You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. ~ Galatians 5:13
 
While “indulging the flesh” might not be the way most of us would describe our response to freedom in Christ, it might be closer to the truth than many of us care to admit.
 
Indulging the flesh has in mind a life turned inward upon itself. It is “you do you” in its rawest, most honest form. It is a life where freedom in Christ has come to mean nothing more than freedom from the penalty of sin, and since the penalty is no longer in effect, we are free to live life on our terms, whatever those terms may be. 
 
Paul says this response to Christian freedom is a complete miss. Instead of a life turned inward, instead of life turned in upon itself, the proper response is a life of loving service spun outward. We are to “serve one another humbly in love.” Or as Paul says to the Ephesians:
 
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. ~ Ephesians 2:8-10
 
We’ve not only been saved from but saved for; we’ve been saved from sin even as we’ve been saved for good works. Freedom in Christ is not simply a movement away from the works of the flesh, but a movement in and towards and through the Spirit. It’s freedom for a life lived in the power of the Holy Spirit that reflects that sacrificial love of Jesus Christ.
 
Loving service, laying down our lives for one another in love through the power of the Spirit – this is what God has determined is an appropriate response to freedom in Christ.
 
While that is easy to write, it’s much harder to do. 
 
Being set free to serve sounds backward, even crazy. The counter-intuitiveness of this command, however, is not unique to us. At the risk of oversimplifying the philosophical worldview of Paul’s day, the Greek world was dominated by two main pursuits: pleasure and reason. 
 
The pursuit of pleasure or experience wasn’t necessarily hedonistic, though this outcome was certainly possible. More often, pleasure was simply elevated above pain and therefore anything that moved us away from what makes us ‘happy’ was to be avoided. When Paul urges us not to indulge the flesh, it is easy to imagine this as a perspective he’s calling us beyond. In a world as experience-oriented and individualistic as our own, not only can we relate to this pursuit of happiness, but we can also appreciate the way serving one another in love tramples upon this so-called ‘highest good’. 
 
On the other hand, there were others who saw reason, not pleasure pursuits, as the highest good. The Greek philosopher Plutarch said, “it is only those who follow reason who deserve to be regarded as free.” For Plutarch and others like him, reason was the highest response to freedom (and in some ways, the only real freedom) which might help us make sense of why, according to Paul, the Gentiles (non-Jews or Greeks) viewed the message of Christ crucified as “foolishness” (1 Corinthians 1:23). 
 
A life pursuing pleasure as the highest form of freedom is a life turned inward upon one’s own bodily experiences. A life pursuing reason as the highest form of freedom is a life turned inward upon one’s own mind and intellect. Neither alone embodies the sacrificial way of Jesus. 
 
It’s hard to make personal happiness your highest good when you’re laying your life down in love for others. It’s hard to make reason, logic, and knowledge your highest good when you’ve chosen to subvert the widely accepted power dynamics of the age. 
 
Serving one another in love hardly seems like the path to true happiness and personal fulfillment. Preferring and prioritizing the needs of others above your own hardly seems like the most reasonable way to live. 
 
And yet, this is what freedom in Christ calls us to precisely because this is how our freedom in Christ was accomplished. 
 
Jesus did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing, by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death — even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:8-9)
 
Jesus has given us life by giving up his life for us. He laid His life down for us so that we might be raised to life with Him. He saved us through His sacrificial obedience, which means He has saved us for sacrificial obedience – for serving one another in love. 
 
Worldviews governed by reason and pleasure have not gone away. They may go by different names and come in different packaging, but as Shakespeare reminds us, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” The marketing may change, but they’re still the same, empty, distorted products.

For what it's worth, this isn't intended to be a full-on assault against reason and happiness as if these things are evil in of themselves. These things have their place and indeed have value. Where we go wrong is when we treat these things as the highest good - as God's desired response from us toward freedom in Christ.

Left unexamined and untethered from God's word, reason and pleasure will endeavor to make their case as to why they are the most appropriate responses to Christian freedom, but the way of Jesus has not changed. Loving service to one another in the power of the Spirit is a way better than pleasure and wiser than reason alone. So, may Paul’s words to the Galatians all those years ago be embodied in us today – 
 
You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. ~ Galatians 5:13