Freedom is Costly, How Are You Using It?

Yesterday I found a bicentennial quarter amongst my change. I showed my kids, but I was probably more excited about it than they were: when I was a kid, quarters all looked the same with very few exceptions. Now, there are over 50 varieties! It got me thinking though: our country, the United States, is about to celebrate 250 years as a nation, and “the freest nation on earth” is facing battles of censorship, religious suppression, and restriction of things within our bill of rights. This post is not meant to be political, but I want to use the freedoms our nation has as a backdrop for my point: freedom is bought with the price of blood, and is often taken for granted. When you have free speech, the danger is that anyone can have an opinion, when you have freedoms.

When you have freedom of religion and expression, someone can challenge your beliefs. When you have the right to bear arms, someone has a right to defend themselves from your attacks. This is oversimplified, but I don’t think it can be overstated: when you have freedom, freedom can be taken for granted, especially since someone else pays for it, and the freedoms granted can, and will be, abused by some, and some will want to suppress the freedoms of others because they view opposite viewpoints as a danger to their own. Consider all of this under the fact that our God is not a tyrant.

Since the beginning, God’s creation has had a right to choose. The angels of Heaven serve freely; we know this to be fact, as Satan and His angels refused His rule (a third of all the angels of heaven rebelled against God). Humanity chose in the beginning: obey God’s voice, or live in death: we chose “freedom” and, thus, death. And what do we do with our freedom? We use our “rights” to rule over and dominate one another, seeing our neighbor, not as the image of God, but conquest. Murder, rape, wars, atrocities, are all done in the name of this conquest. Do you see the risk God took?

And yet, because of Jesus and the Cross, because He died to bear the wrath of God and pay the penalty for our rebellion, we can freely choose to come back. We can die to the Old and live in the New. We have a promise of a hope and a future beyond this! Our freedom, bought with the blood of Jesus Christ, can be and is taken advantage of by billions, but we have the opportunity because of Jesus and His blood to give Him glory as well. We can choose, guided by the Word and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, to live free of the consequences of sin, but not only from consequences, but FOR Christ! So how are you using your freedom? Are you using it for God’s glory, or for your own benefit? Choose wisely.

Galatians 5

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.

You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion is not from him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view, and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is. But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed. I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves!

For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

2 Corinthians 3

Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you, or from you? You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all. And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory. Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all, because of the glory that surpasses it. For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory.

Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end. But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.