GALATIANS 5:13-14 – “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.””
THEME OF THE DAY: HE FULFILLED LIFE. Every single person wants the theme of today’s devotion. Yes, every person. How is that so? God wired us for it to be so. He created us to know the fulfilled life, and it was so before Adam and Eve sinned. Think what that would have been like prior to them disobeying God. They never knew what it was like to be afraid, encounter pain, deal with anxiety, experience sorrow, grief, disappointment, sadness and all the other things that rob us of living fulfilled lives. Oh, the definition of a fulfilled life is one of living contented, in need of nothing or anyone to bring lasting satisfaction in our lives. Back to Adam and Eve.
When our first parents disobeyed God, the destruction was total and severe. They didn’t just make a mistake. They rebelled against God and forfeited the only place a fulfilled life is found and that is in loving God. Sin destroyed their desire and ability to love Him, and when divine love is absent in the human heart so is the fulfilled life. And that brings us to today’s scripture.
In writing to the Galatians, the Apostle Paul reminds them of their freedom in Christ because of the Gospel. These believers were in danger of abandoning the true Gospel, and he is very concerned for them. In the opening verse of the fifth chapter to the Galatians, he exhorts them to “stand firm therefore” in the freedom Christ has given them (Galatians 5:1). It is this freedom that sets us on the path to a fulfilled life; a life of love. Now make the connection of verse one with today’s scripture. The freedom we have in Christ is the freedom to kill sinful self-love so that we can serve others, and it is service of love. Our greatest satisfaction or the fulfilled life is a life of obeying the Great Commandments given by Jesus – “But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets”” (Matthew 22:34-40).
It is only when we learn to put “self on a shelf” and seek a life of loving God and others that we will discover true contentment or a truly fulfilled life. This is the way of our Master. It is in our daily death to self that we are in the position to know the power of His controlling love, and in that control, our hearts are full, our lives are fulfilling, and we are leaving an impact for our Lord – “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15).
PRAYER: Father, help me to see that my purpose in life is not to serve myself but others and that in love.
REFLECTION: Satisfaction, contentment, and fulfillment in life comes from self-denial, not self-seeking.