Called to be Free, and Called to be Holy

Galatians 5:13
Richard Spencer | Sunday, July 28, 2024
Copyright © 2024, Richard Spencer

We are called to be free, and called to be holy. That is the title and it is also the two points I have this morning: called to be free, and called to be holy. But first, let’s begin with some background to consider this idea of freedom.

When I was a teenager, hippies were a big thing. The Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco was taken over by them. You had the so-called “summer of love” in 1967 and the popular song that helped to advertise that summer told you that if you were going to San Francisco, you’d better wear some flowers in your hair. San Francisco had a “free clinic” that provided free medical care to anyone and a “free store” that offered basic necessities to anyone without charge. The hippies didn’t worry about the fact that nothing is really free and someone had to pay for these things. And one of the mantras of the hippies was “free love”, which like many of these sayings was the opposite of the truth because what they were talking about definitely came with a cost and it was anything but love.

Freedom has been a rallying cry for many movements in history. This country is known as the land of the free and the home of the brave according to our national anthem. But there are all different kinds of freedom, and while freedom can be a very good thing, it is not always so, nor is it always so without exception. People tend to think that the more freedom we have, the better it is for us. But that is not true. Constraints can be a great blessing and, given the sinful nature of human beings, they are absolutely necessary for us to have a peaceful society.

But, even in the absence of sin, I can prove to you that having total freedom is not the best possible situation to be in. Just consider heaven. It is, by definition, the place of greatest joy, there cannot possibly be any better place better for a human being to be. It is impossible for a human being to be happier than people are in heaven. But think about it, we will not be entirely free in heaven! We will not have the freedom to sin.

And we can also take note of the fact that God himself is not absolutely free. He is constrained by his own perfect nature. For example, he cannot lie. Therefore, we need to think carefully about freedom, rather than just imagining some impossible and, in fact, undesirable situation of absolute personal freedom.

Nevertheless, the right kind of freedom is, in fact, a very good thing. And the Bible speaks a great deal about freedom. In John 8:31-32 Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” When the people objected that they were already free, Jesus made it clear what kind of freedom he was talking about. In Verse 34 he said, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” And, of course, by definition, a slave is not free. And then, in Verse 36, he went on to say that “if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”

We were originally created in God’s image to be his image bearers here on earth. But when Adam sinned, that image was severely defaced. Man was no longer free to be a proper image-bearer for God. He was not free to carry out the purpose for which he was created. And that creates misery and depression. Remember when Cain was depressed and complained to God? His face was downcast because of his depression, but God said to him “Do what is right, and your face will be lifted up.” That is Pastor Mathew’s translation[1]. Sin brings misery and depression. But we all begin life in bondage to sin and are not free to do the next right thing.

Paul also spoke a great deal about freedom in his letter to the Romans. In Chapter Six Verses 17-18 he said, “But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.”

Notice carefully what Paul says there. We were slaves to sin, but after being set free from sin, we are slaves to righteousness. That is a very puzzling statement at first. Most people would think that if you have been set free, you could not be a slave to anyone or anything. But God sets us free from slavery to sin by giving us a new nature, and everyone is a slave, so to speak, to his nature; in other words, we all obey our fundamental nature. Unless we are physically forced, none of us can do anything that is not consistent with our nature. That is why God can’t lie, it would violate his very nature as truth. That is what Jesus meant when he said that a good tree cannot produce bad fruit and a bad tree cannot produce good fruit.

As Christians, we have a new nature that desires to obey God. But we also still have a sinful nature that is with us in this life, so there is a conflict going on inside every true Christian. Paul wrote about this conflict in the book of Romans. In Romans 7:22-25 we read, “in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.”

When God causes us to be born again, he gives us a new nature, but as I said earlier, he does not completely take our old sinful nature away in this life. Therefore, we need to be very careful to understand what Paul means when he talks about our being free. He certainly does not mean that we are free to indulge our sinful nature. We are completely free from the guilt of sin, the power of sin, and the impossible burden of keeping the law as a means of earning salvation, but because we also have a new nature that desires to please God, we can be called slaves to righteousness. And it is because we have this internal conflict between our old nature and our new nature that Paul issues the stern warning in the verse we are examining this morning, Galatians 5:13. Paul wrote, “You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.”

Paul has been repeating himself over and over again throughout Chapter Five of Galatians in order to guard the pure gospel from all perversions. And, as we have said before, there are ditches on both sides of the narrow road to heaven. Therefore, in Verse 1 of the chapter, Paul warned against being enslaved again by thinking that we need to keep the law in order to be justified. He said, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” And the “yoke of slavery” refers to the idea that you must keep the law to be saved. And now, in Verse 13, he warns against the opposite error of thinking that we don’t need to keep the law. “You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.”

And because Paul repeats himself, much of what I say this morning will be repetition of things we have already heard as we have been going through this letter. But that’s alright! We need repetition. We need it first because we are slow to understand, believe, remember and obey. And secondly, a thirst for novelty has led many a preacher astray. It is my desire, and my duty, to preach the same old gospel message that has been coming forth from this pulpit for fifty years. It is the same gospel that Paul preached and the same gospel he so vigorously defends in this letter to the Galatians. For only the true gospel is the power of God for the salvation of those who believe, Romans 1:16.

Therefore, I want to take a closer look at Galatians 5:13. And the first point is that we are called to be free.

I.             Called to be free

This letter was written as a polemic against any false gospel that claims we must earn some portion of our salvation. We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Our obedience is the obedience of faith as Paul wrote in Romans 1:5 and 16:26. Our translation varies the rendering in those two places, but the original Greek is the same in both places. Our obedience is a result of, rather than a cause of, our being born again. Our good works are essential to our salvation because, as James says in James 2:26, “faith without deeds is dead.” But our good works are not in any way the basis for our salvation. They are not only not essential for justification, they are completely irrelevant to justification.

We are justified purely because of our being united to Jesus Christ by faith, and faith is a gift from God. It is the result of being born again, which is a monergistic work of God. That is why Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:8-9, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” And, in Ephesians 3:7 he wrote, “I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace given me through the working of his power.” And, as just one more example that this is a clear teaching of the Bible, in Romans 6:23 he wrote, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The fact that salvation is a gift from God explains why Paul is careful in Galatians 5:13 to say that we “were called to be free”. It isn’t something we earned, nor is it something we deserved. We deserve God’s wrath, just like every other sinner does. But because God chose us, or you could say predestined us, in eternity past as we are told in Ephesians 1:4, he also called us.

We are told about predestination and calling in Romans 8:30, which says that “those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.” It is important to notice that those verbs are all in the past tense, as though these things were all already true of us. Greek does not have a simple past tense as we do in English, but this is a proper translation of the Greek, because the Greek tense is used “to describe an event that is not yet past as though it were already completed.”[2] Therefore, the English past tense is appropriate, it emphasizes the certainty of the event. The point is that all of these events are equally certain even though they have not all occurred yet. If God has chosen someone to be saved, that person will, with absolute certainty, be called, justified, and glorified.

And, based on what we are told elsewhere in the New Testament, we can fill in other steps in this process of salvation. We know that a person must be born again, which occurs when God effectually calls the person. Jesus told Nicodemus, in John 3, Verses 3 & 5, that a person must be born again to see or enter the kingdom of God. And Paul wrote in 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14 that “we ought always to thank God for you, brothers loved by the Lord, because from the beginning God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth. He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” That passage makes it clear that God’s effectual call comes through the gospel message and also requires the work of the Holy Spirit. We also read in James 1:18 that the Father, “chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.” And Peter wrote in 1 Peter 1:23 that “you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.” Putting all of this together, we can say that those God chooses, or predestines, he also calls through the gospel, and regenerates, or causes to be born again by the Holy Spirit.

I want to emphasize that the power to save sinners is not inherent in the gospel message. Many people hear the gospel and are not saved. The Holy Spirit must work in the heart of a person to regenerate him so that the gospel message is believed and obeyed. In 2 Corinthians 2:15-16 Paul wrote, “For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life.” To those who are not born again, the gospel is the smell of death, while to those in whom the Holy Spirit works the miracle of new birth, the gospel is the fragrance of life.

We also know from the scriptures that if a person has been born again, he will respond to the gospel call with repentance and faith. Jesus himself said, as we read in John 6:44, that “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.” The Greek word translated as “draws” in this verse could also be rendered as drags. In fact, the same word is used in Acts 16:9 where we read that Paul and Silas were dragged into the marketplace, and it is used in Acts 21:30 where we read about Paul being dragged from the temple, and again in John 21:11 where we read that Peter dragged a fishing net ashore. Therefore, John 6:44 argues powerfully that when God draws people, he does so in such a way that their response is certain.

Therefore, we can now say that those God chooses, or predestines, he also calls, and regenerates, or causes to be born again, and they then respond with repentance and faith. And God then justifies them, which means that he declares them not guilty on the basis of their being united to Jesus Christ by faith.

Paul makes this point powerfully in Chapter Three of Romans. In Romans 3:20 he first explains that because no one is righteous in himself, “no one will be declared righteous in [God’s] sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.” But, praise God, he then goes on to explain the gospel. In Verses 21-28 he writes, in part, “But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, … so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. … For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.”

And, finally for our purposes today, it will be sufficient to add sanctification to this list of steps that occur in our salvation. A couple of minutes ago I read 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14, which said, in part, that “God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit”. This is speaking about what is called definitive sanctification. It is the one-time action of the Holy Spirit in regenerating us. It cannot be repeated, and it can be undone; hence it is called definitive. We are given a new heart, a new nature. We are born again, or you can say regenerated. And, as I’ve already said, we then respond to the gospel call with repentance and faith. But there is more. Because we are radically changed by this work, we also live differently. Paul speaks of this difference in 2 Corinthians 5:17 where he says that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” Or look at Ephesians 4:22-24, where Paul again speaks about the fact that there is an old you and a new you, he wrote, “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” Or look at Colossians 3:9-10, where Paul wrote, “Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.”

The message is clear. Regeneration makes us a new creation. There is a new me. And the new me cannot live in the same way as the old me. There is a process that follows regeneration. We are to put off the old and to put on the new. This process is called progressive sanctification and while it is the result of, rather than the cause of our being born again, it is absolutely essential. Anyone who does not exhibit progressive sanctification has not been born again. It is simply impossible for the new man to live in the same way the old man did. Although the old man certainly pops his ugly head up once in a while; we all sin.

Therefore, our salvation is a gift from God, not something we earn. And that is why Paul could write in Ephesians 2:8-9 as we saw earlier, that “it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” And yet, because we must be born again to have saving faith, and a born-again person is different, and lives differently, Paul can go on in the very next verse, Ephesians 2:10, to say, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” In other words, the reason God regenerated us, was not solely, or even primarily, so that we would repent and believe, but that we would be enabled to do good works, works that redound to God’s glory.

Therefore, Paul wrote the verse we are considering this morning, Galatians 5:13, which begins by saying, “You, my brothers, were called to be free.” Free from the power and guilt of sin and free from the impossible burden of keeping the law to earn our salvation. But Paul goes on in the verse to say, “But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.” Or, we could say, we are called to be free, and we are called to be holy. And now let’s move on to my second point and consider the proper use of our freedom, which is, that we are called to be holy.

II.           Called to be holy

Paul explains in our verse how we are to properly use the freedom he is speaking about. He expresses it with both a negative statement and a positive statement. Negatively, we are not to use our “freedom to indulge the sinful nature”, or as the English Standard Version puts it, which is more faithful to the original Greek, “do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh”.

As I said earlier, our sinful nature, what Paul refers to in the Greek as our flesh, is a traitor. It is a vestige of the old man with which we must constantly battle. Our old nature wants to obey Satan. And in 1 Peter 5:8 we are told, “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” And our sinful nature is all too happy to hand us over to this ravenous lion. Therefore, if we take the wrong view of our freedom in Christ, it can be an opportunity for the traitor within, our flesh, our sinful nature, to hand us over to Satan.

Satan hates God first and foremost, but because he can’t do anything to God, he attacks God’s people instead. But the good news for us is that even though Satan is far more powerful than we are, he is completely under the control of our sovereign, almighty God. God has chosen to allow Satan to rule this world for a time (1 John 5:19), but he puts limits on what he can do, and he gives us the power necessary to be victorious over him.

God could, undoubtedly, take away our sin completely, but he wants us to experience victory for ourselves. This is very much like when the Israelites entered the Promised Land after being freed from their slavery in Egypt. They didn’t completely defeat all the nations in the land. We are told in Judges 2:23 that “The Lord had allowed those nations to remain” and we are told that he did this to test the people and, in Judges 3:2 we are told “he did this only to teach warfare to the descendants of the Israelites who had not had previous battle experience”. Our justification is a free gift from God, but he wants us to participate in the process of our salvation. This is a great blessing to us. We value things that we have to work for more than we do things that are just given to us. And, undoubtedly, we learn to have a greater understanding of the wickedness of sin and the beauty of God’s holiness and justice. Therefore, we must struggle against Satan, the world and our sinful natures.

Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 2:11 that “we are not unaware of [Satans] schemes”, or we could say we are not unaware of his thoughts. The Greek word translated as “schemes” also means thought or mind. It is the same Greek word that is rendered as “thought” in 2 Corinthians 10:5 where Paul wrote that “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

Satan can put thoughts into our minds to tempt us, but we must take these thoughts captive and cast them out. In John 13:2 we are told that “The evening meal was being served, and the devil had already prompted Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, to betray Jesus.” But the Greek literally says that Satan threw into Judas’ heart the idea to betray Jesus. And he can and will do the same to us, so we must be vigilant. When Satan throws an evil thought your way, don’t receive it, cast it out.

Now, of course, sinful thoughts can also come from our own sinful nature. But either way, we are to oppose them. We are not to let our freedom become an occasion for Satan to succeed in tempting us, nor are we to allow it to be an occasion for our old sinful nature to rule over us. We are to defeat wicked thoughts and feelings when they come in and before they result in wicked words and actions coming out.

And let me state what is obvious, controlling our thoughts is definitely not easy! But we must see the seriousness of the battleground in our mind. Don’t let yourself believe that sins in your mind are minor little problems and no big deal. For example, Jesus said that improper anger violates the command to not murder our neighbor, and looking at someone lustfully is the same as committing adultery. Now, we can all admit that the actual physical acts of murder and adultery are worse than the thoughts, we need to realize how serious the thoughts are! Sinful thoughts are not some little peccadillos to be laughed off, they are an offense against almighty God and they are the first step down the road to more serious offenses.

But, in spite of how difficult it is to control our thoughts, the good news is that God guarantees us victory in this endeavor. In 1 Corinthians 10:13 we are told that “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” And in James 4:7 we are told, “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

Therefore, we all need to work on this. Develop ways to deal with whatever sinful thoughts you are prone to. Memorize scripture and recite it when those thoughts come. Learn to avoid things that stimulate those thoughts. Develop habits and techniques and be very careful and deliberate about it. Your mind, or we could say your heart, is the primary battle ground. If you win the battle there, it ends there.

Jeremiah told us in Jeremiah 17:9 that “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” And in Genesis 6:5 we read that “The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.” We have to see that our old sinful nature, which is still in us, is evil. And when it rises up and puts thoughts in our minds, we must cast them out because they are the wellspring from which come even greater evils. In Matthew 15:19 Jesus said, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” And in Luke 6:45 he said that “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.”

We all have some of the evil man still in us, so we must be sure to put that to death and to nourish and encourage the new nature. As Paul wrote in Ephesians 4:22-24, “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

And this battle for our hearts, for our thoughts, is especially difficult in our day and age. We are constantly assaulted by the world around us with wicked images, sayings, and philosophies. Therefore, Paul’s command to not indulge our sinful nature is of utmost importance.

But we can’t simply focus on what we are not supposed to do. Therefore, Paul gives us a positive command also. We are told to, “serve one another in love.” This is essentially the same admonition we looked at a few weeks ago when we considered Galatians 5:6, where Paul wrote that “in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”

But it will still be worthwhile to remember in outline form what was said at that time. That verse dealt with the ditches on both sides of the narrow path to heaven. On the one side is the ditch of legalism. We must see that we cannot earn even a tiny part of our salvation. Our best deeds are still tainted by sin and do not meet God’s standard of perfection. And, even if they did, they can’t make up for our sins. As we are told in Psalm 49:7-9, “No man can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for him—the ransom for a life is costly, no payment is ever enough—that he should live on forever and not see decay.” We must recognize that the only efficacious sacrifice for sins was made by Jesus Christ when he offered himself on the cross. Only the unique God/man could accomplish our redemption. He had to be fully man to pay the price that men owed, and he had to be infinite God for his payment to be sufficient.

On the other side of the narrow road to heaven is the ditch of antinomianism. We must never think that a faith without good deeds is a real, saving faith. It is not. In James 2:26 we are told that “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.” We must have good deeds or we do not have a real, living faith. Without good deeds, any so-called faith that we have is the faith of demons. It will not save. And as I labored to show in that sermon, there is a world of difference between doing something that is in external conformity to the word of God and doing something in true obedience. True obedience is motivated by love. Jesus said in John 14:15 that “If you love me, you will obey what I command.” And in John 13:34-35 he said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Therefore, we must “serve one another in love” as our verse this morning says. That is a call to holy living. We are called to be free and we are called to be holy, which is demonstrated in part by serving each other in love. And that must be a biblical love that is sacrificial, focused on what is best for the object of that love, not on what is best for me.

That kind of love is impossible for the natural man. The natural man can have a sincere appreciation of another person, he can even be willing to go to great lengths to help that person. Unbelievers have even given their lives for others. We’ve all heard stories about someone diving on top of a grenade to save his comrades in arms. Or some other self-sacrificing act. But when have you ever heard of an unbeliever sacrificing himself for a sworn enemy? That is what Jesus Christ did. Paul wrote in Romans 5:7-8, “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” We were God’s sworn enemies, hostile in our hearts and in rebellion against his just and beneficent rule. And while we were in that condition, Jesus Christ died for us.

That is the greatest love imaginable. The love of God for his chosen people. And the only way any of us ever loves another properly is if the love of God has been placed in our hearts by regeneration. As we are told in 1 John 4:19, “We love because he first loved us.”

Friends, we were created in God’s image. That image was severely distorted by sin, and we were slaves to sin. We were in bondage. We were not free. But now, for all who trust in Christ alone for their salvation, God is restoring that image. We are called to be free, free to be what we were originally created to be, God’s image bearers. In Hebrews 1:3 we are told that “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being”. In other words, Jesus is the perfect image bearer because he is, in fact, God. And are “predestined to be conformed to the likeness of” Jesus Christ as we read in Romans 8:29. We are now free to say “No” to sin and to walk in holiness. In Hebrews 12:14 we are told that we should, “Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.” And in 1 Peter 1:15-16 the apostle gives us this command, “But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy.’”

God is holy in both senses of the word holy. First, he is morally perfect, and second, he is separate. He is the Creator, and we are creatures. And we are called to be holy in both senses of the term also. We are called to be morally perfect, and we are called to be separate from those people whom God has not chosen to save, those who are still in rebellion against him.

Our moral perfection will only occur when we get to heaven, but we are to be working on it even now. And our separation will only be absolute in heaven, but we are to be separate now in a sense. We are called to live in this world as salt and light, but we are not to be of this world. We are to represent God and influence this world for God. We are to speak the gospel and live in a way that adorns the gospel message.

And Paul’s statement in Galatians 5:13 is not unique. The apostle Peter gives us the same command in slightly different words in 1 Peter 2:16, where he told us, “Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God.”

Brothers and sisters in Christ, these verses are a call to holiness! We are free, but we must understand that freedom properly. As I noted at the beginning, constraints can be a great blessing. God’s laws are a great blessing, they tell us how to live a life that is morally pure and pleasing to God. And authority is a blessing when it is used properly. The authority of parents, teachers, elders and the state. These are all good and help us to walk in holiness if they are exercised in a godly way. They are for our good and are not the enemy of our personal freedom.

We read in Hebrews 2:11 that “Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers.” Therefore, let’s all go forth and live as free men and women. Free to obey God, and free to serve one another in love. Let us be among those who are made holy and those whom Jesus is not ashamed to call brothers.

[1] Pastor Mathew’s translation. See https://gracevalley.org/sermon/the-cause-and-cure-of-depression/
The ASV also uses essentially the same translation: Verse 6 ends with “why is thy countenance fallen?” and Verse 7 then begins, “If thou doest well, shall it not be lifted up?”

[2] D.B. Wallace, Greek Grammar, Beyond the Basics, Zondervan, 1996, pp 563-564 The verbs are all aorist, active, indicatives in the original Greek, which means that the actions are undefined in terms of when they occurred or if they are continuous or punctiliar. But this usage of the aorist is called a proleptic aorist.