Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 248 · September 5
Entangled Again
“Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.”
We are better at getting out than at staying out. Most of us have watched someone be set free and then watched them slowly walk back, and some of us have done the walking ourselves.
What makes Paul's letter to the Galatians uncomfortable is where they went back to. They went back to religion. Teachers had arrived with a list of rules, a calendar of holy days, and the demand that every man be circumcised, and the church was taking it all up. Paul writes, "Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years." His alarm is personal: "I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain." And again, "Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?"
Then comes today's verse: "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." A yoke is the heavy wooden collar a working animal wears. Peter used the same word at the council in Jerusalem, when some wanted the new Gentile believers to keep the whole law. He reminded them that none of them had managed to carry it either: "why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?"
Twelve verses later, Paul guards the other side of the road: "ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another." Freedom in Christ is never an excuse to please ourselves. And there is one yoke that is offered to us, with Jesus stating the terms Himself: "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart."
Lord, You did the setting free, and still we keep fitting ourselves back into the collar, because a collar tells us where to stand. Show us which one we are wearing, and who put it on us. Keep our freedom from turning into an excuse for something cheap. And if we are to wear a yoke at all, let it be His, because He promised that it is easy and that we will find rest in it. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 248 is Written Before Birth (Psalm 139:16).