Welcome to July, friends!
I remember growing up that the Fourth of July was always a special day in our family. Sure, it’s a special day for America and for many families, but our family celebrated not only America but one of my cousins whose birthday is July 4. So we always spent the entire day with them enjoying family, fellowship, food, and fireworks! I hope you all get to celebrate the day of Independence with those closest to you and do so safely!
Independence, or freedom, is not only a large theme in America but also in Christian theology. Paul puts it this way in Galatians, “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (5:1). I Peter puts it this way, “As servants of God, live as free people, yet do not use your freedom as a pretext for evil” (2:16). Finally, John 8 tells us, “Jesus answered them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” (8:34-36). There are quite literally dozens of other passages that refer to freedom as well.
Freedom, as a Christian theme, refers to our status as citizens of heaven. Freedom for Americans means a list of rights from the Constitution. For Christians, freedom is a chosen status. We are chosen by God to be God’s people. When we recognize this, we freely choose to be bound by Christ to follow his way. While American freedom is freedom from something, Christian freedom means to not be free but to be bound.
I know…that sounds confusing. If we’re free, how can we be bound? I’ll put it this way in a paraphrase of the thinking of Reformed theologian John Calvin: In Christ’s coming, we were set free from sin and death (the handcuffs and chains were removed). In freedom, we walked to Christ and asked him to bind us hand and foot to his way instead.
The condition of humanity (generally called sin) bound us to death. We were slaves to only one way and one outcome. We could not get beyond ourselves because our wills were so constrained by the desire to be our own gods and carry out our own wills. However, in the coming of Christ, the dynamics changed and we could finally be free to live in the way God intended.
Being bound to Christ, although technically not how we’d define freedom, is a far better state than the freedom we had before to do our own thing. By becoming bound to Christ, we find ourselves receiving his life and his love in full measure. In this way, we can know freedom from being constrained by our own selfishness. Instead, we are imbued with Christ’s selfless love and given a new heart and mind to embrace the world which he is actively redeeming.
This July 4, I hope you won’t just consider America’s freedom. Instead, I hope you’ll prayerfully consider your own in Christ!