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The Case for Freedom

“It was for freedom that Christ set us free...”
Galatians 5:1, NASB

Who said this? (Answers at the end of the article.)

“Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”

“While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.”

“It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.”

“People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have. For example, the freedom of thought. Instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation.”

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

Okay who said this:

God's Spirit is on me; he's chosen me to preach the Message of good news to
the poor, Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, To set the burdened and battered free, to announce, "This is God's year to act!"

Of course, that was said actually by Isaiah and then quoted by Jesus at the beginning of his ministry. And that’s what we really want to talk about today…that God has taken some action that has provided freedom for us, more freedom than we dare imagine, much more freedom than we are taking advantage of. But before we go there let me set the stage:

Introduction

June 6, 2004 marked the 60th anniversary of D-Day, the campaign to liberate Europe from the Nazis. It was the largest military operation of its type in human history. It involved more than 7,000 ships, 7,000 airplanes, and 6,000 vehicles! D-Day casualties – the death toll for that day alone – were over 17,000 individuals!

Today we have the luxury of looking at Europe and seeing the upside of W.W.II – that there are 45 different countries that have the opportunity to govern themselves and to experience true political freedom. Some of them are taking better advantage of this opportunity than are others, but all have the choice.

Nevertheless, the opportunity is there because a great price was paid to purchase the political freedom that is our American heritage and is now the reality of Western culture in general. What was the price of freedom for Europe? 40 million Europeans died – nearly 7 million Poles are included in that number - in the course of the war and around 300,000 Americans paid the ultimate price for the liberation of Europe. I would guess that most of us had relatives that were involved in that war.

When we consider W.W.II and all the many other wars which have been fought for the sake of political freedom, we would have to be blind to miss the glaring fact that the cost of freedom is very high indeed! Freedom is seldom won without the loss of human life, and sometimes it means the exorbitant loss of life. We should be very thankful that there were so many before us who were willing to pay that price so that we could enjoy our freedoms today.

Now my purpose is not to talk about political freedom, but only to use that as a backdrop for something far more relevant for us, something far more profound than even that – spiritual freedom.

So, let me pose a question: If political freedom is so costly, what do you think the price of spiritual freedom might be? In other words, if we were to declare war on sin and were to put together a human army to fight that war, what would be the cost of that war in terms of human lives? Let’s say we enlisted the entire world population – about 6.4 billion people – to be our army (now just play along with me on this) to fight this war for spiritual liberation, how many casualties do you think we’d have?

If I understand scripture correctly, our casualty rate would be 100%!! We’d lose 6.4 billion soldiers in that war and that means whatever measure of freedom that war might gain, there would be no one around to enjoy it!! That’s the epitome of a Pyrrhic victory – where the cost of victory far outweighs any measurable benefit because we’d all be dead and spending the rest of eternity in hell where, believe me, there ain’t no freedom! If I’m not mistaken that’s what Paul means when he says “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” or “for the wages of sin is death.” (Romans 3:23; 6:23)

In view of this reality maybe you can begin to see why scripture says that we need a savior? It’s because humanly speaking we don’t even have a prayer of winning the war against sin and the slavery, bondage and death it produces in the lives of man. And what’s so startling is that most people think that we can win this war by just getting our moral act together or by upgrading society or by behavior modification and good psychology!! What effective propaganda our enemy has proliferated!!

At any rate, scripture says we were in big trouble - without hope and that we were prisoners to the law (Galatians 3:23), slaves to sin (Romans 6:20), slaves to our false gods (Galatians 4:8), alienated from God and enemies of God (Colossians 1:21), along with a variety of other terminal problems!! (See Ephesians 2:1-3.)

So, the question remains: How do we get freedom from this burden of bondage that we fight and labor under? Well, let’s go back to that quote from Jesus:

God's Spirit is on me; he's chosen me to preach the Message of good news to
the poor, Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind,
To set the burdened and battered free, to announce, "This is God's year to act!"

GOD'S PLAN FOR FREEDOM – JESUS OUR CHAMPION

Jesus came to announce that it was time for God to act because we could do nothing for ourselves. But Jesus was not just a messenger with good news, he was also the anointed champion, the one who came to fight the fight which would bring about the liberation. Think about David and Goliath and you get a picture of this idea of champions – Goliath represented the Philistines; David represented the Israelites. Whoever won the battle between those two men won the battle for their own people. Not only would the champion win but every man in the army would be a winner!!

And what we learn from scripture is that the whole solution to the problem of freedom for us is invested in the life, death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ (John 14:6). Everything that we need to experience true freedom is found in Jesus Christ (Colossians 2:9-10). The first man, Adam, is the one who led us into this slavery and bondage; the last man, Christ, is the one who came to lead us out…Jesus came to fight for us!!

Now I want to do this as simply as possible. So I ask you to follow me closely as I use those five aspects that I mentioned – His life, death, burial, resurrection and ascension – to illustrate the way our champion won our freedom. The best way to understand how this works is to illustrate the concept of “identification.”

IDENTIFICATION

1 Corinthians 1:30
God alone made it possible for you to be in Christ Jesus. For our benefit God made Christ to be wisdom itself. He is the one who made us acceptable to God. He made us pure and holy, and he gave himself to purchase our freedom. (NLT)

Scripture says that when we put faith in Jesus as our Champion – sometimes referred to as Savior – Father identifies us with Jesus by putting us into Jesus. (1 Corinthians 1:30; Romans 6:3; Galatians 3:27) One reason public baptism is so awesome is that it portrays this identification process since “baptize” really means “put or place into.” Through our faith in Christ Father puts us into him; it intimately identifies us with Jesus. What it means is that whatever Jesus had to go through to provide salvation has been applied to us.

I can’t overemphasize the significance of this reality that we are now IN Christ. Virtually all spiritual experience grows out of this truth. (1) (Footnotes at the end of the article.) Folks, this is sheer genius…it is an awesome solution! Let’s consider at how this works out for us.

His Life

Matthew 5:17
Do not think that I have come to do away with or undo the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to do away with or undo but to complete and fulfill them. (AMP)

Jesus came to earth and lived here as a human being. He fully identified with us through his humanity. This is important because he came on a mission much like the one that Adam had. Adam and Jesus were our representatives before God. So the kind of humanity that Jesus had was like that which Adam had, more so than it was like the kind we now have. Our eternal freedom was in the hands of these two men, and because they were our representatives, our champions, we could experience only the freedoms that these men were able to pass on to us.

As a Jew in the 1st century, Jesus lived under the law of Moses, the old covenant, the 10 commandments. In fact, he himself said that he had come to fulfill the law not to do away with the law…this is really big because as I said earlier, scripture says that we were prisoners to the law. It was our master and its demands controlled our entire lives and our freedom was strictly defined by the law. Adam had blown his chance and our chance to be free from the law because he chose to try to do life on his own rather than to depend on God for everything.

Jesus, on the other hand, lived in full dependence on Father and in this way he was able to live a sinless life here on earth. It is amazing to think that it was possible for anyone to do this, but Jesus never had any guilt in his life…wow!! He took on the challenge of living up to the law and meeting Father’s requirements for us and he did it!!

Romans 7:6
But now that we're no longer shackled to that domineering mate of sin, and out from under all those oppressive regulations and fine print, we're free to live a new life in the freedom of God. (Message)

Galatians 3:13
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us. (NASB)

One of the fundamentals of our salvation is that we’re free from the law. We are no longer under its jurisdiction. This is a vital truth to embrace if we are to live as free men. Since anyone living under the law is also under the curse of that law, Jesus, our champion, removed from us the demands of the law by fulfilling the law for us. This was just one of the “battles” he came to fight for us.

His Death

Colossians 2:13
You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ. He forgave all our sins. He canceled the record that contained the charges against us. He took it and destroyed it by nailing it to Christ's cross. (NLT)

Now, because Jesus lived a life without any sin or guilt, he qualified himself to be a stand-in for each and every one of us, as our representative, our champion. When this sinless man, Jesus, went to die on the cross, he did not die there for his own sins – since he had none – he was our stand-in and Father’s anointed-appointed representative for each of us. As our champion and rep, Jesus’ death on that cross had far-reaching, very broad impact – it had the effect of paying off all the debts that we all owed to Father because of our sins and unrighteousness lives. When Jesus said “it is finished” he really meant that it is finished! We’re free from the penalty of sins, no longer under condemnation and judgment. (2)

Romans 6:6-7
Our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. For when we died with Christ we were set free from the power of sin. (NLT)

Not only were our sins paid for by Christ’s death in our place, but by being in him when he died, our old nature – the person we were before Christ – died as well.

In this case, think of Sin (3) as that power that totally ruled our lives before Christ. That old person was a sin-machine, always and only powered by Sin’s power. But now that Sin-controlled person is no longer around – the old man is literally dead! The power of Sin is still there but Sin’s slave is not there – the old you is dead!! We’re free from the power of Sin. The control has been broken, the chains have been removed.

As with our freedom from the Law, this freedom from Sin is foundational to living as free men. What Lincoln’s “Emancipation Proclamation” portended for the political options of blacks in 19th century America, Christ’s proclamation by his death accomplished for the spiritual existence of all who are in Christ. Just one more marvelous benefit of being in Christ! We are capable of overcoming the besetting sins and strongholds which have kept us hamstrung for years! It offers us the hope of living in a righteous way which really makes God look as good and powerful as He truly is.

His Burial and His Resurrection

Romans 6:4
Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death…

His burial is important for us also because the scripture is very clear that before Christ all people are dead and dying (Romans 5:12; Ephesians 2:1). When Jesus’ body died on that cross, it was quite normal, but also imperative, that he be buried. The grave is the proper place for the dead, right? When Father put us dead folks in Jesus, he made it possible for us to be buried with him in that tomb. So when he was buried he took all of us dead folks into that grave with him!!

Water baptism, you see, is a reenactment of that burial (Roman 6:4; Colossians 2:12). When we go under that water, it is about us going into the grave in Jesus. Finally the dead man is out of the way once and for all just where a dead man belongs. But that isn’t the end of it…the best is yet to come!

Romans 6:4
… so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. (NASB)

When Father raised Jesus up out of that grave, he raised us up with him. He did not resurrect the old man – what would be the point of that!? The old man stayed in the grave where he belongs – he raised up a new man, a new creation in Christ. This new man is now our identity before God and must become our new identity to ourselves and to one another (2 Corinthians 5:16-17). This man lives in union with the Spirit of Jesus Himself (1 Corinthians 6:17) and therefore has the moment-by-moment spiritual resources he needs to effectively represent God in our postmodern world or in any other world for that matter!


Romans 6:9-10
We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. (Message)

One more thing about the resurrection of Jesus – it ended the reign that death had over us. Our Champion has defeated death forever. Death is no longer the terrible end for us in Christ as it is for those who are lost. They have no solution for death but for us Jesus is our solution.

John 11:25-26
"You don't have to wait for the End. I am, right now, Resurrection and Life. The one who believes in me, even though he or she dies, will live. And everyone who lives believing in me does not ultimately die at all. Do you believe this?" (MSG)

1 Corinthians 15:55
Who got the last word, oh, Death? Oh, Death, who's afraid of you now? (MSG)

We are free from the fear of physical death because we already have eternal life and there is nothing that can take that from us – certainly not our bad behavior. Our eternal future is secure in our Champion, Jesus Christ! Do you see why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 that the resurrection of Christ is such a pivotal part of the Gospel? Without the resurrection of Christ the Gospel is empty and we’re still left to our own resources. And with the promise that we too shall out live death, we can live on the edge for Jesus, we can be risk-takers as people-lovers, missionaries, counterinsurgents for Father, just as Christ did! But there’s more…

His Ascension

Ephesians 2:4-6
Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us!! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah. (MSG)

Because we are in Christ (see how important this truth is!), we are now already in heaven…let me repeat, we are already in heaven. (4) We don’t have to go through any religious gymnastics to get close to Father since we’re already seated at his right hand with Christ Jesus. We don’t have to worry about whether we’ll get there, so we are free not to be religious ever again. Do you understand what I mean? We are free from trying to earn these things from Father so now we are free to live, truly live in an all new way, without anxiety or worry. We can live in real freedom!

Colossians 1:13-14
God rescued us from dead-end alleys and dark dungeons. He's set us up in the kingdom of the Son he loves so much, the Son who got us out of the pit we were in, got rid of the sins we were doomed to keep repeating. (MSG)

We have been set up as citizens of a new kingdom altogether…it’s called the kingdom of God. Our lives are no longer defined by the circumstance of our experience on this earth. Our citizenship is in heaven. In fact this world is not our home…we are on mission here. If you have ever been on a mission experience then you know what I’m talking about. Our lives are different on the mission field. We live in a foreign culture with a foreign language and how we live impacts the kingdom of God. And because we are on mission, the rules of engagement have changed!

I am convinced that this freedom that Christ secured for us must influence the way we live here on earth…I mean isn’t that the whole point? Surely all this is not merely about going to heaven one day! We’re not merely freed from all the bondage, we’re freed for something much, much better than we had before. The people of Iraq were not freed from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein so they could be terrorized by insurgents from Al Qeda or Iran or the PLO. They were freed so that they might build a new system. Wouldn’t it be insane for the new government of Iraq to set Saddam up all over again? What a waste of human life!!

Now that we have the freedom we have, can it make any sense at all to continue to live as slaves to the old way? No, the cost of our eternal spiritual freedom was far too dear for us to merely turn back to the same old way of life that we knew as lost people.

CONCLUSION

When I was in graduate school I read a challenging book written by a Jewish psychiatrist named Viktor Frankl who survived the Nazi death camps. I share this quote with you from that book:

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.
And there are always choices to make, every day, every hour,, offered the opportunity to make a decision…which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate… “…in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone.” (5)

Wouldn’t it be great to know that all those self sacrificing people in the concentration camps were Christians? Who knows, maybe they were. But whether they were or not, that is the sort of attitude, the kind of inner decision that truly free people make – to make the most of the time, to edify others, to sacrifice, to build, to invest in others.

And at some point in our lives we all face that decision, that inner choice that has nothing to do with how comfortable we are in this life here, but it has everything to do with the freedom that Christ has won for us. That is what it means to repent, to rethink our thinking, to flip that inner switch in the heart and mind that puts us fully online with Father.

Are you still in bondage? Is fear, timidity, self-indulgence, keeping you from living boldly before God and/or for him? Are you trying to make your place in the world system…trying to find your fortune or identity there? Are you ignoring the “least” people whom Father has put in your pathway? Make the choice that free people make, the choice that Jesus would make. Give it up, be free and use your freedom to do something eternal. And freedom is our destiny. It allows us to move here as Christ himself did. Our Champion, Jesus himself, told his followers - that’s us - this:

If you continue in My word,
then you are truly disciples of Mine;
and you will know the truth,
and the truth will make you free.
John 8:31-32, NASB

Blake Rymer
July 2004
Grace Link International
rymerfam@arilion.com
www.grace-link.org

(Answers: Patrick Henry, Lenin, Mark Twain, Soren Kierkegaard, Janis Joplin)

FOOTNOTES:
1. A careful reading of Romans 6:3-10 should enhance your appreciation of this powerful provision from Father that we call “identification.”

2. One of the obstacles to living under the Law is that we cannot live up to the standard that the Law requires – perfection. Hence we all had gobs of guilt that kept us from having an intimate relationship with God. How many of us would have graduated from school/college if the standard of perfection – 100% on all projects, quizzes, tests, exams, etc. - had to be maintained? So what the Law produces is people who need serious help to get to God.

3. I capitalize “Sin” because I want to distinguish it from “sins” the bad thoughts, words and deeds which are the fruit of Sin. The Apostle Paul gives us this distinctive usage of “Sin” in Romans Chapters 5-8. It appears to mean an evil power in us which is not us and which works against what God is trying to do in our lives. See Romans 7:21-23, especially the Amplified version.

4. It is an attitude changing exercise to examine the verb tenses that are used to describe most of what is ours in Christ. For the most part they are past tense, qualities that are already true about us or benefits that are already ours. This is not poetic license on the part of translators, but accurately reflects the meaning of the Greek language in which the New Testament was originally written.

5. Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, (emphasis mine).

Craziness

How do I explain this? I was with a mission team in Budapest, Hungary and we were visiting the local flea market. We found these German helmets and thought we'd cut up some. One of the team members caught us. Oh well, zieg heil!

Beginnings

Hey Men,

I'm offering you this to give you fair warning that now that I have turned 60, I hope to be writing down some things that are on my heart and some things that I think are vital for us to have down pat as we move forward on this Journey. I also will exercise the option of the Elder to share them with you since you have been fellow travelers with me. Some of these things you will likely be familiar with.

I'm also learning my way around this blog-world deal so expect the first phase to be somewhat lame...but remember I am open to feedback and hope to maintain a teachable spirit at least for another few years!

Later - Blake R