Against Such There Is No Law

St. Paul reveals the path in the Spirit that liberates us from the law

What if I could tell you about a way of living that meant you simply wouldn’t need rules to govern your behavior in a healthy way? What if there were a way of living that automatically meant you were in sync with God and His will for your life?

Yeah, it sounds too good to be true, but it is exactly the kind of life our Orthodox Faith offers us.

As a former police officer sworn to “uphold the Law”, I can tell you that I was convinced we just had to have “laws” to “make people behave.

But now that I am unpacking the spiritual treasures of the Faith, I am invited to consider there is another way!

Our passions, our desires, seek to overtake us, catch us, and trap us into feeding them and indulging them. that's why the Faith teaches us how to tame our passions and our desires, so they remain servants and never our masters. They weren't meant to master us but to serve us. And when we allow them to master us we fall into addictions and patterns of life that lead us downward. But the virtues strengthen our will to become strong enough to tame our passions. That is the power of the spiritual disciplines of fasting, prayer, and worship. They feed our souls so we are strong enough not to be overtaken by sin.

This way of living is what the Faith is all about.

Look at our lesson today in Galatians 5:22-26; 6:1-2:

Brethren, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us have no self-conceit, no provoking of one another, no envy of one another. Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Look to yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

The book of Galatians is St. Paul’s outreach to his spiritual children who had been deceived into believing they had to follow the Law of Moses to become Christians. These Gentile converts had a group of people come up from Jerusalem and their message was “Great, you want to follow the Jewish Messiah. You have to become Jewish before you can become Christian.” These teachers were called “Judaizers” by St. Paul and the Church to warn us away from their false teaching.

Paul, no slouch when it came to being a pious Jew, hit the roof when he heard what these sincere converts were being told. You see, St. Paul had been inspired by the message of Jesus to see much broader wisdom than the time of tutelage that the Mosaic Law represented before Christ.

Paul understood that what the prophets promised in the First Testament had come true now that Christ had come and conquered death. Now, the Law was to be written in our hearts and not some external force meant to reduce our relationship to God as some behavioral modification program. As the Prophet St. Jeremiah prophesied long ago “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” (Jeremiah 31:33)

The “fruit of the Spirit” St. Paul mentions to these precious and sincere Gentile converts is plain. Now that Christ has come, the living Holy Spirit that indwells all who come to Christ in faith does such an internal transformation that you no longer need a tutor to change you. You are made new in Christ Jesus, and now the Spirit within you starts producing the kind of person that doesn’t need rules and regulations to make you a “good” person. You are being made a NEW person who has been so transformed by Christ that you live for Him and love your neighbor not because you are told you have to, but now you do it because it is WHO YOU ARE!

That’s why this is called “Good News” and why St. Paul calls this new life the “law of Christ.” This is the life you are being offered, directed to, and invited to by your baptism, chrismation, and Eucharistic life in the Orthodox Faith!

This is why we remember St. Paul of Thebes as the first hermit monk of the Faith. This man fled into the wilderness to escape the persecution of the Christians that raged in his area under Emperor Decius in 250 AD. He lived a transformed life in that solitary place for 91 years! St. Anthony the Great, the father of monasticism in the Church, was directed by the Spirit (that kind of thing happens when you live the Spirit-filled life of Faith) a few days before the holy “hut dweller” reposed at 114 years of age! St. Anthony buried this remarkable man we remember to this day because he was so filled with the Holy Spirit, that he naturally lived a life free from the slavery of the passions and false desires!

Today, are you crucifying your passions and desires, or are you indulging them? Are you able to live your life free from necessary external controls because you are still addicted to your passions? Know that the fruit of the Spirit grows in the lives of those who willingly humbly and purposefully embrace the disciplines of the Normal Orthodox Faith to see the character of Jesus created in them. Tame your passions by the wisdom of the Faith and watch as the fruit of the Spirit grows in your life!

P.S. With the rivers of your tears, you have made the barren desert fertile. Through sighs of sorrow from deep within you, your labors have borne fruit a hundred-fold. By your miracles, you have become a light shining upon the world. O Paul, our Holy Father, pray to Christ our God, to save our souls.

Do you find these devotionals helpful? We would love to hear from you. Email us at frbarnabas@faithencouraged.org and let us know!