Goldilocks and the Free Bears

Before we look at Galatians 5, I want to begin with a problem—or perhaps a parable to ponder. Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a deep, dark forest. Many bears lived in this forest. Unfortunately for the bears, so did many hunters. One day, a bear was caught in a trap. He lay there for hours in agony, waiting for the hunter to return and kill him. Then, quite unexpectedly, a white ute appeared. It had an RSPCA logo on the door and was driven by a blonde volunteer named Goldilocks. Goldilocks released the bear from the trap. Before she left, however, she gave him some instructions.

“If you follow these instructions,” she told him, “you will never get caught in another trap for as long as you live.”

The bear did exactly as Goldilocks said. He followed her instructions for the rest of his days, and he was never caught in another trap. The obvious ending is that the bear lived happily ever after. But there is a question hiding inside the story: Was the bear really free?

The book of Galatians is a letter written by the apostle Paul to relatively recent converts living in the region of Galatia, in what we would now call Turkey. Paul was writing because these Christians had become confused about both the meaning of the Christian message and how they were supposed to live the Christian life. Galatians covers several different subjects, but behind almost everything Paul says lies one enormous question. Paul never simply states the question outright, yet understanding it is essential if we are going to understand the letter.

The question is: How does a person get right with God? Or, to put it more simply: How do we get to heaven? Without that question in the background, much of Galatians makes very little sense.

Paul describes two radically different answers. The first is that we can be accepted by God because of our own perfect moral obedience. For the Galatians, this particularly meant keeping the Jewish law faultlessly. The second is that we can accept Christ, who died on the cross so that people who are not perfectly obedient can be forgiven. Paul describes the first approach as being saved by works, and the second as being saved by grace. The Galatian Christians had originally been pagans. They had accepted salvation by grace. But somewhere along the way, they began to abandon that freedom and instead tried to please God through works—a way of living that Paul elsewhere describes as slavery.

That is why Paul can write in Galatians 5:13:

“My brothers and sisters, you were called to be free…”

But this creates another question. If the Galatians had been given freedom, why were they so willing to give it up? To answer that, we need to think carefully about what freedom actually means.

One reason the Galatians rejected freedom may simply be that they did not understand it. Strange as that sounds, not much has changed. We still struggle to understand freedom. The most obvious definition is that freedom means being able to do whatever you want, whenever you want, wherever you want.

It is the kind of freedom many students imagine when they leave high school. No more bells. No more timetables. No more uniforms. “I can use my phone whenever I want.” But that kind of freedom does not—and cannot—exist, no matter how attractive it sounds.

I remember a final day for a group of Year 12 students. We held an assembly with music, streamers, tears and applause, and then they charged triumphantly out of the school gates. One of those students—let us call him Kane—had somehow managed to complete Year 12 without failing. He was not a nasty kid. He just seemed determined to remain immature for as long as possible.

Kane had recently received his driver’s licence and had a new car. On his final day, he brought the car to school, packed his mates into it and took off up the street with people hanging out the windows. He did a burn-out. Unfortunately, he did it straight into the arms of the Queensland police. His licence disappeared for a year. Suddenly, freedom had teeth. Kane’s fantasy that leaving school meant he could do whatever he pleased collided with reality.

For another student, that collision was far worse. He was joy-riding with friends, bouncing around in the tray of a ute. He was thrown out and killed. We live in a world of consequences. That remains true when we become Christians. The freedom Jesus offers does not remove every consequence from life. If a Christian jumps off a cliff, the law of gravity still applies. If a Christian loses his temper and punches someone in the nose, the laws of physiology and the Australian legal system still apply. The nose can still break, and the angry Christian can still be charged with assault.

Freedom in Christ does not mean freedom from consequences. It does not mean freedom from pain. It does not mean freedom from effort. And it certainly does not mean freedom from responsibility. Perhaps the Galatians were quietly asking themselves, “If I still have responsibilities, still have to make an effort and still cannot avoid the struggles of life, then what sort of freedom is this? Why is it worth having?” Christians can still ask the same question today.

So let us return to our bear. Was he really free? In the original version of the story, the bear followed Goldilocks’ instructions and lived happily ever after.

But imagine a young, arrogant bear who reacts differently. “Thanks for the helping hand,” he says, “but nobody is going to tell me what to do!”

Or imagine a conspiracy-theorist bear. “I was freed from one trap,” he complains, “only to be forced into another trap—the trap of Goldilocks’ fascist rules!”

Or perhaps, after a few years, another bear begins to rewrite his memories. “Sure, the trap was painful,” he says, “but it wasn’t really that bad.”

An arrogant, suspicious or wilfully forgetful bear might decide that Goldilocks’ instructions are taking away his freedom. But a bear who truly remembers what it means to be caught in a trap will see those instructions very differently. For that bear, the freedom Goldilocks offers is profound and wonderful. And so it is with Christ. Freedom in Christ is not the selfish fantasy of a life without responsibility. But it is still genuine freedom.

It is freedom from a guilty conscience. Freedom from the trap of personal meaninglessness. Freedom from spiritual forces beyond our understanding. Freedom from a mind curled in upon itself. Freedom from the dictatorship of public opinion. Freedom from the dread of death. And, particularly for the Jewish Christians of Paul’s time, freedom from suffocating religious micromanagement.

The Galatian church wanted a “better” freedom—one that gave them more, cost them less, or preferably both. What they failed to understand was that no such freedom exists. All freedom comes at a price. Jesus himself made this clear in Luke 9:23 when he said that anyone who wanted to be his disciple must deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow him. The same principle has been captured in the famous saying:

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

Freedom in Christ comes at a cost. But when we understand that freedom for what it really is, it is worth the price.

At this point in Galatians 5, Paul begins to move away from explaining doctrine and towards the practical question of how this new freedom is actually lived. In verse 17 he writes:

“For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other…”

Two words are particularly important here: Spirit and flesh. “Spirit” is Paul’s shorthand for the Holy Spirit—God’s Spirit dwelling within the believer. “Flesh” is more difficult. Different Bible translations handle the word differently because there is no single English word that captures everything Paul means. Most importantly, flesh does not simply mean the human body. God created us with bodies, and our bodies are not evil. In fact, the Bible describes the body as God’s temple in 1 Corinthians 6:19. What Paul is describing is something different.

Human beings have a tendency to take the easy road: the selfish, indulgent road. In that sense, there are two competing calls within the Christian life. There is an upward call: the call to follow God and his principles. And there is a downward call: the call to take the easier, selfish and indulgent path. That second call is what Paul means here by “the flesh”.

Almost by definition, those two calls will be in conflict. Scripture tells us that our responsibility is to obey the call of the Spirit rather than the call of the flesh. But Paul does not merely tell the Galatians what they should do. He also begins to tell them how. In Galatians 5:16 he writes:

“So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.”

What, then, does it mean to “walk by the Spirit”? That is not an easy question, and we can only begin to answer it here. Think of this as Chapter One of the Freedom Handbook.

In John 16, Jesus told his disciples that his departure would not mean that they were being abandoned. He would send the Advocate—the Spirit of truth—who would guide them into truth. This is the Spirit Paul is talking about in Galatians. The Holy Spirit is perhaps the most mysterious part of the Trinity and, partly for that reason, is often misunderstood. I certainly do not claim to have everything about the Holy Spirit figured out. But there are some things we can say with confidence, and given the importance Paul places on the subject, we need to try.

There seem to be two opposite errors people can make. On one side are those who insist that unless a person has extraordinary supernatural experiences, that person has never received the Holy Spirit. That is not true. At the other extreme are people who treat the Holy Spirit as little more than a vague way of talking about “how God does stuff here on Earth”. As a result, they never seriously consider Paul’s instruction that Christians should learn how to walk with the Spirit.

So where do we begin? As with freedom itself, it helps to begin by understanding what walking by the Spirit does not mean.

First, walking by the Spirit does not mean that temptation disappears. Notice Paul’s wording carefully:

“Walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.”

He does not say:

“You will no longer be tempted by the desires of the flesh.”

That distinction matters. The Spirit strengthens us against sin, but the presence of the Spirit does not make it impossible for us to sin.

Second, walking by the Spirit does not mean that we will avoid difficulty. The Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness, where he fasted for forty days. Paul himself walked by the Spirit, yet his life included imprisonment and many other struggles. Walking by the Spirit therefore does not exempt us from doing things that are difficult, uncomfortable or awkward.

Third, walking by the Spirit does not mean that the Spirit is at our command. The relationship works in precisely the opposite direction. Through the Spirit, we make ourselves available to do God’s will. We do not recruit the Spirit to do ours.

Those are some of the things walking with the Spirit does not mean. But what does it mean positively? What can we actually do if we want to “keep in step with the Spirit”? The first step is wonderfully simple: Try.

Jesus promised that he would not leave his followers alone. He promised the Advocate who would guide them into truth. Paul writes that those who are led by the Spirit are not under law. So perhaps the first thing we need to do is allow those promises into our lives as genuine possibilities. Take them seriously. Believe that God may actually do what he has promised to do.

Second, we should follow what the Spirit has already told us plainly through Scripture. Wherever the Holy Spirit may lead us, he is not going to contradict his own words. The Bible is Spirit-inspired. So read it. And having read it, do it.

Third, pray about it. Jesus said:

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find.”

So ask.

When someone has a consistent weakness in their spiritual life, I sometimes suggest a very simple challenge. Find a time when you can pray without interruption. Go somewhere private—perhaps your bedroom. Set an alarm for twenty minutes. Get down on your hands and knees, perhaps beside the bed. And pray. Keep praying.

If the alarm eventually goes off and you have reached the point where you are no longer sitting there wondering, When is that alarm finally going to go off?, then you have completed the challenge successfully. Just try it and see what happens. See what happens to your heart. See what happens to your motivation. See what happens to your peace of mind. See what happens to temptation. That is the Spirit of God at work.

But do not forget Paul’s warning:

“The flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit.”

So do not be surprised if there is a struggle, particularly at the beginning.

As we go into the coming week, we should be careful not to disparage the freedom God has given us simply because it does not satisfy every selfish preference. Christian freedom does not mean that we never struggle. It does not mean that nothing difficult is ever required of us. It does not mean that we can do whatever we please without consequences. Instead, we are called to embrace the responsibility of freedom—the very responsibility through which we remain free.

And alongside the gift of freedom, we should strive to understand the second great gift Jesus has given us: the indwelling Spirit. It is the Spirit who leads us towards love, joy, peace, goodness, kindness, gentleness and self-control. But he does not turn us into passive spectators in our own spiritual lives. His work requires our willing, thoughtful and prayerful participation.

The bear in our opening story was not less free because he listened to Goldilocks. He was free precisely because he had learned how not to return to the trap. Perhaps Christian freedom is much the same.