In my years of Teen Challenge ministry I struggled many times with a great dilemma: how to teach students to live an overcoming life without causing them to become bound by legalism.
A student enters our program bound by all kinds of sinful behaviors and then finds out the Good News that God can forgive him or her of their sins and can set them free. How exciting!

They may enter Teen Challenge either before or after they accept the Lord and then we hit them with the student manual. Six pages, ten pages, thirteen pages, or more! We tell them when to get up and when to go to bed. We tell them how they need to interact with other students and how to interact with the staff. We tell them they will read their Bible at a certain time each day and they will pray for a certain amount of time each day, etc, etc.

Now, we know why we do this. We do this because they need to develop Christian disciplines in their lives to counteract the spiritual, physical, and emotional chaos that used to rule their lives. We also do this because without rules or guidelines in a program ministering to new Christians who are just days, weeks, or months away from their sinful lifestyle the place could quickly turn into a zoo! (Or a circus, if you prefer.)

We all should understand, that it is not by following the rules of Teen Challenge, the church, society, or any other organization that makes them right with God. They are right with God because they have put their faith in Jesus Christ. They have received the grace he displayed by shedding his blood on the cross and for no other reason. (Eph. 2:8-9) We should understand that the reason we give them the many rules we do is to help discipline them in their everyday life so they can learn to grow and honor Him in their personal relationship with Christ. (Mt. 5:16, Heb. 12:11, I Pet. 2:9)

We find ourselves with this very challenging problem. We must not teach our students that God will not love or accept them unless they do everything we are telling them to do. If we do that, we can fall into the error for which Paul castigated the Galatians, that of “preaching a different gospel” (Gal. 1:6-9). Salvation is by grace alone. If we teach our students anything to the contrary we do them a disservice and endanger their walk with Christ.Yet we also cannot let our students fall back into their old patterns of sin.

Sin destroys and eventually separates us from God. If our students return to and persist in their life of sin it will ultimately draw them away from Christ. “and things like these, of which I forewarn you just as I have forewarned you that those who practice such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. (Gal. 5:21*) (This article does not allow us to fully discuss the issues concerning the security of the believer.) So what do we do?

Two bondages. In Galatians, Paul clearly speaks of two bondages.

The first is bondage to the Law. The Galatians were saved under Paul’s ministry — a ministry that taught salvation by grace through faith. However, a certain group of Jewish Christians (Judaizers) came in after Paul left and began teaching that in order to be Christians they had to follow the Law of Moses. This included circumcision of male believers, a real non-starter for most Gentiles!

Paul spends most of the first four chapters of Galatians arguing vehemently that if the Galatians were to live according to this teaching they would not be following the true gospel. In fact, he makes the rather astonishing statement in Galatians 5:4 that those who try to be justified by the Law “have fallen from grace.”

This whole scenario explains why Paul makes the statement in Galatians 5:1, “It was for freedom that Christ has set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.” For many years I interpreted that “yoke of slavery” as being the yoke of sin. In the context here it clearly is not. It is the yoke of the Law that the Judaizers wanted to force the Galatians follow.

But, you might say, “We would never teach our students to follow the Law.” True, but we can teach them about their walk with the Lord as if it is another law. In our well-intentioned zeal to make sure our students never go back to their former lifestyle we can send a confusing message that if they stop doing the wrong things (drugs, drinking, sexual immorality, etc.) and start doing the right things (follow TC rules, read your Bible, pray, etc.) that they will be right with the Lord.

The result is that we can have students who generally follow the rules of the program, do all the class work, read their Bible and pray, yet never develop a true relationship with the Lord. The staff feel good about them and they feel good about themselves, but often they will fall immediately after graduation and will leave everyone wondering what happened. What happened is they tried to serve God in their own strength, and that is a formula for failure.

The second area of bondage is to sin and the flesh. We are free from the Law (and we will not walk in true freedom until we understand that) but if we use that liberty to indulge ourselves in sin then we will come into the bondage of sin and the flesh. Neither is this is not what God wants us to do. “For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” (Gal. 5:13)

So, no, God does not want us to use our freedom in Christ to return to the bondage of sin and the flesh but he wants us to use it as an opportunity to serve each other. This is the positive message that we must give our students about their faith. Christ has set us free not to follow the Law (or ‘a’ law) and not to follow the dictates of our fallen, sinful nature, but he has set us free to serve others.

Wow, we have a tough task! We must teach these former alcoholics, drug addicts, and criminals that they need to quit living like they have been living but we have to tell them that it will do no good for them to just follow a list of do’s and don’ts. How are they going to do that? For that matter, how are we going to do that?

Paul tells us exactly how we can do both at the same time: by walking in the Spirit! “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.” (Gal. 5:16) If we are walking in the Spirit then we are not bound to man made rules as the basis for our salvation. When we walk in the Spirit we are not trying to earn God’s favor for his favor is constantly with us.

And equally important, when we walk in the Spirit Paul makes it clear we will not carry out (fulfill) the desires of the flesh! Notice carefully that Paul did not say that we would not have the desires of the flesh, just that when we walk in the Spirit we would not fulfill them. We must emphasize to our students that they need to be filled with the Holy Spirit but not just so they can speak in tongues. They need to be filled with the Holy Spirit so they can be victorious in the battle between the flesh and the Spirit. (Gal. 5:17)

I know it is a fine line to walk and I can assure you that in my preaching and teaching down through the years I have stepped over that line many times. I wanted them to walk free from sin and the flesh so much that I am sure that they interpreted it as just following a set of rules that they needed to follow. But we need to understand that God has not ordained us to reach out to those in need and lead them from one type of bondage to another. He has called us to lead them to true freedom from Law and from sin and our fleshly desires.

We need to lead them to true freedom in Christ. Our goal must be to help them walk by the Spirit so they can avoid both the bondage of the Law and the bondage of sin. It is a tough line to walk but, for the sake of our students, we can and must do so. Their ability to live a successful life in Christ may hang in the balance.

*All scriptural quotations are from the New American Standard Bible