One of the greatest but most confusing gifts that We have been given as a follower of Jesus is freedom.

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed John 8:36

It’s the greatest gift because we have privilege of living our lives without condemnation if we are in Christ. Because of His death and resurrection we no longer have a penalty over our head. We were adopted into God’s family when we choose to surrender our lives to Him. We no longer stand condemned before Christ. We have freedom. This is great news.

However it’s confusing because with the gift of freedom we can do whatever we want with it. We didn’t sign a contract with God when we surrendered our yes to Him. There wasn’t a list of conditions that we have to hold up on our end. We are free to choose whether we love Him and how we love Him.

Unlike other religions God isn’t some loan shark asking us to pay back what we owe. He isn’t a tyrant king who demands loyalty from His subjects. He is a good Father who loves us perfectly, and therefore He gives us the right to choose Him. If we didn’t have choice and freedom then His love would not be perfect.

In my times of confusion I wish I didn’t have as much freedom. I am so aware of my fragility and potential desire to not choose God in the moments where I need Him most. Because of that I’d rather not have the ability to choose, I’d prefer it to be chosen for me. Sometimes when I look at the lifestyle decisions of other believers I wish that God hadn’t given them the right to choose either.

Giving us the ability to love and to choose who we love often results in us indulging that freedom in some terrible ways. Too often in our culture I watch, both those of us who follow Jesus, and those of us who don’t, make choices in the midst of our freedom that end up enslaving us. We decide that God’s definition of freedom is not freedom at all and we choose to believe that we know what true freedom is. That is one of our major failings.

When reading Paul’s letter to the Galatians I wondered if he thought the same thing himself. He says this in chapter 5.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Galatians 5:1

And then later on in the same chapter he says.

You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. Galatians 5:13

So what is true freedom then? Tim Keller, a pastor in New York, when writing about freedom said this.

The fish must honor its design. It is designed for water, not for land. Real freedom is not living without restrictions. It’s about finding the right ones.

Tim Keller

This quote messes with my human reality. The human part of me, and most of us, has always thought that freedom meant living without restriction; no rules, no boundaries, no limitations. Therefore when we think of God and the guidance He gives us for living we conclude that as anti-freedom, that He is there to restrict us, to control us, to take away our freedom.

But surely freedom has to be understood in the context of design.

Like Keller says, if the fish was placed on land it wouldn’t be free in the same way that a land animal wouldn’t be free if it was placed in water. Both those environments would provide a limitation to them because they were not designed for those spaces. However, it could be perceived by them that limiting them to their natural habitat is restriction when in fact it is to prevent limitation. Choosing to live outside of our design will bring limitation into our lives – that cannot be freedom. As humans we are always living within our design. We have bodies that require oxygen to live, gravity that keeps us fixed to the ground, time that limits our life and ability to be in more places than one at once. There are so many ‘limits’ within our design.

Understanding our design and deciding to live freely within that will be where freedom is found.

The challenge here is that if we don’t know who designed us and how we were designed we are going to struggle to live out that design. We will try to live a freedom that ends up in restriction.

Freedom involves trust and obedience inside a relationship of love.

The Shack

Freedom is a mark of the scandalous, perfect love of God. As we live our lives let’s never divorce our freedom from Him. Let’s never try to seek it outside of God or His design for us. To do so will surely leave us enslaved. Thank you Father for the freedom you have gifted us and I’m so sorry for when I try to claim a counterfeit freedom!!