Free At Last Series

Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty I’m free at last. Free at last, Free at last. Free, what a marvellous, wonderful, magnificent word.

Free what tremendous connotations this conjures up in our mind. Freedom a concept, an idea a theory. And yet it is more then that because it’s a concept, an ideal and a theory worth dying for and there aren’t many of those around today.

It was for freedom that Abraham Lincoln split his country with civil war. It was for freedom that Orange Scott left the Methodist Episcopal church and formed the Wesleyan Methodist Church. It was for freedom that Canadian soldiers fought and Died at Vimy Ridge and Dieppe.

It was for freedom that Martin Luther King Jr. organized the freedom march, went to jail and eventually died. It was for freedom that my great grandfather escaped the tyranny of Estonia, and left his parents and brothers and sisters to start a new life in Canada.

And it was for a much greater freedom that Jesus Christ the Son of God, Emmanuel, the Messiah left his home in heaven, was born of a virgin, lived on this earth for thirty three years and died on a cross. For your Freedom. Free at last, free at last thank God almighty we’re free at last.

It was this freedom that Paul wrote about in Galatians 5:13 For you have been called to live in freedom—not freedom to satisfy your sinful nature, but freedom to serve one another in love.

At that point freedom was an even more marvellous, wonderful, beautiful concept. Because in the time of Paul life was polarized, you was either free or you wasn’t and there was no middle ground.

That statement is recorded in the book of Galatians which is the 9th book in the New Testament. The author of this book is again Paul. And it was written to the believers in the Roman province of Galatia. If we pull down our trusty map we see that Galatia was in the central portion of what we now refer to as Turkey.

The book was written around A.D. 50 and the reason it was written was to refute those who were teaching that Gentile Christians must obey all the Jewish laws. And so the dominant theme that comes out of this book is freedom.

And it is to our detriment that we have become so used to freedom, so convinced that it is our God given right, so blasé about the fact that we are free to do virtually anything we want that the concept of freedom no longer really means much at all to us. That word, that concept means nothing; it is no longer marvellous, wonderful or beautiful. It has become just a word, just a collection of vowels and consonances.

And yet there are millions of Canadians today who are in bondage. They enjoy their external freedom, the benefits of their political freedoms, and the rewards of their economic freedom and yet they are slaves. Slaves just as surely as if they were black Africans in Atlanta Georgia 150 years ago. Slaves just as Onesimus was a slave 2000 Years ago. And they don’t even realize it.

And the bible says, you, my brothers, were called to be free. Who was called to be free? Paul said, “You, my brothers.” Christians are called to be free. And Christ offers the only true freedom that There is.

1) What Freedom Isn’t

So often in this world we hear people who make the fatal mistake of believing that freedom is the freedom to sin. Yet that isn’t freedom at all. You say “Oh yes it is I’m free to do whatever I want to do.”

Charles Kingsley stated “There are two types of freedom, the false where a man is free to do what he likes and the true where a man is free to do what he ought.”

Do you do it because you want to do it, or do you do it because you have to do it? Because you are driven to do it? Natural man, the man who has been so perversely altered by sin and Satan has a compulsion to sin. It’s not a choice. He doesn’t sin because he wants to; he sins because he has to.

Collins dictionary defines free as, “Able to Act at will, not under compulsion or Restraint, not restricted or affected by.”

That means not even under an internal compulsion. Paul states on four separate occasions in Romans 6 that we are slaves to Sin. Sin is not the master though; sin is simply the chains that hold us secure to the master.

“That’s silly” you say, “I can’t be a slave, because I was never sold, and slaves, must be bought and sold.” I got news for you, you were sold, or perhaps sold out is a better description. You ever gotten taken, on anything? I think most of us have been had, at one time or another. My biggest weakness has been for automobiles, and in the last 28 years I Have had 22 cars and 5 motorcycles, 3 VWs, 3 Dodges, 2 chevs, 1 Pontiac, 1 Oldsmobile, 2 Plymouths, 3 Chrysler, 3 Toyota, 1 Holden a Nissan, 3 Hondas, 2 Yamahas 2 Fords and a Mazda, Not Necessarily in that order. And let me assure you that from time to time I have been taken in trading my cars. Not that I was necessarily upset, I had wanted the cars and I had gotten them.