It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Galatians 5:1 (NIV).
Another word about how Jesus gives us freedom. When I was in fifth grade, our music class sang a patriotic song. Some of the words were, “freedom isn’t free…each generation has to win it anew cause it’s not something handed down to you.”
Right on.
I mentioned yesterday that our idea of freedom comes from faith in Christ. Our idea of liberty comes from the unique Christian concept that we are valued by the Almighty. Not only, but it was Irish Christian monks who preserved knowledge of ancient Greece and Rome, of philosophy, of religion, democracy, and liberty when the rest of Europe fell into the Dark Ages. Those monks preserved this knowledge for over half a millennium before anyone else began to take it up again. We owe them a debt.
Yet most people don’t know this. Indeed, most people in history – and most people on this planet now – aren’t free and are denied their natural, God-given rights. This has always been the case. Man was a brutal, savage race until God chose to reveal Himself through one devout people. He created us to choose, and we chose base carnality and tyranny. It was faith in God that gave the world concepts of nuclear family, of service above self, of natural law and natural rights, of dignity and love, of the family being the most important unit, and of the idea that all men are created equal.
BUT
Freedom isn’t free. God gives us natural rights but it isn’t something that mankind hands down from one generation to the next. Mankind puts limits on freedom; most governments limit freedom so as to preserve themselves. Freedom is only free when people stand firm for it and insist on their God-given natural rights. Sometimes that’s at the point of a sword. It’s always done in faith.
And it’s in standing against the deception of sin. Sin, like tyranny, constantly works to rob us of our natural freedom in Christ. We must stand up beside Jesus because He stands up for us. Only through the liberty-saving faith in Christ are we truly free because what Jesus did at Calvary cost Him everything so He could give us the liberty to live freely; free from sin and its tyranny. Sin lies to us, constantly telling us we need to do more, be more, make ourselves righteous to earn that freedom. That we can be God. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Years later, I still hear the refrain of that song in my head. Freedom was purchased in blood at Calvary. We have liberty, not libertine rights. It’s something worth standing for
For further reading: Galatians 5:2
Jesus, freedom is found only in You and through You.
If you’d like to know more about Practical Proverbials, please contact aspiringwriterdt@gmail.com for more information
Practical Proverbs 