Free for What?

Last week we quoted the verse “it is for freedom that Christ has set us free,” but how much do you really understand what that means? 

First of all, how did Christ set us free? 

And secondly, what is the freedom that he set us free for? 

Let’s take the questions one at a time. 

First of all – how did Christ set us free? The simple answer is through his death on the cross. In that act he challenged death to a duel and won when he rose on Easter morning. After he had passed through that gauntlet as true God and true man he brought the rest of humanity into that victory with him. No longer was death the end of the story for humanity because we have a champion who had defeated it. All of the sudden our fall into sin was not the end of the story. 

We have been set free from the ransom of sin, which is death.

So then, next question, for what freedom did he do this? What was he seeking for us in defeating death? The opportunity for us to do what we feel like? That seems woefully inadequate. We more or less already had that freedom, unless it was infringed upon by social or political groups that happened to be in power at the time. 

There wasn’t really anything supernatural holding us back from doing what we wanted though – that was pretty much the norm of life shackled by sin. I think it is clearly reasonable to insist that there must be a deeper, better freedom which he was seeking for us in setting us free from death.

The freedom to join him. 

The freedom to do what we ought and therefore come into the glory of Heaven alongside him. That seems more worthy of his sacrifice. As Christians, we should never seek the freedom to just do what we feel like or just not have anyone interfere in our lives. We should never seek freedom from God as so many do in our culture today, but freedom for God – freedom to be able to love and serve Him the way He desires us to. And like we said last week, the primary thing that keeps us from this freedom is sin.

Sin is a dirty word in our culture. Some would argue that the concept of sin is completely lost and I would likely begrudgingly agree. 

(In fact, equally sadly and hilariously as I am writing this email, the autocorrect on my computer continues to change the word sin into other words, as if even my computer itself is saying, no no, you can’t possibly mean to be talking about sin. That doesn’t exist.)

But it does. We know it does. 

And it, sin, not rules or regulations, is our greatest obstacle to freedom.

Christ died and rose to bring us into this freedom from sin – so what should our response be to that?

What do you do with this freedom Christ purchased for you? What can you do this week to more completely embrace the gift of freedom you have been given?