Freedom
Galatians 5:1
Freedom is one thing that everyone everywhere, and at all time desires.
We are only free when the Son sets us free; but we are free to choose whether or not we will be made free.
Imagine being given a check for a million dollars and never cashing it.
Imagine having a freezer and cupboard full of food and never eating.
Imagine dangling precariously on a rope when there is a ladder within your grasp.
Imagine living a life of defeat and despair when there is no reason to do so.
Freedom! The words are etched upon our hearts and land, "America, the home of the free and the brave." Freedom has been secured, but freedom must be maintained. If we fail to appropriate the freedom we have, we become slaves.
The Bible tells us we are free in Christ and yet so many times we find ourselves shackled and chained to our feelings, desires, thoughts, and habits.
Galatians 5:1 (NASV) It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.
For liberty Christ set us free is the apostle’s statement of fact, followed by the appeal to stand in that liberty and not be involved again in bondage.
In some ways it is easier to live as a slave than to make right use of one’s freedom (e.g., Israel in the wilderness wishing to return to Egypt).
THE NATURE OF OUR FREEDOM IN CHRIST
Freedom Is Not Autonomy
Does this mean we are totally free from any sort of obligation?
That we are free to "do our own thing"?
That we have no responsibilities to anyone?
That we are free from having to be concerned about others? -- Of course not!
Freedom means: "FREEDOM" IN CHRIST...
Freedom is not free to do whatever I please … but to live and act in Christ. How I live in Him is the true measure of how free I am.
A free will is not the liberty to do whatever one likes, but the power of doing whatever one sees ought to be done, even in the very face of otherwise overwhelming impulse. There lies freedom indeed.
Freedom comes by filling your mind with God’s thoughts.
Freedom means I have been set free to become all that God wants me to be, to achieve all that God wants me to achieve, to enjoy all that God wants me to enjoy.
The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.
Freedom Gone Wrong
Self-fulfillment soon grows into a quest for self-indulgence with a vocabulary of I, Me, Mine and self-indulgence, in turn, soon becomes unbridled.
The self-indulgent pursuit of pleasure embraces tolerance of homosexuality, addiction to eroticism, addiction to drugs and alcohol, habitual divorce, vandalism and lawlessness.
Thus liberty becomes libertinism. It is a dictatorship of permissiveness, which enslaves its citizens, a dictatorship whose decrees are endlessly purveyed by the media.
The truth of the matter is that we have been set "free" in order that we might "serve"!
a. We are free to love God.
b. We are now free to "serve one another" through love
Remain Free!
Imagine being in a prison. You are in a cell with your hands cuffed, and your feet in shackles. Hour by hour, day by day, month by month, year by year you wallow in bondage. Then one day someone comes in and knocks out the guards, removes the cuffs and shackles, and opens all the doors to the prison and says, "You’re free! Leave this place!"
Imagine after a period of time you are walking by that old prison. A guard calls out, "Why not come back in and visit us again? We’ll give you a NEW cell with NEW handcuffs, NEW shackles, and even NEW guards!" You’re reaction, like mine, would be, "No way! I don’t want to go back to that old stinking jail! I like my freedom and I’m keeping it!"
This seems to be a pretty ridiculous story, doesn’t it? And yet every day there are those among us who have been set free by Jesus Christ, who fall back into old bad habits and old bondage. We also entangle ourselves in new bad habits and new bondage. The sad thing about it is we don’t need to go back into bondage once we have born into the family of God. We have been born free!
Freedom disguised frees no one, but binds, holds and enslaves
Freedom has been the cry of our land and lives for over 200 years. But today the cry for freedom has taken on the yokes of bondage disguised as freedom.
Millions of unborn babies are murdered each year and it is called … "freedom of choice."
Cults are joined, magic practiced, Satan worshipped and it is called … "freedom or religion."
Pornography fills the magazine racks in stores, on the monitors in the home, and the movies paid to see … lyrics are sang about the perversion of man and it is called "freedom of speech."
Freedom Gone Wrong
Today, "freedom" seems to mean the right to abort one’s child or to censor certain lofty ideas from the public schools while tolerating the filthiest of pornography as First Amendment-protected speech and press. Conviction in political leaders is seen as "extremism." It is thought better to consult the polls to arrive at a bottom-line consensus than to posit firm standards of right and wrong and challenge the nation to follow.
-- Cal Thomas, Christian Reader, Vol. 31.
Conclusion
Man has said, that "eternal vigilance is the price of peace."
Committing all you do to God. Putting God first in your life.
Mark 4:19 . . . (NLT) but all too quickly the message is crowded out by the cares of this life, the lure of wealth, and the desire for nice things . . .
True Peace, that which comes from God, is killed by our attraction to worldly things. When we lust for money, position, power, fame, we will be tempted to spend our energies to get these things, and that will take us away from a pursuit of God.
God has laid upon man the duty of being free, of safeguarding freedom of spirit, no matter how difficult that may be, or how much sacrifice and suffering it may require.
I will never forget the day Nancy & I went to see a state penitently in Menard, Ill. We saw several inmates behind the prison fence and gates. We also saw several freed men waiting for a bus ride home. These men had served time in prison and had been freed. Freedom had been a long time in coming.
For them freedom would require some adjustment. They were so used to forced regimentation that some of them really did not know they were free.
As children of God, we sometimes do not quite comprehend the fact that we have been set free by our Savior. Some of us are imprisoned by the memories of a sinful past.
Lloyd Ogilvie said, "The memory of past failure is like sand in the gears of our effectiveness."
God did not put the handcuffs of past memories on you. They are self-imposed. He wiped out your sins in order that you might have seasons of refreshing (Acts 3:19).
Other Christians are incarcerated by legalism. They read the Bible to learn of its rules.
Let Christ take off your shackles
Gal 5:22-25 NIV
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.
Freedom to Love instead if hate
Freedom to be joyous in the midst of sorrow
Freedom to have peace in the midst of conflict
Freedom to wait with God, when others moved by circumstance
Freedom to be kind when others hurt
Freedom to do good, when others do evil
Freedom to have Christ as your anchor, when others have nothing to trust in.
Freedom to let Christ lead you in steps of righteousness, and holiness
Freedom from self, wrongful passions & desires
If you are living in a prison of your own making, you can walk through the doors of freedom today.
"It is for freedom that Christ has set us free" (Gal. 5:1).
