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"So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don't get tied up again in slavery to the law." Galatians 5:1
This verse can seem pretty confusing at first, but once we break it down, it's actually so cool how deep this verse dives in just one sentence!!
Paul is the one who writes this book of the bible which originally was a letter to the church of Galatia. He writes to teach and encourage them in the ways of the Lord! Nearing the end of the letter, Paul brings up how Christ (aka Jesus) has set them free! Paul is referring to Jesus dying on the cross and raising from the dead (which happened in most of these peoples life time, so it was a recent event that all the Christians were very aware of). Christ has set everyone free not just from their sins and from eternal separation from God but also from the "slavery of the law".
This is a new concept to everyone, because before Jesus died on the cross and rose again, (revealing to everyone that He IS the Christ, the Savior of the world) many of the Christians were previously Jews. The Jews had been waiting for this Savior for thousands of years, to come, fulfill the prophecy's of their bible (the now: old testament) that said a Savior would come to set them free!
God had asked the Jews to obey and follow the law. The Jews tried to follow the law but continued over many generation to fail. Man tried to become holy by following the law, but it was not possible to do so, and God knew this. It's like one of those, I told you moments, but God wanted us to see it for ourselves.
The law was never something they were going to be able to keep, and so God sent His son Jesus to be the Savior of the world, and to pay the price for us, since we could not do it on our own. He lived a sinless life, and died to pay the debt of our sins, and this is what set us free as Paul says!
To recap: Man tried to become holy by following the law, but Jesus made us holy and instead fulfilled the law!
What does this mean?
Well, now that the Savior of the world has come, there is no need to follow the law TO "try to be holy".
Paul was trying to explain that God doesn't want us to get trapped in the slavery of the law. How? Well, the best way I can describe this is "religious traditions".
God didn't want them to just have a 'checkbox' relationship with Him, where they try to just do all the right things and follow all the rules in order to be good enough to have a relationship with God. God was trying to show them that will NEVER work. Humans will always mess it up, and can run into the dangerous territory of beginning to focus more on being "good enough" than remembering that it's what JESUS did for us that saves us, and not anything that we did or ever will do.
The slavery of the law is just that. Slavery. It's something that has entrapped us, and is not meant for us, and God has offered us freedom of salvation through what HE did. We do not have to carry the wait of being good enough to make it to heaven, it's simply accepting what God done for us and having a personal relationship with Him!
The last thing I want to clarify is what Paul is NOT saying. Paul is not telling them that now they can just go ahead and murder people, and that lying is okay now, etc, etc. What Paul is trying to say is what Jesus says SO clearly in these verses that I'll share below. Watch how Jesus explains what the true purpose is of the law:
One of them, an expert in religious law, tried to trap Him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?”
37 Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”
Jesus says so perfectly, loving God, and loving others is still something we still need to do and obey when it comes to following the laws, but Paul is trying to remind them that following Gods commandments is NOT how we earn our way to heaven, it's what Christ did that made the way for us to be free! In summary, the slavery of the law is the weight of us trying to carry salvation and holiness on our shoulders, thinking there's a way we can checkbox our way to heaven by being perfect. God showed the Jews and showed us, that it will never be possible without Him and what He did for us.
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