<p>5:1- see on Gal. 5:11.</p><p><i>For freedom did Christ set us free</i>- Romans 6 compares baptism to a change of masters. The point has been made that this is a reference to manumission, whereby a 'redeemer' gave a 'ransom' to a god, which meant that a slave was freed from his master and became a free man, although he was counted as a slave to the god to whom the redeemer had paid the ransom. Indeed, <i>lutron</i>, one of the words translated &quot;ransom&quot; with regard to the blood of Christ, has this specific meaning. Deissmann comments: &quot;When anybody heard the Greek word <i>lutron</i>, &quot;ransom&quot;, in the first century, it was natural for him to think of the purchase money for manumitting slaves&quot;. This means that when we come to understand the atonement, we understand that the price has been paid to free us from slavery into the service of God. We are in the position of a slave who suddenly discovers some gracious benefactor has made the longed for payment of ransom. And so he goes free, but is willingly and eagerly in slavery to the god to whom his redeemer had paid the price. In our case this is none other than the One, Almighty God of Israel. And the ransom is the precious blood of Christ, which thereby compels our willing slavery to the new Master. There are other references to manumission in Gal. 5:1,13 RV: &quot;For freedom did Christ set us free&hellip; ye have been called unto freedom&quot; and in the references to our being bought with a price, i.e. the blood of Jesus (1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23). And this is the horror of 2 Pet. 2:1- &quot;denying even the Master that bought them out&quot;. To turn against their gracious redeemer was the ultimate sick act for a slave freed through manumission. And this is the horror of turning away from the Lord. The death of Christ for us is thereby a warning to us of the end of sin and therefore the need to change.</p><p>The world, Paul told the Romans, seeks to push us into its mould (Rom. 12:2 J.B. Phillips). And this is increasingly true, as people crowded together catch the same bus each day to arrive at roughly the same time, reading the same newspapers, watching the same soap operas&hellip; automatic lives. Yet the real self created in the believer is ultimately <i>free</i>. For freedom did Christ set us free. The new person, the essential you and me, is characterized by sudden, creative welling up to the Father&rsquo;s glory. This doesn&rsquo;t mean that we have no habits- regular prayer, Bible study, meeting together etc. are all part of the new person. This is why the elderly, the infirm, the chronically shy, experience the flowering of the person, the sense of new life even in the face of the outward man perishing daily; because their inward man, their real self, is being so strongly infused with power (2 Cor. 4:16). This explains why the graph of spiritual growth in any person is not a smooth upward curve; it is a very jagged line. Our true person asserts itself in those moments of totally free choice to serve our Lord. But we so easily allow our lives to slip back into the automatisms which define our internet personas.</p><p>The spirit of life in Christ sets us free from sin (Rom. 8:2); but Gal. 5:1 simply says that &ldquo;Christ&rdquo; has set us free the same Greek phrase from sin. The Man Christ Jesus is His &ldquo;spirit of life&rdquo;; the man and His way of life were in perfect congruence. They always were; for in Him the word was made flesh. There was &lsquo;truth&rsquo; in His very person, in that the principles of the God of Truth were perfectly and totally lived out in His person and being. Back in 1964, Emil Brunner wrote a book, whose title speaks for itself: <i>Truth As Encounter. </i>Truth is essentially a person- the Lord Jesus. Truth is an experience, a way of life, a total assurance of forgiveness and salvation, a validation of the new man created within us, in a way so deep, and so strongly felt, that all else appears as falsehood compared to that surpassing &lsquo;truth&rsquo;.</p><p><i>Therefore, stand fast, and do not get entangled again in a yoke of bondage</i>- &quot;Again&quot; would suggest to me that the audience was largely Jewish; but see the discussion at 4:8. The allusion is to the &quot;yoke&quot; of life in Christ; Paul seems to be saying that we cannot wear two yokes. We cannot be saved by faith alone, and also by legal obedience.</p>