Journeeman.

There is a difference between being given freedom and learning to live as a free person.

Paul’s declaration in Galatians is startling:

“For freedom Christ has set us free.” (Galatians 5:1)

The Greek eleutheria carries the full weight of liberty. Yet this liberty is not merely permission. It is a condition of existence into which Christ has brought the believer.

And Paul does not begin by telling the Galatians what they may now do. He begins by telling them who they are — not directly, but through a movement. They have moved from slavery to sonship, from sonship to heirship, and from heirship into liberty.

This argument has a clear trajectory. Paul is not simply removing religious restrictions or rituals from the centre of human existence. He is taking these young Christians on a discovery of the depth of what has happened to them in Christ.

In today’s environment, calling God “Father” does not always carry the weight it ought. Some reasons are sociological, but from a spiritual sense it is often linked to familiarity — the profound has become too common rather than the point Paul seeks for these Galatian Christians.

They are no longer attempting to establish their righteousness through conformity to a religious system. Instead, this new relational way of being is far more dynamic and existential:

They belong.

They are adopted.

They are heirs.

They have received the Spirit.

Therefore they are free.

The order matters. It is a telos — a point of completion. The end is not utility. The end is belonging.

From my own lived experience, I have encountered this in many of the denominations and fellowships in which I have participated. We can begin to perform our collective way of being. This is how we do things becomes almost sacred, while personal ownership quietly gives way to conformity.

I have seen it within the crowd of a fellowship: people using the same words, avoiding the same subjects, clinging to the same doctrines and quoting them by rote without necessarily understanding what they mean — and then being praised by others who have learned the same habits.

At some point, this begins to look less like liberty and more like collective mimicry: learning how to fit in, learning how to sound right, learning how to perform belonging. And perhaps more disturbingly, we can begin to perform before God as well — as though saying the right words, holding the right doctrine, observing the right practices, and belonging to the right people could somehow secure God’s favour. As if we could perform our way into grace.

But grace, by its very nature, cannot be performed into existence.

The person who has been liberated by Christ does not need to become a convincing imitation of everyone else. They need to become who they are in Christ.

The Danger of the Second Yoke

Paul’s warning is therefore more profound than a warning against circumcision.

He is resisting the creation of another righteousness through conformity — one that would lead them further from the message of grace that Christ came to bring. The danger is not merely that the Galatians might adopt the wrong ritual. More concerning: it is that they might allow a collective religious system to become the arbiter of their standing before God — and consequently, of the legitimate shape of their lives.

It is human nature to create solutions that make us feel significant, structures embedded within our own ego. We lean into the outward form without seeing the quiet slide away from grace and the faithfulness of God. The old yoke can be replaced by a new one. A code can become a culture. A doctrine can become a social expectation.

Even our relationships can become instruments that enforce conformity. This internal drive to feel significant can be found in one of the most dangerous places of all — the compromise of the crowd or the mob, where we trade our true identity for acceptance.

And even Christian language can be employed to make people smaller. We claim certain words, doctrines, and practices as sacred, layering upon them more authority than they ought to carry — until they tower over and silence the simple, liberating truth: “You are loved.”

The irony is profound: a people liberated by Christ can begin constructing systems that teach liberated people to live like slaves.

This is where the correspondence with John Stuart Mill becomes illuminating, though not equivalent. Mill recognised that tyranny need not come only from government. Society itself can become tyrannical through the weight of prevailing opinion, which claims too much authority over the individual — a warning against social conformity that can crush the person. Paul sees a related danger within the religious sphere: a system of conformity can become a yoke that obscures the freedom Christ has given.

The correspondence is real, even though the foundations and end points are different. Mill is concerned with liberty and human development within the political and social order. Paul speaks from Christ — through redemption, adoption, the Spirit, and new creation. A Christian can therefore recognise Mill’s warning without becoming a Millian. Indeed, Christianity provides its own deeper reason for resisting the reduction of the person to the collective: the person stands directly before God.

Mill’s own words underscore this concern for individuality:

“Whoever thinks that individuality of desires and impulses should not be unfolded, must maintain that society has no need of strong natures — is not the better for containing many persons who have much character — and that a high general average of energy is not desirable.”

— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (AmazonClassics Edition), p. 52

And on the necessity of freedom for what is exceptional:

“Persons of genius, it is true, are, and are always likely to be, a small minority; but in order to have them, it is necessary to preserve the soil in which they grow. Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom.”

— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (AmazonClassics Edition), p. 56

Mill does not prove Christian theology. But his analysis provides an important point of convergence: the suppression of individuality is not merely personally damaging; it impoverishes the society that does the suppressing. And from a christian perspective, it weakens the church and robs it of the richness of creativity, and shrinks us down.

The Person Is Not Abolished by Redemption

Christ does not liberate us from the law in order to make us less human. He liberates us so that we might become more fully alive in him. The Christian self is therefore not the autonomous self of modern individualism — but neither is it an anonymous unit within a religious collective. It is the self before God, in Christ, through the Spirit.

That self retains agency — most essentially in its surrender to God and its walking in faith. If agency is diminished, so too are conviction and the joy that comes from choosing freely.

This agency chooses. It thinks. It creates. It dares to ask questions. It commits itself to love. It works with integrity. It rests. It enjoys the fruit of its labour because it is personally connected to what it has been given. It develops. It becomes. Because agency, when it flourishes, always becomes.

And because people are genuinely different, the life that emerges from the same Christ need not be identical in every person. Unity is not sameness. It is not uniformity — it is the gathering of unique, individual lives. When our unity is found in Christ, the shallow pressure to conform becomes distasteful. Instead, there is a true diversity — a multitude of people being formed in his image, becoming the true selves he loves and is working to mature.

This is why Christian liberty can encompass the ordinary texture of human life: vocation, intellectual exploration, literature, music, art, food, friendship, recreation, humour, beauty, entertainment, creativity — and the innumerable choices by which a human life acquires its particular shape. As Scripture affirms: “Everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:4). This does not mean every choice is automatically good — but it does mean that the people we are, in our ordinary, embodied, diverse existence, are being made complete in Christ.

The Fence Is Not the Playground

This brings us back to the metaphor we have explored before.

The fence around the playground has a purpose. It protects the space in which the child can play — allowing for exploration, joy, and shared creativity. But if the child spends the whole afternoon staring at the fence — measuring its height, worrying about how close they may stand to it, arguing about whether they have technically crossed its boundary — something has gone terribly wrong.

The restrictions have become the centre. And in doing so, they rob us of the freedom Paul knew was ours — and is ours in Christ.

I think much Christian moral discourse makes exactly this mistake. The Christian life becomes an endless exercise in boundary management:

Can I read this? Can I watch this? Can I eat this? Can I listen to this? Can I pursue this career? Can I enjoy this? Can I be this kind of person?

And the tragedy is that the person becomes so occupied with the boundaries that they never discover what the freedom was for. They lose themselves — and the joy of their connection with God. Rules can become so loud, so heavy, that we grow bitter and lost beneath their weight.

Paul does not answer the Galatians’ freedom with a larger fence. He gives them the Spirit. The same Spirit who moved over the waters at creation, and who still looks upon what God has made and says, “It is very good.”

The Answer to Freedom Is Formation

Paul’s answer to the danger of liberty is not increased regulation. It is formation through relationship:

“Walk by the Spirit.” (Galatians 5:16)

And what emerges?

Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Goodness. Faithfulness. Gentleness. Self-control. (Galatians 5:22–23)

Understood rightly, these characteristics were never meant to be joy-busters. They are the fruit of a life lived well and fully. The mature Christian therefore does not need an externally constructed rulebook for every possible human circumstance. Instead — through creativity, imagination, and faith — they are becoming the kind of person who can exercise wisdom within freedom: a living work of both divine grace and human agency.

This changes the question entirely.

Legalism asks:

What am I allowed to do?

Immature autonomy asks:

What do I want to do?

Christian liberty asks something deeper:

What kind of person am I becoming, and what can I freely do with the life I have been given?

That question requires thought. It requires conscience. It requires wisdom and character. It requires the Spirit who breathes life into our lives. And therefore it requires maturity.

Servanthood Must Be Understood Through the Character of the One Served

This is where the very nature of Christian service becomes decisive. Paul writes: “Through love serve one another” (Galatians 5:13). He does not say simply, “Serve.” Love qualifies the service. And the character of the one served matters deeply — for service flows from the nature of God, and from the image of God we carry in our understanding of who he is.

If God is imagined as a tyrant, service becomes submission.

If God is represented primarily through a system, service becomes conformity.

If the church becomes the ultimate object of allegiance, service can become servility to the collective.

But the God revealed in Christ is not a tyrant demanding that human beings become smaller, or surrender their agency and creativity. He is the God who gives himself. And the person who serves this God does so as an adopted heir.

That changes everything. The Christian does not serve in order to become a child — they serve because they already are one. They do not serve to earn their inheritance. They serve from their inheritance — out of the goodness freely given by God.

This is why servanthood and liberty are not opposites. There is a form of service that destroys the self. But there is another form of service that is the free expression of a self secure enough to give itself away in love — knowing that the One we serve does not demand the loss of who we are, but works within us to make us more fully the people we were created to be.

The difference is enormous.

The Eternal Yes

Perhaps this is why the distinction between the great “No” and the eternal “Yes” is so vital. It is a truth worth saying again:

The “No” is easy to construct. We are drawn to it, often out of immaturity and fear. It gives certainty by eliminating alternatives. It provides boundaries defined more by restriction than by purpose. And it can offer the comforting illusion that holiness consists simply in avoiding enough things.

But the eternal Yes is much larger.

It says:

Yes, you belong.

Yes, you are adopted.

Yes, you are an heir.

Yes, Christ has liberated you.

Yes, the Spirit lives in you.

Yes, your humanity matters.

Yes, your embodied existence matters.

Yes, your gifts matter.

Yes, your capacity to think matters.

Yes, your creativity matters.

Yes, your choices matter.

Yes, there is beauty to receive.

Yes, there is work to do.

Yes, there is life to inhabit.

Yes, there is love to give.

Yes, there is a future toward which all of this is moving.

The “Yes” does not make the “No” disappear. Rather, it assigns the “No” to its proper place. Galatians 5 still says no to everything that destroys human beings and their relationships. But the “No” is no longer the centre. The “No” protects the “Yes.” The fence protects the playground. It is not the reason the playground exists.

And Then Comes Christ’s Body

This vision finds its greatest depth in the person of Christ. A high Christology matters because who Christ is determines what redemption means.

The Son does not save humanity by remaining distant from us. He is far more radical than that. He becomes human. He fully enters what it means to be one of us. He takes on embodied existence within creation. He eats, works, speaks, walks, suffers, loves, and dies. And then he rises bodily. The resurrection does not discard his humanity. It glorifies it.

This should make us deeply cautious of any theology that treats embodied human existence as though it were merely a temporary inconvenience from which salvation will eventually rescue us. The future is not the abandonment of creation. It is new creation. And if the risen Christ is the beginning and guarantee of that future, then Christian liberty acquires an eternal horizon.

We are not merely free to “be ourselves.” We are free to become what redeemed humanity is meant to be in Christ. That is both more expansive and more demanding: God calls us to own who we are, and to let that identity flourish in him.

Freedom Therefore Needs a Horizon

Without Christ, liberty can collapse into: “I am free to do whatever I want.”

But Christian liberty says something richer: “I am free to inhabit my humanity within the story of redemption.” This is not cheap grace, nor flippant faith. It is deep ownership of the life we have been given — growing into closeness with God, and flourishing in his design.

I can choose a vocation. I can read a book because it stirs my mind, delights me, or simply brings me joy. I can watch a film. I can make music. I can share good food. I can rest. I can create. I can explore. I can pursue things that delight me and help me flourish. And I can do all these things neither as acts of rebellion nor as attempts to prove my spirituality — but as acts of gratitude and stewardship: receiving and inhabiting the life I have been given, while allowing that life to be shaped by Christ.

The question is not whether every choice can be labelled “Christian.” The question is whether the person making the choice is being formed in Christ — living authentically, not merely as a copy of someone else’s life. That distinction honours both true liberty and serious faith.

What We Truly Believe Must Become a Philosophy of Life

Perhaps this is where the entire argument finally converges.

Theology cannot remain merely words we speak. If we truly believe in the incarnation, it should change what we think it means to be human. If we truly believe in adoption, it should change how we stand before God and how we value this gift of belonging. If we truly believe in liberty, it should change how we make choices — exercising agency, creativity, and honour toward God. If we truly believe in the Spirit, it should change how we understand character — and why a life of wisdom is not mere intellectualism. If we truly believe in the Resurrection, it should change how we regard our embodied existence. And if we truly believe in new creation, it should change what we imagine human life is moving toward.

Belief becomes vision. Vision becomes character. Character becomes ethic. Ethic becomes a way of life. And that way of life is lived out in the thousands of ordinary choices by which we live — a kind of art, made real in ways we rarely acknowledge. All this comes otgether in the love of living well — philosophy.

Conclusion

Perhaps, then, the deepest question is not:

“Where is the fence?”

Nor even:

“What am I free to do?”

It is:

“Who is Christ? Who have I become in him? And what kind of life follows from believing it?”

Because who determines how. And when the Who is the incarnate, crucified, risen, and glorified Christ; when our identity is that of an adopted heir; when our way is through the Spirit and in love; and when our horizon is new creation — then liberty becomes something far larger than permission. It becomes the space in which redeemed humanity learns to live. Not recklessly. Not fearfully. Not conformingly. But gratefully, creatively, responsibly, lovingly, and freely.

Perhaps we have spent too much time teaching Christians where the fence is — and too little time teaching them why there is a playground. Perhaps we have confused the boundaries that protect life with the purpose of life itself. Perhaps Christ’s eternal Yes is larger than all the human “No’s” we have built around it.

And perhaps the deepest act of Christian maturity is not learning to live as safely as possible within the smallest possible space — but learning to inhabit the immense liberty of an adopted heir: alive in Christ, formed by the Spirit, free to become, free to love, and free to live toward the new creation.