True Freedom in Christ
Notes
Transcript
Freedom
Freedom is the state that emerges after God has acted to remove all hindrances—social, spiritual (sin and death), economic, and institutional—that block our creational purpose. This purpose is to know, love, worship, and enjoy God forever. This is a freedom that has been won for us by the death and resurrection of the Messiah. By the power of the Spirit, the Christian seeks to live into this freedom and to join with God in freeing others, while we await freedom’s full realization at Christ’s second coming (Rom 8:1–39).
For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Lexham Theological Wordbook (Concept Summary)
Concept Summary
Many OT words related to freedom concern liberation from slavery, moral obligations, legal responsibilities, or economic distress. Generally speaking, freedom describes the release from any or all of these conditions.
For example, the Hebrew term šālaḥ describes the act of sending people away with the intended result of their freedom. The adjective חָפְשִׁי (ḥāpšı̂) refers to a person who has been freed from either slavery (e.g., Exod 21:2; Deut 15:18) or taxes (e.g., 1 Sam 17:25). The verb נקה (nāqâ) often designates a person’s freedom from an oath (e.g., Gen 24:8), but the term can also convey the idea of being innocent of accused crimes (Num 5:19).
Many of these basic meanings are also represented in the NT. Nonetheless, there is a noticeable shift in focus to freedom from sin and death as accomplished through Christ (Gal 5:1). His death has “loosed” or “released” (λύω, lyō) the believer from the bondage of sin (John 8:36; Rom 6:18; Rev 1:5). The NT also uses Greek terms related to freedom to describe the believer’s “freedom” to marry (1 Cor 7:39), Paul’s “right” to preach the gospel without receiving payment (e.g., 1 Cor 9:1–7), and to distinguish a “free person” from slaves (e.g., Gal 3:28; Col 3:11; 1 Pet 2:16; Rev 19:18). Many of the Greek terms used for freedom in the NT are taken from the political realm of the Graeco-Roman world, though they rarely have this meaning in the NT.