The catch cry of humanity.
It is the same from the slaves to the slavers, from the poor to the rich.
We all long for some kind of freedom.
We cry out in the face of a world that tells us to conform and to age and to die "you will never take our freedom!"
So we buy the latest age defying creams, we take out loans to pay off debt, we move from one relationship to the next trying to avoid being 'tied down', we make alternate lives on line and take drugs to improve our experiences of the world. We even take our own lives to avoid our pain.
We are terrified of losing our freedom.
Yet none of us had any freedom to take in the first place!
We are slaves to sin. We do things that we don't want to do and don't do the things we do want to do. We search for freedom from pain and death and all the while ignore the only person who has ever been able to defeat them.
The only one who can offer us this freedom is Christ. In him is freedom.
Freedom to live and not die, to one day never feel pain again, and freedom to hope.
Yet this one person who can offer us this freedom we run from because we find him 'too restrictive'. We see only the rules and regulations. We see words in the Bible like 'slaves to righteousness' and start panicking that something might be demanded of us. We don't realise that all that is demanded is that we accept this freedom and live out of it.
Is it not ironic that while crying for freedom we prefer our slavery?
That while trying to avoid death we merely embrace it?
That in trying to reach people with the freedom of the gospel we
have restricted it with rules, standards and acceptance requirements?
So what is freedom?
Does it mean to live however we choose and screw the rest of the world?
What does it mean to bee a slave in Christ and yet free in him?
And how do we share this message with a world that cries out for freedom?
Today is Easter. Today signifies freedom from death and sin. Today I know that even if I don't understand all of it, I am free in Christ and no one will ever take my freedom.
Freedom to love as we were created to love.
ReplyDeletebut is that all freedom from sin entails? is that all that slave to righteousness means? I to love as we were created to is huge but 'love' seems like such a simple answer to such complex questions.
ReplyDeleteIf it is to love then we, all of us, are getting it wrong so how can Paul say that we are free now from sin and death if we still are subjected to both and fall short of what we are created for?