salvation isn't real. I have been told that if I don't speak in tongues then I am not really saved. I have been told that if my baptism wasn't in the Brethren fashion, three times forward, by immersion then I cannot really be a believer.

And here is the best one: A client of mine asked me if my wife ever wore slacks since slacks are “mens'” clothes and therefore an abomination and if I permitted her to wear them, I was probably lost in a false church. The funny thing was back then, I was in a different form of holiness church and we would never have a television in our house. And she was watching a soap opera! At that time, I believed that watching soap operas was a straight ticket to hell. So I started preaching back to her and you know how that goes, I was bashing her over the head with “in reference to evil, be innocent” and she with “it is an abomination for a woman to wear man's clothing.” Of course, I was justified and more right because mine was a NT passage and hers was OT.

God help us! God deliver us from ourselves. I thank God that His grace kept flowing, even to me a self-righteous know it all. Praise God.

Now back to the first three verses of our scripture:

¹³For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. ¹⁴For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ¹⁵If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.

Verse 13: We are free! I love it in the NASV translation: It was for freedom that Christ set us free!”

I remember my English teacher telling us how wrong it is restate an idea with the same root word. I read that verse: “It is for freedom that Christ set us free” and thought that the author was just being wordy.

But that isn't the case. Jesus set us free so that we can be free to love, free to serve, free to actually be Christians instead of religious folks.

I talked at length about all these different additions to our faith, these additions beyond grace and the problem is, they lead us to feel less, they distract us from grace, they lead us back into bondage.

Jesus set us free from the fear of not making it, not stacking up, not working hard enough to make God love us.

He set us free in order to be able to actually be Christians, to actually be what He called us to be.

So, verse 13: You are free, but don't take advantage of your freedom to live for yourself. We are now free to love one another. That is the point of the work that Jesus did while He was teaching. Those were the lessons that Jesus taught during those three years of ministry.

This is why Grace sometimes gets dismissed. People say that it means a license to sin. That is not what he means. He means, we have the freedom to serve without the fear of taking the chance of blowing the rules.

For example, a church having a cigarette disposal at its front door. For many years, I have heard: “if we put that there, it means that we condone the behavior.”

All of a sudden, we have added to the faith another rule. When I came back to Christ, my brother was in seminary. He was a form of mentor to me, very spiritual. Kathy and I went to visit him in Minneapolis where he was studying and as soon as we got settled, he looked me in the eye and asked me if I still smoke. I turned my gaze down, hung my head and got ready for a sermon. I said yes and he handed me an ashtray and said, “go outside if you need to smoke.”

My jaw dropped and he noticed. He said: “did I shock you?” I asked him why and he said: “that is the work of the Holy Spirit, not mine. God will do it in time.”

I gotta tell you, he graced me more than any other event in my life. I was reading the bible, praying, and my heart was changing. When I saw someone stranded, I stopped to help them, I picked up hitchhikers there were several changes in my behavior based on what the Holy Spirit was doing inside of me.

And God did/does His work in us according to His time, not ours.

Verse 15: “But if you bite and devour each other, take care lest you be consumed by each other.”

That is an odd verse in the middle of the grace brings freedom passage. Did he switch the subject all of a sudden, or misplace a parenthesis?

He uses this passage to introduce the contrast between flesh, selfish motivated actions verses Spiritual activities, the fruit of the Spirit.

He gives a plan to help live in this freedom.

So why this verse?

That afternoon, in that client's living room when I was proving to her that my special scripture made me better than hers is exactly what Paul is talking about.

It is just like Total Forgiveness. Forgiveness is between us and God and has nothing to do with the person we are forgiving. It isn't something we wait to feel, it is a choice that make. We make this choice so that we are no longer under bondage to that person. Someone once said: “Harboring bitterness and unforgiveness is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies.”

Grace is the same way. We get grace, and we give grace just as freely. The problem in the Church is that others were coming in and making them upset by adding more rules to their faith.

Now, the rest of the passage:

The Works of the Flesh

¹⁶Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. ¹⁷For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. ¹⁸But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law.

What is he saying? Remember, he isn't saying that God has saved us for a self-indulged lifestyle. He has saved us to freely love one another and serve them, just as Jesus served us.

And it isn't accomplished by obeying the rules. The more we focus on the rules, the harder we work to overcome sin, the harder it is to overcome sin. That is the bondage from which Jesus set us free.

Walk by the Spirit, in love, by the fruits of the Spirit: Love, Joy, Peace... and we will be Christians.

The Holy Spirit will not lead you into sin. The Holy Spirit will not lead you into judgment of others. The Holy Spirit will not lead us back into fear of failure in our Christian life.

The Holy Spirit will lead us in paths that are good for both us and those around us. He will lead us to healthy lifestyles, set us free from the things that bind us. The Holy Spirit will lead us to do good, to prosper in doing well, to care for others.

So, there isn't any such thing as a free lunch. No, God has saved us to good works. The free lunch would be freedom to do whatever makes feel good, not right. And many times, those things that make us feel good are destructive to our personal lives, and our families. I have seen to many families torn apart by the abuse of alcohol, drugs. When one of my children thought they were mature enough to make life and death decisions about themselves and started smoking, I was doing a chaplain residency at the long term care facility of a downtown hospital. I took that child to see what dying from Emphysema was like.

The freedom isn't given to indulge ourselves to our destruction, or the oppression of others. Nope, we are free to love, free to live.