Freedom in Practice // You Have Been Set Free, Part 10

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

Freedom, which is what we’ve been chatting about over these last couple of weeks, is a great concept. But it’s more than just a concept. God’s freedom is meant to make a real difference in your life.

It’s amazing, just over my lifetime, how many changes have taken place as oppressive regimes have fallen. The Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the Soviet Union came apart in 1991, Apartheid ended in South Africa in 1994. Of course there are still plenty of oppressive regimes around the world. There are still more than enough conflicts and wars but there has been a lot of change, even in my short lifetime. And hopefully, we’ll see a lot more.

The good change happens when countries move from oppression towards freedom. When instead of looking after a privileged few through oppressive power structures, governments and leaders start to look after their people.

The bottom line is that you and I were created to be free, to be equal, to be able to live out who we’ve been made to be. Of course, within the rule of law but then without that, there can be no real freedom. And yet as individuals we all too often squander that freedom. We all too often throw it away through our own tyranny, our own selfishness, our own tendency to want to look after ourselves at the cost of everyone else.

The Apostle Paul makes an interesting, almost blindingly glimpsingly obvious point about freedom. Galatians chapter 5, verse 1, he says:

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

In other words, wake up. Get a revelation; this isn’t just talk, this thing about freedom. There’s a point. God actually wants you to be free. Jesus put it slightly differently in John chapter 8, verse 36, he says:

So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

I love that, free indeed. Really, truly free from the slavery of sin. This is every bit as amazing as the Berlin Wall coming down, as the Soviet Union and communism coming to an end, as Apartheid coming to an end. Even more so, because this freedom is available to every last human being on planet earth.

You can be a prisoner in a dungeon on death row, as in fact the Apostle Paul was when he wrote many of the books of the New Testament, and still be free indeed. You can be in the middle of the worse imaginable circumstances of your life and yet, in Christ still be free indeed.

This is not just a theory lesson. It is for freedom that Christ has set you free. He means for you to be free, free indeed, free from the sin that has ravaged your life. Free from the shackles of bondage. And given the price he was prepared to pay for your freedom with all my heart, I believe that he doesn’t want you to settle for anything less in your life than being free indeed. But exactly what does that look like?

The freedom that Jesus purchased for you and me on that cross is something that we can never earn for ourselves. Now many Christians know that in their heads but only a few live out that truth in their hearts. I want to come back for a moment to one of my favourite verses about freedom in the Bible: Galatians chapter 5, verse 6:

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything. The only thing that counts is faith working through love.

In other words, no other rules in the old rule book, in this case the rule of circumcision, count for anything. The only thing that counts in the kingdom of God is your faith working through love.

Now there’s a powerful truth here about actually living out the freedom that we have in Jesus Christ. There is an incredibly powerful truth here about how to lay hold of this freedom, how to experience this freedom first hand in our lives.

The first part is faith. Now, I’m a simple guy and you know what, God’s word says that Jesus died for me and because of that I am set free from my sin and because of that I have the gift of eternal life. I’m going to believe in Jesus for my salvation. I am going to believe in Jesus for my freedom. And I am going to believe, just as the Bible tells me to, that these are the free gift from God through the sacrifice of Jesus full stop, end of story, I believe. How about you?

But then, then God wants us to put that faith to work in love. And the sort of love he’s talking about here is sacrificial, unconditional love. The very sort of love that Jesus showed towards you and me on that cross, agape love.

Look, without work and exercise, your muscles are going to waste away. If you sit there on the couch, you’ll just become weaker and weaker. And without works faith is dead unless we take our faith out for a walk. Unless we exercise our faith in sacrificial, unconditional love, it becomes empty, hollow, dead. I think you know what I’m talking about here.

What does freedom look like? How do we lay hold of God’s freedom? By having faith in what God says and by living out that faith day by day, by showing the same unconditional, sacrificial love that Jesus showed towards us on that cross. It’s by living that sort of a life that you experience freedom. A sense of freedom that we’re all so desperately looking for comes when we surrender our lives to God, believing in him, trusting in him and working out that faith by loving others in him.

Rules? Nah, the only thing that counts is faith working through love. And when we live like that, other people’s failings and weaknesses will no longer rob us of our freedom.

All too often we set out at the beginning of a day with all good intentions of living in God’s joy and God’s peace, living in the freedom that Jesus came to give us. After all, as the Apostle Paul writes, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. That’s why God sent Jesus to give us that freedom. But then it’s almost as though the devil deliberately wants to rob you of your sense of freedom.

Someone comes along and argues with you, to fight with you, to be angry with you, to stab you in the back, right? And it’s like in an instant your sense of freedom, your peace, your joy, they just disappear. In an instant you go from living in victory to being a victim. Freedom, great, what happened to that? But God had an answer to that. He has a solution for that because He doesn’t want anyone or anything robbing you of your freedom. Again, the Apostle Paul, Galatians chapter 6, verses 1 and 9:

My friends if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time if we don’t give up.

Did you catch that? Instead of adopting a victim mentality, instead of going on the back foot, get out there on the front foot by exercising your faith through unconditional love. Look, when they came to arrest Jesus, when they tried him, beat him, spat on him. When they nailed him to a cross, not at any point in that process did he adopt a victim mentality. He knew what he was about; he knew what he was called to, to save us through sacrificial, unconditional love. In fact, at one point he even said in John chapter 10, verse 18:

No-one takes my life from me but I lay it down of my own accord. You see I have the power to lay it down and I have the power to take it up again. I have received this command from my father.

There is freedom of choice; there is faith working through sacrificial love. So when people come against you, don’t throw in the towel, don’t become the victim, don’t grow weary in doing what is right, don’t let them rob you of your victory and your peace, your joy and your freedom. Don’t grow weary of doing what is right. Love them, create them, admonish them, sure, but do it in love.

Whenever you have the opportunity, show unconditional, sacrificial love. Will it hurt some days? Absolutely, going to the cross always hurts but you will reap that harvest at harvest time. That’s freedom.