What is freedom? For Kelly, it meant graduating from high school and getting out from under her parents thumb. Carl thought that freedom would come when he had his own car and could come and go as he pleased. Rosa longed for the freedom to quit work so that she could stay at home with her children, while Betsy couldn’t wait for them all to be in school so she could go back to work. Harry dreamed of starting his own business so that he could be free to be his own boss, and run it the way he wanted. Stan found, after 20 years in prison, that the outside world was more than he could cope with, so he robbed a gas station and got sent back.
The Peruvian Incas found that freedom from the Spanish landowners meant that they had to decide what to plant, and when, and they had to find their own buyers and suppliers. And after the Jews were freed from exile in Babylon, those who returned from Babylon to rebuild their own country again found themselves embroiled in a tug of war between political and military alliances for the next 500 years, when sometimes it seemed as though the only choice they had was whom to seek protection from - and at what price.
What is freedom?
Freedom doesn’t mean just making our own choices, although that’s certainly part of it. Freedom isn’t easy. It doesn’t come easily, and it’s very easy to lose. Freedom is uncertainty, freedom means responsibility, and freedom involves taking risks. And sometimes you can get it wrong. Because freedom alone isn’t enough. It’s not just freedom from. It’s freedom to. Freedom isn’t a destination or a goal. It isn’t an end, a place you get to and stop. It’s a means to an end. It’s a house you live in or a road you travel on. And if you don’t want freedom for something else, something better than what you have or where you are right now, what you think is freedom may actually lead to a prison that’s worse than what you left behind.
When Harry started his own business, he actually worked more hours, longer hours, and for several years brought in less money. But he was a happy man. But after Kelly graduated from high school, she spent all her money on clothes, and had to get a second job to pay off all her debts.
Real freedom isn’t easy. And there are times when prison is actually easier, because the rules are clear and you don’t have to make decisions and if something goes wrong there’s somebody else to take the blame.
Rigid, legalistic religion provides much the same kind of security: the rules are clear, the boundaries are fixed, and if you can’t get out, well, at least no one can get in, either. It’s safe.
The rules the Jews had lived by for so many years were not bad rules. Their community had been formed and defined by the law, and the law had been given to them by God, and it had served them well. But now there was something better. Instead of law, there was now freedom.
Paul isn’t telling the Romans that what Jesus had done cut them loose from everything God had said up to now, and that they could go and do anything they liked. Although some people thought that was what he meant. What Paul has been saying, throughout this long letter to the Romans so far, basically has two parts. Part one is: stop trusting in your possession of the law, or your ability to obey the law, for your good standing with God.
You see, the Jews of Jesus’ day had gotten things the wrong way around. They knew that God had chosen them purely out of grace, not out of anything they had done. But then they thought that following all the rules was what made them acceptable to God, that the better they behaved, the more God would love them. And of course anything that made God love them more, obviously made them better than other people, too, right? So they could look down on everybody else.
That’s why Paul spent a good chunk of this long, complicated letter making sure they understood clearly, with absolutely no possibility of error, that Jews were just as much sinners as Gentiles, if not more so, because they had less excuse. At this point, then, if his audience hasn’t tuned him out altogether, they’re quaking in their boots, because when you really take a good, honest look at your innards, it’s enough to drive you to despair. That’s why Paul begins this chapter - one of the most beautiful in all of Scripture - with that very familiar and comforting assurance: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
That’s part two of the point that he’s been trying to make. Stop being afraid that God will be mad at you if you make a mistake. God doesn’t love you more if you obey all the rules, and he doesn’t love you less if you don’t. That’s what it means that “Christ died for us while we were still sinners.”
So then, why should we bother with God’s laws at all, if there’s no penalty for ignoring them?
Good question. There are two answers.
Answer one is, God gave the law for our good. It is a gift.
The ceremonial law - that is, circumcision and holy days and all the food laws and so on - helped made the Jews into a people, a community with an identity that could survive in the face of truly enormous obstacles. You can see the effects all the way down to the present. How have the Jews survived as a uniquely persecuted people for two thousand years? By sticking with their cultural and ceremonial and linguistic distinctives.
The moral law, also, is for our good. Can you imagine living in a world where people didn’t know it is morally wrong - not just illegal - to steal or lie or kill? Did you know that almost every moral precept we take for granted comes from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? The idea that people should be treated equally under the law was new with Moses. In Hammurabi’s code, rich people got off easier than poor ones. Legally. And the idea that even women and slaves are made in the image of God and have rights, and must be treated with respect - that, too, was new with Moses. I could go on and on. And all of those laws are gifts: God’s gift to us. Our obedience isn’t something we owe God, it’s something we owe ourselves and each other. If we ignore the moral law, God doesn’t have to punish us. It comes with the territory, as society breaks down around us.
So, first, we should obey the moral law because it’s good for us. And the second reason we should obey is that it’s one of the best ways we have of showing God how much we love him. I have a beautiful new hand-woven scarf that my sister brought me from Ecuador. I wear it A LOT. Partly because it goes really well with a lot of my outfits, but also because I love my sister, and wearing it reminds me that she loves me too. Following the law, recognizing that it is a gift of love from God, is a return gift of love to God.
We are free of the debt of sin - the debt of obedience. And so we don’t owe God obedience. But what we do owe is much more difficult.
What we owe is love.
What?!?! I hear you say. Loving God is harder than following the rules? How can that be?
After you’ve met the requirement of the law the rest of your life is your own. Once you’ve paid your 10% the rest of your money is your own. Once you’ve come to worship on the Sabbath, the rest of the week is your own. You may discipline your body, be faithful in your marriage, and live a moderate life, and the rest of your heart can still be your own.
Loving God means giving back to God everything you once thought was your own, everything that once you thought you owned. Loving God means understanding, gladly, that everything that you have received belongs to God, including your dreams. Loving God means trusting that whatever God has in store for you will be enough. Loving God means trusting God’s love for you, and living your life with open hands.
And we can’t open our hands without help, can we. Without the help of the Holy Spirit, the things of the flesh always come first. And sometimes, believe it or not, the needs of the body should come first. As the great Rabbi Hillel said, just a generation before Jesus, “If I am not for myself, who will be?” That’s good advice, the best. How many of you still listen to the stewardess’ talk before the airplane takes off about seatbelts and emergency exits and so on? I regret to say that I haven’t listened for years. But I do read the info card in the seat back in front of me, and I know that the rules for the oxygen mask haven’t changed at all. If you are traveling with children, put your mask on first so that you will be able to care for your children. “If you do not take care of yourself, who will?”
We still live in the flesh. We need food and clothing and work and shelter. Another reason we work is to have enough to give away. But we don’t just work, do we. We worry. We worry about careers and health and money and children and clothes and politics and where to go on vacation. We measure ourselves against our neighbors and wonder if we’re being taken advantage of. And every shortage, every disappointment, every temporary hunger takes on an overwhelming importance, like poor short sighted Esau, whose growling stomach filled his whole universe and who lost his future because of it.
Without the help of the Holy Spirit, we can’t see any farther than our own cares and ambitions and egos either. The whole point of the freedom Jesus bought for us lies far beyond our own limited horizons.
“If I am not for myself, who will be?” asked Rabbi Hillel. And nearly a hundred years later, Paul answered. God is for you. God is for us. Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount that when we put God first, God will take care of our needs better than you could possibly imagine. It will rarely be exactly what you imagine you want, though, because God doesn’t only know the future, he also knows you. He knows what we really need, in the long run.
Sixteen years after I first heard Handel’s glorious anthem “Come Unto Him,”and asked God for a sign, I thought God hadn’t heard me and that the promises weren’t true after all. But I came into work one morning to find a note on my desk, from my boss, telling me to go interview for a job in another department, working for a man I hardly knew but didn’t much like. It turned out that my boss’s boss’s boss was also this man’s boss, and had told him he had to interview me.
Well, he didn’t want to either; he didn’t like me any more than I liked him. But I went to the interview, and we clicked, and eight days later I had received my promotion to professional staff. It was the year I spent arguing theology with this boss (an outspoken evanglical Christian) that prepared me to accept Christ when the last few pieces came together. God knew what I needed. And he made sure I got it, even when I didn’t even know what I was looking for. So - back to the first question: what is freedom? A better question is, what is the freedom Jesus has bought us for?
The whole point of this freedom from the law, and freedom from the fear of punishment that comes from the law, is to make it possible for us to love God. That what Paul means about living “in the Spirit” - because living in the Spirit is living each day in love with God. It is the Spirit who makes it possible to love God, to trust God enough to put him first. It is the Holy Spirit who lifts us beyond our earth-bound horizons into the perspective of eternity.
But it’s not easy. Freedom means that each one of us is responsible to listen to God, to understand his word, to ask for guidance. We can no longer just follow the crowd, figuring that if everyone else is doing it, it must be okay, nor can we be content with just going through the motions. Each one of us is responsible for choosing, every day, between putting God first, or trying to squeeze him into the time that is left over. Freedom means choosing to let go of the things that make us feel safe, that make us feel successful, and to risk our balance, stretching out our hand for that gold ring. Freedom means taking risks, means giving up control to God, who most often doesn’t let us in on the fine print of his plans for us. Freedom may even mean real danger - in the short run.
But in the long run, to choose God is the only security there is. Our freedom is real, we have real choices. But putting anything but God in first place leads not to freedom, but to prison. Or, as Paul puts it, “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”
