Everyone who decides to follow Jesus has a reason for that decision.
Think back on your own faith journey. Most of us remember a moment where we decided to take faith seriously. We remember the moment where something bigger than ourselves would guide the rest of our lives!
Everyone who follows Jesus has had that moment. The journey to that moment looks different for everyone, but the journey afterward looks similar for all followers of Jesus.
There’s many verses that can summarize the life of a believer, but this one is the shortest, and easiest to remember: “…You shall be holy, for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16).
Paul, one of the earlier followers of Jesus, describes holiness like this:
“…The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”
Galatians 5:22
The trouble is that holiness is hard—and following that list is hard.
Choosing to be patient when unexpected traffic makes you 20 minutes late isn’t fun. Being gentle when you’ve been given a harsh word feels painful. Self-control is impossible around bags of salty chips.
While consuming chips may not be sinful, being unholy—at any time—is sinful. That’s part of why following Jesus is so hard; it forces us to recognize how unlike him we are.
Cultivating the fruits of the Spirit—cultivating holiness—is hard.
Most Christians feel stuck in their faith at some point, and that’s because holiness is hard.
So, what should you do? First, let’s discuss what not to do. Most of us have one of two reactions to realizing our own unholiness. Christopher J. H. Wright, a UK-based author and pastor, refers to these reactions as “legalism” or “license” in his book Cultivating the Fruit of the Spirit.
The first incorrect response is legalism. This word traditionally refers to an incorrect belief that Christians need to do more than what the Bible says in order to be saved. Rather than believing Paul’s words in Romans 10:9, where he writes that “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved,” many first century legalists believed that all people should adopt the behaviors and beliefs of first century Jews alongside their faith in Jesus to secure their eternal salvation as a part of the Kingdom of God—behaviors like circumcision. Paul spends much of his letter to the Galatians explaining the error of this thought process!
A modern legalist in the church may not believe that every follower of Jesus must become functionally Jewish to follow him, but modern legalists are still recognizable by how strict they are about following “the rules.” You’d know them by how little empathy they have for the struggles of others, by a constant focus on the appearance of piety, or by their “if you’re not with us, you’re against Jesus” attitude. The legalist ultimately believes that “you shall be holy” means “try really, really hard, or else.”
This is not the Christian response; it’s an earthly one. It feels really good to be able to say, “See God? I’m a good person, look at all the things I do in Jesus’ name!” But Paul refers to this way of thinking as slavery in Galatians 5. Jesus wants the opposite for us. Paul tells us that the gospel of Christ sets us free. Not only does it set us free, Pauls says that “it is for freedom” (Galatians 5:1) that Christ set us free, meaning that Christ set us free just for the purpose of being free!
We’d be silly to respond to that freedom by being slaves to sin all over again. But that’s the legalist response: choosing slavery by adding a bunch of extra rules and focuses to our faith that Jesus himself isn’t asking for. Paul anticipates that response by saying “do not submit again” to the slavery of legalism, because the only thing that matters is “faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6).
The second incorrect response is license. Persons responding in license have looked different throughout history, but we can recognize these persons pretty easily as well. A person embracing license often adds or subtracts from Scripture based on their preferences. In modern times, these persons view Christian faith as a way to be free from any rules, viewing faith as separate from religion. They have little patience for any form of accountability or obedience, incorrectly viewing the healthy versions of these as legalism. They end up looking and sounding like the world, saying “God is love, and he loves everyone just as they are!”
Love is important, but love is easily distorted into something less pure than the love that God means for us. Modern love looks and sounds selfish, while the love of Jesus is others-focused. It’s Jesus’ love that Paul encourages the legalists to choose, and Jesus’ love that those in license should choose, too. He says it like this:
“You were called to freedom… do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.”
Galatians 6:5
That brings us to the response we must have when we are stuck in our faith, and it’s the answer to both the problems of legalism and license. That answer is liberty (or freedom).
Our liberty in Christ is to serve one another in love. Did you notice that love is the answer for both the legalism and license problem? Paul tells the legalist that love is all that matters, and tells the person in license that love serves others.
It shouldn’t surprise us at all, then, that when Paul describes liberty, he starts with love. Again, he says it like this:
“…The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”
Galatians 5:22
The result (or fruit) of liberty in Christ is all of those qualities. When you feel stuck in your faith, it’s usually because you aren’t living in freedom. When you’re stuck, you’re not free. When you’re free, it looks like love, joy, peace, and all the other fruits of the Spirit!
While it’d be easier to give a list of do’s and don’ts, or to say the rules don’t matter at all, Paul instead gives us the holier (and harder) way: we must be guided by the selfless love of others to be free.
When you feel stuck in your faith, it’s time to examine love for others. By cultivating a love for others, you cultivate fruit of the Spirit, unsticking yourself from the slavery of legalism and the yoke of license. Choose love, friends!
A Chicago native, Alex currently lives in Cincinnati with his wife, Charlotte. After twelve years in full-time pastoral ministry, Alex now works in the financial services industry, enjoys cooking, coffee, and quality time with friends and family.
