BARBARANNE KELLY | CONTRIBUTOR

As Americans we’re rather fond of freedom. Every July our communities are clothed in red, white, and blue, and fireworks pierce the sky in jubilant displays of national pride and celebration. “Give me liberty or give me death!” was the rallying cry at the birth of our nation and we repeat it again whenever we feel our freedom slipping away. At best our freedoms are enjoyed together with the mutual responsibilities that make living in community possible and pleasant. At worst, they descend into demands for unfettered individuality—the freedom to do whatever I want without restriction—when our personal Declaration of Independence is reduced to “Don’t tell me what to do!”

As Christians however, we are blessed with a different kind of freedom, a freedom that goes spirit-deep and lasts eternally. Our freedom is found in our Lord Jesus Christ. But what exactly is the nature of this freedom? What are we free from, and, conversely, what are we free to? The answers lie in the very name and title of our great Savior: the Lord Jesus. His earthly parents named Him Jesus because He would save His people from their sins (Matt. 1:21), and His title is Lord, because we owe Him our loving obedience (John 14:15; Eph. 1:20–22).

Give Me Liberty and Give Me Death

There is no true liberty apart from God. He is our Creator and we live in the world that He made. The freedom enjoyed by our first parents was a limited freedom, as creatures before their Creator, and depended upon their perfect obedience to Him. But when the serpent suggested that their obedience to God was preventing a greater autonomy, they forsook God’s loving embrace only to be shackled with the chains of sin and death. They believed the lie that they’d become the captains of their own souls but instead they became slaves to their own flesh. Tragically, they learned that “liberty” from God meant alienation from Him and death. And mankind has been bound under the illusion of autonomous freedom ever since. Far from enjoying a paradise of their own choosing, our first parents won for themselves and all their posterity a wilderness of servitude and death. Relationally, rather than gaining mutual love and harmony, they reaped jealousy, murder, and every evil under the sun. Spiritually, they dug their own graves.

Free From Sin

Scripture is clear that there are only two ways to live in this world: as a slave to sin, or a servant of God. “[Y]ou are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness” (Rom. 6:16). There is no third option. We might feel like we’re free, but it’s a false freedom. Outside of Christ we are “dead in [our] trespasses and sins . . . following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— [living] in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind” (Eph. 2:1–3). “For to set the mind on the flesh is death . . . For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:6–8).

We are enslaved to sin and death until by grace through faith in Christ we are freed from those cursed bonds and bound to the Lord in whom is found perfect freedom, for only “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3:17). “But thanks be to God,” if we are in Christ, then we “who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart” . . . and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness” (Rom. 6:17–18).

Free To Serve the Lord

Our freedom in Christ is not a freedom to live however we want—that’s what we were doing in our enslavement to sin! Instead, we are to “Live as people who are free, not using [our] freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God” (1 Peter 2:16). Because we have been freed by the great love of God from the sin which entangled us to serve our own flesh, we can now serve God and love one another (Eph. 2:4; 1 John 4:11). We can walk in the good works God has prepared for us, demonstrating the fruit of the Spirit from hearts cleansed of pride and selfish motives (Eph. 2:10; Gal. 5:22–23). We can love our neighbors by openly sharing the gospel without fearing their opinions of us or any social or financial consequences. Because we understand that God mercifully saved us when we deserved hell, we can see others through the lenses of the same mercy and serve dinner at the homeless shelter, volunteer at a pregnancy center, open our homes and hearts to foster children, and in a thousand other ways show love to a hurting world full of people who need Jesus!

Charles Wesley captured the contrast between the shackles of sin and true freedom in Christ in one of my favorite hymns, And Can it Be That I Should Gain:

Long my imprisoned spirit lay
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray,
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee. [1]

In Christ, we are truly and finally free from “sin and nature’s night” to go forth in the brilliance of His light and follow Him.

Hallelujah! Let freedom ring!

[1] Charles Wesley, “And Can It Be That I Should Gain”, 1738, Trinity Hymnal 455

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash