Paul’s letter to the Galatians gives us his
great teaching on freedom. It is summed up in the words, “Where the Spirit of
the Lord is, there is freedom”.
Some of us might remember the resonant Latin
phrase: “Ubi Spiritus, ibi libertas.”
In Galatians, Paul makes an interesting
contrast. He does not oppose freedom with slavery, or imprisonment, or
oppression, or captivity; he contrasts it with self-indulgence. And by
self-indulgence he does not mean what we usually mean; gluttony, lust or any of
the other modern materialisms we hear about with such regularity. For Paul,
self-indulgence means two things; lack of love for neighbour, and failure to be
guided by the Spirit of God.
For Paul, we cannot love one another, nor can
we live at peace with each other, without the freedom from self-centredness,
from self-indulgence, which only God’s Spirit can bring about in us. He uses
the most common example of this in our lives; our extreme willingness to find
fault with others, to snap at people for the faults they have that annoy us. We
recognise how intolerant we can be of others’ weaknesses, and especially of
their criticisms. We are outraged that someone should dare to tell us we are
wrong about something, especially when that person has faults of his own. And
how often do we lash out in kind; we counter someone else’s criticisms by
criticizing them, hoping to
neutralise their words by revealing to them that, since they are no better than
we are, they have no business criticising us. In this way, marriages, families,
cities and countries are torn apart or reduced to tattered shreds.
This is what Paul refers to as self-indulgence.
It is one of the worst characteristics of human beings. It is one about which
we moralise, one which we try to rectify by human
means, through endless counseling, group discussions and platitudes.
But there is no real human solution to it. We have
no human ways to correct each others’ sins; in fact, we are not going to
correct people’s sins at all. Each one of us can help only ourselves, in this
regard, with the help of God. But, like God, and with his help, we can learn to
live with the sins and weaknesses of others, and to find ways of building them
up. We need not to indulge our resentfulness and anger towards others, but to
be sources of healing to them. This we will only ever be if we are enfolded in
the liberating power of God’s Spirit. Only when we are possessed of the freedom
of God’s Spirit will we be truly free, free especially from the self-indulgence
of a mean human spirit.
“Ubi Spiritus, ibi libertas.” It was in this
Spirit that Jesus died for our sins with the words, “Father, forgive them, they
know not what they do” on his lips. Paul emphasises this by reminding us that
“Christ Jesus died for us while we were still sinners,” in other words, before
we had even shown sorrow for our sins. It is also true of the saints; they
lived for God, not themselves, and in the same freedom of the Spirit. Through
it, they were able to love their neighbour as themselves, no matter what their
neighbour’s sins. May we, following the exhortation of Paul, find the source of
our strength in God, that we too might enjoy that same freedom in his spirit,
and love our neighbour as ourselves. Amen.
Fr Phillip
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