Faith & Freedom
How might you live into the liberation from shame and condemnation a little bit more today?
Galatians 3:25
But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian.
Sometimes I mention to friends that my life has gotten significantly better since I stopped thinking about sin so much. For context, I grew up in a pretty fundamentalist church and I spent a LOT of time worrying about whether that twinge of jealously or the mean thing I said to my sibling or (God have mercy) that sexy thought I just had would mean that I had backslid and that I would no longer be guaranteed a spot in heaven if I happened to die before repenting.
It was exhausting.
In this verse from Galatians, I hear the writer creating a framework for helping us abolish the cop in our hearts and minds. With faith, there is freedom from condemnation, from harsh discipline, from lives of anxiously combing over every action.
We can rest.
There will always be room to grow, of course. There will be room to expand our capacities for love, for forgiveness, for taking care of the people in our lives and treating them with kindness. All of that is limited by obsession over purity. What actually creates space for loving action is liberation.
How might you live into the liberation from shame and condemnation a little bit more today? What might banishing the cop in your brain feel like?
–Candace Woods