A theme
common to both salvation in Christ and to the heart of man
is the promise and desire of liberty. No greater issue
drives conflict both in the Church and in the world.
In the
church, we struggle uniquely over the matters pertaining to
spiritual liberty in our beliefs and practices regarding
sin, grace and the will of God. The world meanwhile
struggles over the matters pertaining to natural and civil
rights regarding human relations (i.e., government). In that
the church is also in the world, it is affected by both
struggles, caught between the two as it were.
Further, all
mankind—church and world—struggles over the matters
pertaining to liberty of body and soul—what we otherwise
call health:
physical, mental, emotional and economic. It is the struggle
for mortal well-being, mobility and prosperity against
nature in its subjection to death.
These three
then—the church body of Christ, the world body politic and
the natural body common to all—demonstrate three theaters
within which the struggle for liberty is fought. Not only
so, but struggle in turn ensues between
the theaters: the church vs. the world, and nature vs. the
church and vs. the world.
Christ’s Promise and Human
Yearning
It’s from
this context that we want to look at the meaning of freedom
in Christ. Christ offers the promise of freedom to mankind
in his yearning for liberty. The Christian promise of
liberty is profuse throughout the ministry of Jesus and the
apostles. Jesus promised—“I
am…the truth, ….and you shall know the truth, and the
truth shall set you free;…therefore whom the Son sets free
is free indeed.” The prophets declare He shall “proclaim liberty to the captives and release from darkness to the
prisoners.” The apostles echo our Lord thusly, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom…It was for freedom
that Christ has set us free.”
Conversely,
man’s yearning for liberty is inherent and everywhere
expressed. Men seek deliverance from the bondages of
nature’s oppressions, the bondages of state tyranny and the
bondages of religion. The questions and issues of these
bondages are discussed and debated everywhere—from hospital
rooms to voting booths to church “synagogue” meetings. In
some cases, the yearning in the world is so great and so
otherwise oppressed that it results in violence and
bloodshed.
A Problem
So it is
that Christ came to bring His promise of liberty to a world
yearning for liberty. But there is just one problem, and it
is a monumental one. It is that the world’s otherwise
legitimate yearning for liberty is inherently attached and
inextricably bound to its idolatry
of liberty itself. The virtue
of liberty for which humanity cries is esteemed in its own
right as god(dess) in the place of God. Said simply, men worship liberty.
This sets up
a drama of the spirit between Christ who promises freedom
and man who seeks it. Before Christ can effectively bring
the lasting liberty He promises, He must smash
the idol of liberty before which man has fallen in
worship. Otherwise, whatever freedom man may momentarily
receive from Christ will not last, and man will return to a
greater and perhaps even irreversible state of bondage.
Where
blessing, persuasion, teaching and conviction of conscience
fail to lead man to yield up his worship of freedom, the
Lord allows bondage itself to intensify in the hope of
breaking man’s idol and obtaining his surrender. In this,
the heart of man is put to the test in every theater of
liberty conflict.
The Carrot and the Stick
Thus
Christ—in His bid to bring us liberty—may either use the
“carrot” or the “stick.” In His good kindness, He may bring
us first a “taste” of the freedom we seek in answer to our
yearning—before we have repented of our liberty idol—in
hopes we may surrender it, coming to Him alone as our God.
(Consider how many He healed, delivered from demons, from
religion’s judgment and supernaturally fed prior to any
surrender of their freedom lust.)
Or He may
leave us in our bondage, allowing it to multiply against us,
until we surrender our idol quest, yielding to His Lordship.
(See how Christ did nothing to release the nation from its
bondage to the scourge of Rome.)
Either way,
we must come to the place where we worship Him alone,
whether after or before we receive His deliverance. Jesus
always promises liberty, but permanent liberty comes only by
surrender of the idol of liberty. And any freedom we are
graced to taste otherwise will not last. This applies to
personal healing and deliverance, as well as to societal
well-being under any state of liberty. And it applies to
freedom from religious tyranny, which only comes by
confession of our own innermost sins (“Go,
and sin no more.”)
Freedom from Sin: The Root
Eternal Liberty
The first
and foundational liberty Jesus promises us is freedom from
the penalty and power of sin. Every other perceived freedom
in body and society is but a shadow freedom that won’t last and can’t be preserved while sin
continues to reign in our mortal body. Without eternal
freedom from sin, every other freedom is ultimately a
passing illusion, a mirage. Nevertheless, God gives
undeserved graceful tastes of temporal liberty in nature and
in the world while leading us by these to freedom from sin.
We ought to thank Him for whatever fleeting natural
liberties we may enjoy by such grace.
But this we
must know: the idol
of liberty must come down for eternal liberty to come
and remain, and thus for any other bodily and societal
liberty to remain. (Such an idol
of world renown has stood on America’s eastern shore
for 140 years. But you don’t call it an idol. You call it a
“statue.”) And if it does not come down, whatever liberty we
perceive to still have will be taken from us, and we will be
delivered to the oppressors. And if we do not repent of our
idolatry once the oppressors arrive, we shall remain
oppressed unto death.
Deliverance from the Oppression
to Come
“Lead us not into the time of
testing, but deliver us from the Evil One.”
The
scripture already tells us that such oppression will finally
envelop the earth before “the
Deliverer comes
to turn away ungodliness from Jacob.” The
liberty-worshiping world and church will together go into
captivity under the time of testing. We are watching that
captivity arise even now in both nature and politics, as
well as through remaining bondage to religion in the church.
But those
who know their God and have surrendered their own liberty
idol(s) have a promise of deliverance. Earlier for some, and
later for a vast host, that deliverance will see the
actualized glorious
liberty of the sons of God….even the immortal
redemption of our bodies.
Closing Exhortation
In view of
these things, lying between divine promise and human desire,
let those of us who already know the God of eternal liberty
be sure that, in our own yearnings, we have first laid down
idolatry of every freedom we seek of Him—in the church, in
the world and in nature. This is crucial. We must be
persuaded of His promise. But we must accept testing under
remaining bondage against any and all idolatry until His
deliverance comes:
19
Until the time that his word came to pass, The word of the
LORD tested him. 20 The king
sent and released
him, the ruler of peoples, and set
him free. Ps.
105
This is only
for our good. Woe to us if we receive His promise without
finding deliverance from our idol. Many there be who have
received their liberties without ever enduring severance
from their worship of them. That receipt then turns to their
deceit and eventual ruin under worse bondage than before.
(King George had nothing on the societal tyranny that lies
ahead for “freedom loving” America.)
Such ruin is
where most of the church and the nations are now headed. But
in view of such, let us who are committed to losing our own
idols extend an intercessor’s heart to repent on behalf of
our deceived who have not, that the Lord might yet have
mercy, that they too might escape the greater bondage to
come.
There is
still a little time, and a closing (yet still ajar) door of
opportunity for such deliverance before the latch
irreversibly shuts.
“Lord, set us free from our idolatry of your freedom, that you may set us
free indeed from our bondage.”
Selah.
Chris Anderson
First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org
