THE CROSS OF FREEDOM
K. Doug Allen
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INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
By way of Review:
We’ve been spending some time talking about genuine Christian community.
We talked about a list of around 50 “one another” commands. Commands will never be obeyed by Sunday church attendance alone; but only in genuine community.
We talked about the biggest hinderances to genuine community:
Pride
Self Sufficiency - we rely our strengths to make us self-made men or women
Selfishness, we just don’t want to love unlovely people.
Fear of being used or abused
Shame - fear of being exposed
George Macdonald said this: “The one principle of hell, according to , is: “I am my own.””
25 For if you choose self-sacrifice and lose your lives for my glory, you will continually discover true life. But if you choose to keep your lives for yourselves, you will forfeit what you try to keep.
25 “The person who loves his life and pampers himself will miss true life! But the one who detaches his life from this world and abandons himself to me, will find true life and enjoy it forever!
The cross is the key to freedom.
I can think of few times in history where there has been more emphasis on the concept of freedom, while at the same time fewer and fewer people are actually experiencing it.
So what is freedom? It is one’s definition of freedom that will will define their life.
1 Whatever happens, my dear brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord. I never get tired of telling you these things, and I do it to safeguard your faith.
2 Watch out for those dogs, those people who do evil, those mutilators who say you must be circumcised to be saved.
3 For we who worship by the Spirit of God are the ones who are truly circumcised. We rely on what Christ Jesus has done for us. We put no confidence in human effort,
4 though I could have confidence in my own effort if anyone could. Indeed, if others have reason for confidence in their own efforts, I have even more!
5 I was circumcised when I was eight days old. I am a pure-blooded citizen of Israel and a member of the tribe of Benjamin—a real Hebrew if there ever was one! I was a member of the Pharisees, who demand the strictest obedience to the Jewish law.
6 I was so zealous that I harshly persecuted the church. And as for righteousness, I obeyed the law without fault.
7 I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done.
8 Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ
9 and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith.
10 I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death,
11 so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead!
12 I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me.
13 No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead,
14 I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.
15 Let all who are spiritually mature agree on these things. If you disagree on some point, I believe God will make it plain to you.
16 But we must hold on to the progress we have already made.
17 Dear brothers and sisters, pattern your lives after mine, and learn from those who follow our example.
18 For I have told you often before, and I say it again with tears in my eyes, that there are many whose conduct shows they are really enemies of the cross of Christ.
19 They are headed for destruction. Their god is their appetite, they brag about shameful things, and they think only about this life here on earth.
20 But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior.
21 He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control.
31 Jesus said to those Jews who believed in him, “When you continue to embrace all that I teach, you prove that you are my true followers.
32 For if you embrace the truth, it will release more freedom into your lives.”
33 Surprised by this, they said, “But we’re the descendants of Abraham and we’re already free. We’ve never been in bondage to anyone. How could you say that we will be released into more freedom?”
34 “I speak eternal truth,” Jesus said. “When you sin you are not free. You’ve become a slave in bondage to your sin.
35 And slaves have no permanent standing in a family, like a son does, for a son is a part of the family forever.
36 So if the Son sets you free from sin, then become a true son and be unquestionably free!
Isaiah Berlin, twentieth century political philosopher at Oxford for many years, has a very famous article on freedom in which he says that the dominant modern Western understanding of freedom is what he calls ‘absolute negative freedom’. And absolute negative freedom is freedom from, not freedom for … that’s positive Freedom, freedom from the way we think about freedom, it’s freedom ‘from’ which means freedom as the absence of all constraints on our choices. So the lesser the interference, the fewer limitations and the fewer constraints I have on my choices, the more free I am, and if anything constrains me, anything limits me, anything interferes with me choosing whatever I want to choose, I am less free. Now Isaiah Berlin says that is the dominant understanding of freedom, freedom as the absence of constraints, freedom ‘from’. But he said, and I’m saying to you, and it’s reflected in what Jesus says, that’s simplistic and unworkable. That definition is simplistic and unworkable. That’s not the way freedom works.
These two basic definitions of freedom define modern society, with the most prevalent, especially among non-religious persons, is that of Negative freedom; that is, freedom from something. I am free to decide what freedom is. In this definition, any form of constraint, is the enemy of freedom.
If humanity is the product of random atomic collision, than who’s to say what is right and wrong? The answer is, he who has the most power. But history is rife with examples of the abuse of power in the name of truth, by the church as well as the state.
With this definition of freedom, you must say goodbye to love.
In truth, freedom is complex. It is neither the presence nor the absence of restraints; it is the choice of the most liberating restraints.
I am “free” to smoke cigarettes if I want to. But in the end, what I began in freedom becomes slavery to my choice.
True freedom is found only in Jesus Christ.
6 He existed in the form of God, yet he gave no thought to seizing equality with God as his supreme prize.
7 Instead he emptied himself of his outward glory by reducing himself to the form of a lowly servant. He became human!
8 He humbled himself and became vulnerable, choosing to be revealed as a man and was obedient. He was a perfect example, even in his death—a criminal’s death by crucifixion!
21 For God made the only one who did not know sin to become sin for us, so that we who did not know righteousness might become the righteousness of God through our union with him.
34 “I speak eternal truth,” Jesus said. “When you sin you are not free. You’ve become a slave in bondage to your sin.
35 And slaves have no permanent standing in a family, like a son does, for a son is a part of the family forever.
36 So if the Son sets you free from sin, then become a true son and be unquestionably free!
12 But those who embraced him and took hold of his name were given authority to become the children of God!
