When I asked my students for the definition of freedom, they all agreed that it was being able to do anything they wanted. Perhaps many adults would concur. But let’s think about that. If I did anything that I wanted, I might choose some things that had harmful consequences. But that’s my right, right? That’s freedom, right? What if those harmful consequences harm someone else? Doesn’t that “right” to do whatever I want infringe on their “right” to do whatever they want? Now my freedom has interfered with someone else’s freedom. So where does it end—this “freedom”?
It doesn’t. Because doing whatever we want is not freedom at all. To live that way is a disaster. Not only do we end up harming others, we often harm ourselves. That’s why laws were created—to protect people’s freedom. The law says that we can do whatever we want unless it harms someone else. So, sometimes the law prevents us from doing what we want. In that sense, the law actually takes away our freedom. We become enslaved to the law. How are we still free, then? We aren’t—not if doing whatever we want is our definition of freedom.
Webster defines freedom as liberation from slavery or restraint from the power of another and its synonyms are words like autonomy and independence and control. Of course, those are all true ideas when it comes to government but this kind of freedom is only partially true for individuals.
True freedom is being free to not do anything; it is being able to say No to things. If I can say No to something, then I am not its slave. Saying No is powerful. But it’s not easy. Oh, it’s easy for me to say No to some things—like eating collard greens. But it’s not easy for me to say No to eating a brownie. It is easy for me to say No to doing something I do not want to do.
However. Sometimes I do find myself doing things I really do not want to do! How crazy is that? I feel like a slave in my own body at times—unable to stop myself from doing bad things. Paul, a godly man of faith, struggled with this. “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”1 The truth of the matter is that we are all slaves—if not to the law, then to ourselves. None of us is really free because we are slaves to sin. Jesus said it very clearly: “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.”2
But there is another choice—becoming a slave to God. So . . . still a slave, then? Yes. Being a slave to God is the only place where we will find freedom! How can that be? When we give our lives to God, he adopts us as his children, and he treats us as family (not slaves). But the freedom that we still long for is satisfied in being his slave. How can that be? God knows what is best for us, so submitting to his plan frees us up to be free! “For if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”3
As family members, brothers and sisters to Christ, children of God, we are free to do anything we want! We even have the freedom to go back to slavery if we wish! How crazy is that? But sin is so powerful that sometimes we will be tempted to go back to it, which is why Paul warns us, “Do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”4 How do we fight the temptation to go back to slavery? Defer to God’s strength, which lives inside us—the same strength and power that raised Jesus from the dead! So, we are able to “be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.”5 In Christ, we have the power to say No to things—which is the true definition of freedom.
1Romans 7:15 2John 8:34 3John 8:36 4Galatians 5:1 5Ephesians 6:10
What a powerful Blog. Thank you Deb.