1003 - Free, But Responsible
Friends: In Jesus we are free to do what is right, not to do whatever we want. See the column. Blessings, Bob
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Spirituality
Column #1003
February
3, 2026
Common
Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Free,
But Responsible
By
Bob Walters
“It
is for freedom that Christ has set us free … The only thing that counts is
faith expressing itself through love.” Paul, Galatians 5:1,6
Having
myself grown up in the “do your own thing” 1960s and then maturing in the “Me
Decade” of the 1970s, I look back with dumbfounded gratitude that it was responsibility
that my father pounded into me from an early age.
I’m
neither perfect nor bragging, though I had a friend in college who leveled a
criticism at me saying, “You don’t have to be responsible all the time.” But long
before I had true Christian faith or freedom, I had, thanks to Dad, an
on-board, secular sense of responsibility along with, sparing specifics, no
shortage of examples of irresponsibility.
The
second of four kids born 1952-1959, I shared standard kid household chores like
setting the table, clearing the table, washing the dishes, drying the dishes,
taking out the trash, burning the papers (in our backyard we had a metal
incinerator that looked like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz; trash
went in a trash can; paper refuse was burned in the incinerator located between
the garage and our basketball goal).
Any
lack of attention to these or other chores was met with a sternly worded speech
from Dad on being responsible. And it was many years later that I grew
to fully appreciate the importance of what Dad was telling me. It means far more to me today in a Christian
sense and a civic sense than it ever did about pulling my weight at home.
In
Galatians, and really in much of Paul’s writing and the New Testament overall,
our freedom authored by Jesus was a function of “faith expressed through
love” (Gal. 5:6), not about chores but about salvation. We think mainly of salvation
from sin, but Paul was teaching salvation generally from death and
specifically from the law.
Galatians
overall is Paul’s book coaching believers in Jesus to understand that the game
in Christ was now departed from the “yoke of slavery” (Gal. 5:1)
presented by the Old Testament Law. My Bible mentor George Bebawi, who by the
way, in Egypt, grew up Jewish and converted to Christ in his late teens,
constantly made the point that Galatians was “a stick of dynamite” leveled against
the Jews who refused to recognize Jesus as the Messiah. “Think like a
Christian, not like a Jew,” was his common refrain.
This,
at its most basic, is the meaning of “repent” (metanoia): Think anew.
Sadly,
too many people through the ages – and our age is no different – see this
difference of worldview, across all religions, as fighting words meant to wipe
out opponents. With our freedom in Christ, we are urged to love God, our
neighbor, and our enemy. We are to be
free of the enmity and condemnation the world so exemplifies.
And
I’ll add, sadly even in our Christian family through the ages, history shows us
that the name of Jesus and the idea of Christ have often created as much
intramural havoc and hatred as any beliefs from the outside. In the centuries
up through, say, the 1600s, Christian-on-Christian violence was a regular
occurrence. We see little of that today,
but the mindsets of various Christian churches teach vastly different attitudes
when it comes to the spirit of the age and the liberality of just what we are
free to do.
As
I teach high school students about history and government from the worldview of
Christ and the authority of scripture, my dominant, accompanying point is that
the most important, operative aspect of freedom is responsibility, Christian
responsibility, of love for God and others. Jesus came to save, not condemn
(John 3:17, Romans 8:1).
It
is not about doing what we want to do; it is wanting to do what is right.
Walters’
(rlwcom@aol.com)
father John passed away in September, 1991.