What is freedom?

It’s a paradox

I’ve been doing some thinking.

I had a chat with a friend who is discovering the freedom that comes from following Jesus.  At the moment it seems a number of my friends are discovering the same thing.

I love that real faith is about freedom.

What I have been thinking about though, is that a few of my friends who are discovering this seem to be very nervous about putting themselves again in a place where they might lose that freedom.

I might be wrong but it seems a few of them are nervous about commitment for fear of losing freedom.

As I process what I think I am seeing at the moment, I did a word search for ‘freedom’ and was fascinated at what I found.

Proverbs 12:24 indicates that some people will actually find freedom in work:

The diligent find freedom in their work;
the lazy are oppressed by work.

Romans 6:15- 23 indicates that true freedom isn’t actually the freedom to choose whatever we want, which is contrary to what makes intuitive sense, and certainly different to what the world says:

So, since we’re out from under the old tyranny, does that mean we can live any old way we want? Since we’re free in the freedom of God, can we do anything that comes to mind? Hardly. You know well enough from your own experience that there are some acts of so-called freedom that destroy freedom. Offer yourselves to sin, for instance, and it’s your last free act. But offer yourselves to the ways of God and the freedom never quits. All your lives you’ve let sin tell you what to do. But thank God you’ve started listening to a new master, one whose commands set you free to live openly in his freedom!

I’m using this freedom language because it’s easy to picture. You can readily recall, can’t you, how at one time the more you did just what you felt like doing—not caring about others, not caring about God—the worse your life became and the less freedom you had? And how much different is it now as you live in God’s freedom, your lives healed and expansive in holiness?

As long as you did what you felt like doing, ignoring God, you didn’t have to bother with right thinking or right living, or right anything for that matter. But do you call that a free life? What did you get out of it? Nothing you’re proud of now. Where did it get you? A dead end.

But now that you’ve found you don’t have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way! Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God’s gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master.

1 Corinthians 8:8-13 says while we might be free, our freedom needs to be limited by the impact we have on the people around us.

^8-9But fortunately God doesn’t grade us on our diet. We’re neither commended when we clean our plate nor reprimanded when we just can’t stomach it. But God does care when you use your freedom carelessly in a way that leads a fellow believer still vulnerable to those old associations to be thrown off track.

^11-13Christ gave up his life for that person. Wouldn’t you at least be willing to give up going to dinner for him—because, as you say, it doesn’t really make any difference? But it does make a difference if you hurt your friend terribly, risking his eternal ruin! When you hurt your friend, you hurt Christ. A free meal here and there isn’t worth it at the cost of even one of these “weak ones.” So, never go to these idol-tainted meals if there’s any chance it will trip up one of your brothers or sisters.

¹⁰For instance, say you flaunt your freedom by going to a banquet thrown in honor of idols, where the main course is meat sacrificed to idols. Isn’t there great danger if someone still struggling over this issue, someone who looks up to you as knowledgeable and mature, sees you go into that banquet? The danger is that he will become terribly confused—maybe even to the point of getting mixed up himself in what his conscience tells him is wrong.

Galatians 5:13-15 says our freedom isn’t actually about us, but is a chance to serve others, and in fact by giving up our freedom to serve, our freedom grows.

^13-15It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?

1 Peter 2:13-17 seems to say that in our freedom we need to obey the rules. What kind of freedom is that?

Make the Master proud of you by being good citizens. Respect the authorities, whatever their level; they are God’s emissaries for keeping order. It is God’s will that by doing good, you might cure the ignorance of the fools who think you’re a danger to society. Exercise your freedom by serving God, not by breaking the rules. Treat everyone you meet with dignity. Love your spiritual family. Revere God. Respect the government.

So at the end of this word study on freedom, I have discovered that freedom in the bible is a very different thing to what I would normally see freedom to be. Biblical freedom, paradoxically, leads to service and submission, which in turn leads to whole-heartedness and real life.