July 4, 2016 CALLED TO FREEDOM
Galatians 5:13: “For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.”
Every person has an innate desire to be free. It is for sure a wonderful thing to be “free,” and we see in the above verse that God has called us freedom, but if we misunderstand, or misuse freedom, we do so at our own loss. Some may think that to be free means that there are few or no boundaries in life, and the goal in life is to do whatever it takes to make yourself happy-“if it feels good, do it.” The freedom that God calls us to is a freedom unlike that of the world, and only as we discover who we are in Christ, can we know true freedom. Because God has put a new nature within us, we can now experience freedom as we “through love, serve one another.” So contrary to natural man, freedom is experienced when our focus is on loving and blessings others-and strangely enough, we get the greatest blessing and we realize the greatest freedom when we do so. In Galatians, Paul is admonishing believers to stand strong in their freedom and to be alert to the fact they that would go back into slavery should they revert back to living according to the flesh. In Galatians 5:1 we read: “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.” Paul was warning the believers to beware of those who were teaching that they had to keep the whole Law if they were to please God. Today, in our culture, we constantly here three lies, that if believed, would rob us of our freedom in Christ. One lie, as mentioned above, is to cast off restraints and do whatever makes you happy or makes you “feel good.” Another lie we hear from well-meaning people is that we must keep the law, or do or don’t do certain things, if we are to please God. The third lie we hear is that since we have been saved by grace, what we do does not really matter a great deal. As believers, living in the culture that we do, just as Paul warned the early believers, we must be alert to the possibility that by misunderstanding or by misusing our freedom in Christ, we will “be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Before we were born again, we were slaves to living according to our flesh, separated from God, without hope, and unable to keep the ways of God. Christ not only came that we might go to heaven when we die, He also came to set us free and to break all the chains that kept us in bondage. The freedom that Christ offers is true freedom, a freedom like no other; a freedom to be all that God designed us to be. When we experience the freedom found in Christ, we then realize that what the world calls freedom is really a form of slavery. As we celebrate this Fourth of July, let us thank God that He sent His Son that we may indeed be free.
John 8:36: “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
Blessings,
Buddy
RSS Feed