I love when Paul says, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” Dang! I love that sentence so much, it hurts. I love it because it feels so cheeky and sarcastic. It’s beautifully redundant and I imagine Paul smiling as he wrote it. I mean, he seems like he’s pretty upset for most of the book of Galatians, so maybe he scratched that sentence out in a fury of enraged quill and ink; but even if he was upset when writing this line, I think he must have been smirking. Whenever I read that verse, I almost expect to see it followed by the word, “Duh!” Here’s the thing: So many Christians are trying to simply ‘be good Christians.’ They’re trying to wear the most modest clothes. They’re trying to listen to the right music. They’re trying to raise their kids with the best values. They want to vote for the “right” candidate. I bet that if you time-traveled the Apostle Paul here and dropped him off in the front lobby of a Christian conference for 20 minutes, he’d stand up and shout, “Hey! What’s wrong with you people?! Why are you so obsessed with Christian values?! You’ve made up these rules! You’re trying to make everyone into the same person! No! Jesus set you free so that you could be fully free and completely and uniquely you!” If your Christianity is based on you keeping rules, you have missed Jesus completely and what you have isn’t real Christianity. Jesus doesn’t want you to conform to the rules and values. Jesus wants you to be free to turn into something that has never happened before in the history of the universe: You.
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