Love the Highest Law of Christian Liberty.

I. Love preserves liberty from degenerating into licence.—“Only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh” (ver. 13). Christian liberty is a great boon, but it also a solemn responsibility. It is hard to win and is worth the most gigantic struggle; but the moment it is abused it is lost. Men clamour for liberty when they mean licence—licence to indulge their unholy passions unchecked by the restraints of law. Christian liberty is not the liberty of the flesh, but of the Spirit, and love is the master-principle that governs and defines all its exercises.

“He is the freeman whom the truth makes free,
And all are slaves besides.”

We know no truth, no privilege, no power, no blessing, no right, which is not abused. But is liberty to be denied to men because they often turn it into licentiousness? There are two freedoms—the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where a man is free to do what he ought. Love is the safeguard of the highest liberty.

II. Love is obedience to the highest law.—“For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (ver. 14). “By love serve one another” (ver. 13). We may be as orthodox as Athanasius and as scrupulous as Jerome, we may be daily and ostentatiously building to God seven altars and offering a bullock and a ram on every altar, and yet be as sounding brass and as a clanging cymbal, if our life shows only the leaves of profession without the golden fruit of action. If love shows not itself by deeds of love, then let us not deceive ourselves. God is not mocked; our Christianity is heathenism, and our religion a delusion and a sham. Love makes obedience delightful, esteems it bondage to be prevented, liberty to be allowed to serve.

"Serene will be our days and bright,
And happy will our nature be,
When love is an unerring light,
And joy its own security."—Wordsworth.

III. Love prevents the mutual destructiveness of a contentious spirit.—“But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another” (ver. 15). The condition of the Galatians at this time was very different from the ideal Paul set before them. The quick, warm temperament of the Gauls was roused by the Judaistic controversy, and their natural combativeness was excited. It was easy to pick a quarrel with them at any time, and they were eloquent in vituperation and invective. The “biting” describes the wounding and exasperating effect of the manner in which their contentions were carried on; “devour” warns them of its destructiveness. If this state of things continued, the Churches of Galatia would cease to exist. Their liberty would end in complete disintegration. Love is the remedy propounded for all ills—the love of Christ, leading to the love of each other. Love not only cures quarrels but prevents them.

IV. Love by obeying the law of the Spirit gains the victory in the feud between the flesh and the Spirit.—“Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh: . . . these are contrary the one to the other” (vers. 16, 17). The flesh and the Spirit are rivals, and by their natures must be opposed to and strive with each other. The strong man is dispossessed by a stronger than he—the Spirit. The master must rule the slave. “This soul of mine must rule this body of mine,” said John Foster, “or quit it.” The life of a Christian is lived in a higher sphere and governed by a higher law—walking in the Spirit. Christianity says, “Be a man, not a brute. Not do as many fleshly things as you can but do as many spiritual things as you can.” All prohibitions are negative. You can’t kill an appetite by starvation. You may kill the flesh by living in the higher region of the Spirit; not merely by ceasing to live in sin, but by loving Christ. The more we live the spiritual life, the more sin becomes impossible. Conquest over the sensual is gained, not by repression, but by the freer, purer life of love.

V. Love emancipates from the trammels of the law.—“If ye be led by the Spirit, ye are not under the law” (ver. 18). The Spirit of love does not abolish the law, but renders it harmless by fulfilling all its requirements, without being compelled to it by its stern commands. Law does not help the soul to obey its behests, but it has nothing to say, nothing to threaten, when those behests are obeyed. To be under the law is to be under sin; but yielding to the influence of the Spirit, and living according to His law, the soul is free from sin and from the condemnation of the law. Freedom from sin, and freedom from the trammels of the Mosaic law—these two liberties are virtually one. Love is the great emancipator from all moral tyrannies.

Lessons.—1. Love is in harmony with the holiest law. 2. Love silences all contention. 3. Love honours law by obeying it.