Living with freedom in Christ

I remember a time before we had kids when life seem so simple. If you wanted to go to the movies, it was as simple as choosing a night that was free (which was most of them), and then going.

When you have kids, it becomes a whole new ball game. First you need to find a babysitter, then figure out the dinner plan, the new bedtime routine, write a big long list of contacts in case something goes wrong, and then hope that no crisis happens when you’re out.

Not surprisingly, young parents are often left with this feeling of being trapped.

But of course, it’s not just the young parents. Perhaps you are feeling the financial pinch, where what you choose to do on the weekend, or for that matter what you put in your shopping trolley each week is severely curtailed by how much money is left in your bank account.

Or maybe you feel restricted by work - your putting in huge hours and when you do finally get some time off, you’re too tired to do anything.

Understanding freedom

And so here is the problem - we all think that we are free, but what does that even mean?

You see we get this very simple idea of freedom. It perhaps starts when we’re children, but because we probably haven’t given it a lot of thought, we’ve never really challenged the idea of what freedom is.

But this idea of freedom starts when you’re at school and you start to feel the constraints of the system as well as the constraints of your parents - and you just want to be free to do whatever you want.

Of course, in time we get a certain level of this freedom, but only to be constrained by countless other factors. We long for some notion of freedom, but part of the problem is that we’ve misunderstood what freedom is.

Two factors

Today, as we begin to explore this idea of freedom, I want to suggest that there are two factors that are vitally important to understand if we really want to understand freedom.

Firstly, we need to understand what it is that we are free from. And secondly, what are we free to do.

The first part is about the constraints that have been holding us back, and the second is the direction we want to head.

Freedom from

Regarding the constraints, I’ve already spoken about some constraints we feel, but the truth is, while some of these constraints are going to come and go as we go through different phases of life, the Christian notion of freedom is not suggesting that those constraints suddenly disappear.

In fact, I’d suggest that even if you are in prison where arguably you have the most physical constraints of anyone, you can still experience Christian freedom.

You see, while we mostly focus on our physical constraints, there is another type of constraint that isn’t always as obvious, but I’m going to argue is the far more significant in our lives.

Bondage of sin

It’s not as obvious because it’s largely on a spiritual level, and we’re not as good at discerning the spiritual, even though what happens on a spiritual level has a huge impact on the physical world.

The constraint I’m talking about is actually sin. Now by sin, I mean living contrary to the way God has designed for us, but when we think of it only in terms of our actions we miss the spiritual forces that are at play when it comes to sin.

You see, sin takes a hold of us and makes us do what we know we shouldn’t do.

In the book of Romans, Paul powerfully talks about this:

Romans 7:14–15 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

Romans 7:14

I suspect that we can all testify to the power of sin in our lives.

Perhaps it’s a pornography addiction. You know it’s wrong - but once it’s taken hold, no matter how much you try, you just can’t shake it.

Maybe it’s an anger problem - you see a situation which you know is going to get you all hot, but you are some how driven to it and it just won’t stop.

The more we leave sin unchecked, the more it will just grow and take over us. Sadly, once it becomes so ingrained into us, we don’t even recognise it as sin, and certainly for the vast majority of our society, this is where they are now.

I want to suggest this morning that this all-encompassing, all-consuming sin in our lives, is actually a far greater constraint on our lives then the other physical ones I mentioned, like financial, work-related or family matters.

That might sound strange if you’ve never thought about it, but if you think about it, the other constraints are all external to you. While they may be very unpleasant, you can still make the most of whatever situation you find yourself in.

Sin on the other hand, becomes internal - and while you may manage some momentary pleasures, it doesn’t take long before it crashes down.

The solution to sin

I want to suggest that there is only one solution to this trap of sin in our own selves. Sure, psychologists can help us with other ailments of the mind, but they can’t help us with the problem of sin - that’s because there is only one solution to it.

Sin is essentially a spiritual problem, and so it needs a spiritual solution, and Jesus has provided us with that.

It is the essence of the gospel - that Jesus died and rose again, thus claiming the victory over sin.

When Paul tells us in that it is for freedom that Christ has set us free, this is exactly what he is talking about.

Sin has to be paid for, and Christ provided the only suitable payment that would be adequate for all time, and that was at the cost of his own life.

When we understand

So this is the first part of understanding the freedom that Christ gives us - not necessarily the freedom from financial constraints, although at times he might bless you in this way, nor the freedom from your overbearing mother, or controlling boss - but the freedom from sin that weighs us down and makes us do the very things we don’t want to do.

Paul’s warning to us

This is why in the first 6 verses of chapter 5, Paul is strongly warning us to stay away from anything that weighs us down.

Actually it is quite interesting to see how Paul argues his case. You see he starts in the second half of verse 1 to say don’t let yourself be burdened.

But then from verse 2, his focus moves to circumcision.

Now it’s easy to miss the point here. Verse 2 out of context makes it sound as if being circumcised is actually against God will. That’s not true at all - in fact Paul in verse 6 says that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value, in other words, if you have had the snip then it’s all fine.

It’s not about effort

But what’s the point of his argument - it’s that trying to free yourself from the constraints of sin by trying hard, is completely useless.

This after all is exactly what the Galatians were trying to do with the law. They thought that as long as they could keep this law, then they would be right - what they didn’t realise is that they were never able to do it by their own effort.

In our situation, our efforts might not be based on the Jewish legal system, but yet we do seem to think that we’ll gain our freedom by trying harder.

After all, isn’t this how we naturally think. You let yourself down, so try harder. The problem with this is that it doesn’t recognise the bondage that we are under - it doesn’t matter how hard you try, you can’t get there yourself.

There is only one way in which we can escape this bondage, and that is by having faith in Christ - there is no other way.

Why we still struggle

Now before I continue and start to explore what it is that we have freedom to do, there’s a question that deserves an answer: If Christ can make us free from the bonds of sin, why do I still struggle with sin?

The answer is that being set free is actually a process. The closer you draw to Christ, the looser the bonds of sin.

When Christ died, he had victory over sin, but, so that we can have time to come to Christ, he has yet to fully claim this victory, at which time Christ will return and sin will finally be put in place.

For this reason, because we live in a world with sin, we will never fully be free from sin until Christ returns, but with Christ, those bonds can be significantly reduced.

Freedom to...

Well we’ve explored now what Christ sets us free from, but there is another very important aspect of freedom that also needs exploring.

You see, freedom implies that we are free to do something in particular.

Not egotism

Quite often, when we think of freedom, we think of being free to do whatever we like.

But if you think about it, this kind of freedom is really the freedom to serve yourself. The problem with that, is that we don’t tend to make good masters of ourselves - in fact, we usually make quite bad ones.

Unfortunately, when we let our self-centeredness take over, our freedoms usually clash with the next person’s freedoms, and the end product is usually not very good.

It’s a sad fact, but just think how quickly various relationship go south. How often does that happen because our self-centeredness gets in the way.

The truth is, the type of freedom that we actually crave, is actually not nearly as good as we thought it was - in fact, I’m going to go as far to suggest that this kind of egotism is actually still slavery. It’s almost ironic isn’t it, that the freedom we seek, is actually just another form of the same slavery.

So if it’s not a self-centered freedom, what sort of freedom should we seek?

Serving Christ

Well, the freedom we gain is the freedom to serve Christ.

Now some might scoff and say that that isn’t actually freedom, it’s another kind of slavery - interestingly, Paul in other places calls what we are called to as slaves of righteousness - so maybe calling it another type of slavery isn’t too far off.

But at the risk of sounding like I’m contradicting myself, I’m going to suggest that being a slave of righteousness is actually the only true freedom we can find.

That’s because God’s way is truly the best way. Anything less will give us strife.

Music analogy

As most of you know, I enjoy playing music. Now have you ever seen someone improvising on a musical instrument. It sounds like they have a huge amount of freedom - and the truth is they do. But the freedom to improvise like this actually takes a lot of discipline and there is a whole bunch of rules that you learn.

You need to know scales, key signatures, and chord patterns. You need to understand the beat and what harmonies work. Once you realise all the things you need to know, it can seem rather limiting, but it’s anything but. You see, once it becomes ingrained in your thinking you gain a huge amount of freedom.

It is exactly the same with Christian freedom. At first it can seem really limiting, but in actual fact it is extraordinarily liberating.

Example of sexual ethics

Let’s just take a simple example such as sexual ethics. God’s design for sex is that it’s designed for a husband and wife in a deeply committed relationship. At first sight it can seem very restricting - and I think this is how much of the world looks at it.

But the beautiful thing is that within that committed relationship there can be a far greater level of freedom.

Paul’s encouragement

Now Paul knows the real beauty of this type of freedom and that is why he goes to such length to ensure people keep this beauty.

And that is exactly where Paul’s argument goes from verse 7.

He starts by using a racing analogy, telling them that they were running a good race.

With this analogy of a race you can start to see this concept of a journey that I alluded to before, we’re it’s not a matter of just suddenly becoming free from sin, but loosening the bonds of sin. And so Paul is telling them that they have been doing a good job on this journey.

avoid being knocked off track

But then he add, but who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth?

If I go back to my analogy of improvising on a musical instrument, it’s like someone who doesn’t know much about music thinking that by giving more options of different chords, you gain more freedom. But it’s not freedom at all - it just all starts sounding like a mess.

Paul knows that this freedom only really works when it is done like the Author of Life intended.

Anything else is confusion.

What we need to realise is that this confusion doesn’t actually take much.

Look at verse 9 that say ‘a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough’.

In other words, you just start changing things a little bit and it will come crashing down. In fact, sin often starts by something small.

Small thing

I was reading a while back an article on the self-check outs that are now common place in supermarkets. The article discussed how some people steal, and what it found through a small study was that most people who stole in this manner actually began by a small innocent mistake, but then they realised they got away with it and that it wasn’t really harming anyone, so they progressively became more game in what they stole.

In their minds, they are being fed the lie that they are gaining more freedom, but what they don’t realise is that they are falling under a far stronger bondage called sin.

In this passage we really do find Paul becoming very concerned for the way these free Christians are losing their true freedom to a lie, and Paul’s big concern is that it is others who are knocking them off track.

Remembering that in this context the big concern is the practice of circumcision - well he ends this little section with a sharp remark saying: “as for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!”

He doesn’t usually mince words lightly does he?

Conclusion

The main lesson I want you to take home from this passage today is that the freedom we find in Christ is truly the most remarkable thing and we need to do all we can to keep it the way God wants it to be.

We know that the freedom is a freedom from the bonds of sin, and once we have experienced it, it really would be foolishness to want to go anywhere near those bonds again.

But it is not a freedom to then just become egomaniacs, where we somehow think we can do whatever we want, whenever we want to, but rather a freedom to follow Christ. A path that will lead us to the most glorious place ever.

Like the accomplished musician who understands music and finds freedom within it, when we follow the way of Christ we to will experience a similar kind of freedom.

While ever we live on this side of Christ’s return, that freedom will only ever be partial, because the power of sin is strong. But know that Jesus has already forgiven you, and this forgiveness has taken the full extent of sins power away.

As Paul said back in verse 1, I want to finish with the words: “Stand firm, then and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”