Song of Solomon 6-8, Galatians 4 • Key Verse: Galatians 4:15
Paul asked the Galatians an agonizing and penetrating question, “What has happened to all your
joy?” Biblical Christianity allows us to live life to the fullest extent intended by God, a life of
blessing, one that is to be characterized by the joy of the Lord. We should be concerned when
God’s people are robbed of their joy.
The joy robber in Galatia was the restraints of legalistic Judaism.
Later Paul would describe these people as ones who “cut in on” them as they were running a
good race (5:7). They sought to enforce rules that were not of God but of man.
The problem is not with rules or with having “standards” in our i lives. The problem is with the
reason we keep them. If we observe special days or rules, especially those legislated for us by
others, in hope of gaining some spiritual merit, then we are sinning. We regress from liberty to
bondage and in the process can lose our joy.
. In Christ we have liberty, which includes liberty from legalism. We can express our liberty in
Christ and enjoy the blessing of it by keeping rules or having standards. Those are not wrong in
themselves. The wrong comes from our motives if we do so to gain favor.
Joy will be found when we live a life of liberty, doing what we do to express our love for Jesus.
Don’t lose your joy.
Christian liberty is often misunderstood. Do what pleases God not to gain merit, but to show
your love for Him. Ask yourself if your Christian life is one of joy.
Woodrow Kroll & Tony Beckett
www.backtothebible.in