Month: April 2026

Freedom? – Galatians 5:13-18

“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 (NIV)

Earlier in Galatians 5, Paul is dealing with a real problem in the early church. There were people telling new Christians that following Jesus also meant following all the old Jewish laws and rituals. Paul pushes back hard on that. ‘You have been set free,’ he says. ‘You don’t live under that anymore.’ But then he immediately pumps the brakes on where that logic could go, because freedom from the Law doesn’t mean freedom to live however you want. It means something better than that.

The freedom Paul is talking about has a direction to it. It points outward, toward the people around you. Instead of using your freedom to chase whatever feels good in the moment, you use it to love the people God has put in your life. Radically, humbly, in ways that don’t always make sense to the world around you. That’s the calling. Paul is clear that the Holy Spirit is what produces that kind of love in us. It doesn’t come naturally on its own.

There’s a real tension in this for me personally. On one hand, I know what it means to be freed from sin and given new life. On the other hand, I don’t always live like that freedom has anything to do with the people around me. The call to radical love can feel heavy, or honestly, it can feel intimidating. There are people God puts in my path every single day, and too often I hesitate. Not because I don’t care, but because there’s a quiet fear that gets in the way.

That’s the thing though, fear doesn’t belong to someone who has been set free. Paul isn’t describing a timid, heads-down kind of Christianity. He’s describing people who are so secure in what God has done for them that they can turn around and pour that out on others without worrying about what it costs them. The freedom we have in Christ is actually freedom over that fear too.

So this week I want to keep my eyes open. Not in a forced or awkward way, but just paying attention to the people God has already placed around me and actually engaging with them. The opportunities are probably already there. I just need to stop hesitating and start showing up.

Enemies – Romans 5:6-11

“For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” — Romans 5:10 (NIV)

Paul makes a point early in this passage that is easy to gloss over. For someone to die on behalf of another is unusual and contrary to nature, really. Even for a genuinely good person, that would be a rare thing. But Jesus didn’t die for good people. He didn’t die for people who were already on his side or already working toward the right things. He died for people who were actively working against him. That’s not a small detail. That’s the whole point.

None of us came to God with anything to offer him that he needed. Whether you grew up in church or walked in the door last week, there was a stretch of your life where you were on the wrong side of this equation. If you are not actively working toward the Kingdom of God, you are working against it. There is no neutral ground. No coasting or lying flat. Which means every single one of us needed exactly what Jesus provided, not because we deserved it, but precisely because we didn’t.

That’s the heart of the gospel right there. He didn’t look down at humanity and see something worth saving in the usual sense. He looked down and decided to save us anyway. That kind of love doesn’t really have a human comparison. The closest Paul can get is to say it would be unusual even to die for a good person, let alone enemies. Try to wrap your head around that for a minute.

That should change everything about how I live. The way I approach work, relationships, the stuff that frustrates me on a random Tuesday. I’ll be honest, I don’t always live like that. It is easy to get pulled down by the small things in the course of a normal day and lose sight of what actually matters. That’s a constant battle.

But the remedy isn’t trying harder. It’s fixing my gaze back on what Jesus actually did. Not in a way that feels like a religious obligation, but in a way that genuinely recalibrates everything else. He did more than any of us could imagine or ever live up to. That changes everything…even on the days when its much easier said than done.

The End – Psalm 14:1-7

“The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good.” Psalm 14:1 (NIV)

David doesn’t mince words here. David doesn’t mince words here. Right from the beginning, he calls it foolishness, and not intellectual foolishness, but the kind that comes from a heart that has decided God isn’t real or isn’t relevant. And once that decision gets made, the rest follows pretty naturally. Corruption, evil, and a life that consumes others like a person just eating bread. It’s a bleak picture, but if you look around at the world, it’s not hard to recognize.

What’s easy to miss though, is that David isn’t just talking about the obviously wicked. He broadens it out. There is no one who does good, not even one. That’s a humbling line. It means the difference between someone who follows God and someone who doesn’t isn’t that one of them is a better person, it’s grace. Plain and simple. That keeps you from getting too smug as you read this Psalm.

At the same time, David makes it clear that God isn’t sitting on the sidelines wringing his hands over what he sees. He looks down, he sees it all, and he is not surprised or defeated. His people will be protected. Deliverance will come. The fool may feel like he’s winning for a stretch, but the end of the story will be different. It isn’t up for debate.

That’s the part I need to hold onto. It is genuinely discouraging to watch a world that lives like God doesn’t exist, and to sometimes feel the weight of that personally when it bumps up against my own life and work. It’s easy to get worn down by it. But discouragement is really just forgetting how the story ends, and the story ends with God winning.

So this week I want to live from that place. Of course, I’m not naive about what’s going on around me, but not crushed by it either. The end is already written. That changes how I walk through the middle of it.