Free to Do What I Want???
--John 8:31-38
I am still a fan of the Beatles and admire Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, but I have never been into the Rolling Stones and Mick Jagger. I didn’t realize until this week that Mick and the Stones recorded the song “I’m Free” on September 6-7, 1965. That was at the beginning of my senior year in high school. The song was composed by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. The current, television commercial for the Chase Freedom Card led me to make that discover. The Stones’ original version of the song is the theme for the commercial that has been airing frequently these past several weeks on television and immediately catches our attention.
It features butterflies flying freely through the air and announces: “Introducing Chase Freedom. It feels like no other credit card in the world, and it works like no other card too. Feel free to choose cash back, and then change to points, and then change again, all with the same card and without loosing a thing. That’s freedom, Chase Freedom. Get it free at Chase.com/Freedom.” [SOURCE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zguxl2Q-OCc&feature=PlayList&p=D0330F0BFC99964D&index=22]. Continually you hear in the background Mick Jagger singing:
I’m free to do what I want any old time.
I’m free to do what I want any old time,
So love me, hold me, love me, hold me.
I’m free any old time to get what I want.
[SOURCE: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/r/rolling+stones/im+free_20117891.html].
On this Independence Sunday, nearly 231 years after the birth of The United States of America, we still hear Jesus calling, inviting, and reassuring us: “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” That’s true, genuine freedom, but does it mean that “I’m free to do what I want any old time?” What kind of freedom does Jesus give to those who put their trust in Him? Does being a Christian give me the freedom to “do as I please?” Does it mean “I’m free to do what I want any old time?”
Freedom is expressed in many ways and often means different things to different people. It may be personal or social in nature and often expresses social, economic, financial, political, or spiritual overtones. Many of us remember the CBS evening soap opera DALLAS that aired from 1978 to 1991. I remember the episode after J. R. and Sue Ellen’s divorce in which her financial planner assured her that she was worth four million dollars in her own right and thus could declare financial independence from J. R. That’s personal, financial independence.
Political freedom becomes a reality when one country gains independence from another, when a territory that was once a colony of a stronger nation becomes self-governing in its own right. The former colony gains political autonomy and is no longer under foreign rule. For our country that happened on July 4, 1776, when we declared our independence from Great Britain and the rule of King George III. Social freedom is more personal in nature. It grants individuals the right to act, speak, and think without arbitrary restrictions from government officials, a tyrannical dictator, or other oppressive outside power. Freedom oftentimes is synonymous with liberty, independence, and emancipation.
The Biblical terms expressing freedom, especially in New Testament Greek, have political roots. Often throughout their history Israel and Judah were seeking to overthrow the political tyranny that held them captive to Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Syria, or Rome. Yet the heart of the message of freedom in the New Testament is spiritual in nature: ““So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
Due to the tireless effort and ministry of William Wilberforce, the world’s most prominent abolitionist, on August 1, 1834, the British Slavery Act of 1833 went into effect freeing all slaves in the British Empire. The Emancipation Proclamation, signed by President Lincoln on September 22, 1862, went into effect on January 1, 1863, declared that “slaves in states or parts of states then in arms against the Union should be then, thence forward, and forever free.”
Even today in the United States and other civilized nations slavery, although forbidden by law, is practiced. While just like the Pharisees who protested to Jesus, we too might be tempted to boldly and proudly proclaim, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone,” the truth of the matter is we know Jesus is right on target when He looks each one of us in the eye and proclaims, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.”
We were not personally slaves in Egypt or on a nineteenth century Southern Plantation, but we have all been in bondage and slavery to sin. Just like King David each one of us must confess:
I have been wicked even from my birth,
A sinner when my mother conceived me.
[SOURCE: PSALM 51:6 from http://www.cofe.anglican.org/worship/liturgy/commonworship/texts/psalter/psalms51to55.html]
With the Apostle Paul we must own up, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23),” and we must make it our own personal confession in the first person, “I have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
True freedom, eternal freedom, lasting freedom is spiritual in nature, and you and I can only receive it by grace as a personal gift from our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul is utterly correct in Romans 8:1-2 when He confidently declares: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.” The Bible says in Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” When we receive Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Saviour, He frees, liberates, emancipates us from the law of sin and death
and its eternal condemnation. Only God the Son can set us free indeed. Receiving Him as our Saviour from sin through repentance liberates us from slavery to sin, from the paralyzing, ruining results it brings
To our African American brothers and sisters Abraham Lincoln will always be the Great Emancipator, but, as we will later sing in the great Camp meeting song “Glorious Freedom,” Jesus is indeed our “Glorious Emancipator.” It is only when we receive Him as our Saviour and Lord we are liberated from the “wages of sin which is death.” Only He can set us free from eternal condemnation. Everyone needs the liberation from sin only Jesus can give, for the Bible says in I John 1:8, “If we claim we have not sinned, we make (God) out to be a liar and His word has no place in our lives.”
Paul assures us in Romans 8: “And so He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.” Jesus sets us free from much more than eternal condemnation of sin and death. He liberates and empowers us to “live by the Spirit.” That makes us “free indeed!”
Spiritual freedom has its paradox. There is no place in the New Testament that ever says Jesus frees us from serving another master. We are freed from slavery and bondage to Satan and to sin so we may freely serve Jesus as our rightful Lord and Master. The Holy Spirit frees us enabling us to change masters. Peter expresses it so potently in I Peter 2:16, “Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God.” Remember two points Peter makes: (1.) the fact that Jesus has liberated me never means He has given me a “license to sin.” I am never “free to do what I want any old time.” I must never “use my freedom as a cover-up for evil.” (2.) As one Jesus has set free, I must always “live as His servant.”
What we all need, what the Church needs, what America needs this Independence Sunday is not political freedom or independence to “do what I want any old time,” but spiritual liberation from bondage to sin and Satan that keeps you and me from “becoming all we can be in Jesus and for Him.” Only Jesus, God the Son, can liberate us to become the Disciples He calls us to be, persons who faithful serve Him by serving others. New Testament freedom is not liberation from serving any master; it is emancipation to serve a New Master and only One, Jesus Christ, our “Great Emancipator.”
By the power of His Holy Spirit filling and empowering us, let us fulfill the fervor of Dorothea Day’s poem “My Captain”:
Out of the night that dazzles me,
Bright as the sun from pole to pole,
I thank the God I know to be
For Christ the conqueror of my soul.
Since His the sway of circumstance,
I would not wince nor cry aloud.
Under that rule which we call chance
My head with joy is humbly bowed.
Beyond this place of sin and tears
That life with Him! And His aid,
Despite the menace of the years,
Keeps, and shall keep me, unafraid.
I have no fear, though strait the gate,
He cleared from punishment the scroll.
Christ is the Master of my fate,
Christ is the Captain of my soul.
[SOURCE: http://www.pilgrim.demon.co.uk/alex/invictus.htm]
Live in total dependence, absolute surrender, and complete obedience to God, in service to Him and others because Christ has truly set you free. You are not “free to do what you want any old time,” but God’s Spirit sets you free from slavery to Satan and to sin in order to love and serve Jesus and to please only Him.
