WE ALL STRUGGLE with restrictions on our personal freedoms. Much of this is to our own benefit, though chafing. The toddler is hemmed in by the parent’s “No!” The teenager, striving for identity and socialization, is curfewed by those same parents. In all relationships there are ‘no-fly zones.’ The schools, the boss, the social group, the spouse – all these interconnections come at a price that finds our liberties nuanced by responsibility and reward, and risk and recrimination. The chances we take in linking our lives to other people has benefits, but it comes at a cost. That price is a limitation on our ability to act, speak, or think as we want without hindrance or restraint.
Let’s further consider a view from afar and awhen. Maturing Christians understand that there are spiritual limitations, manifested in life experiences called ‘trials,’ that God has placed around each of us. Our progenitors’ failure to accept the original protective limits on their freedoms – “but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” (Gen. 2:17) – have burdened all mankind since. The discipline from God became administered through the Covenant of the Law. And that not just the Ten Commandments, but all 613 commandments of the expanded Torah, from Genesis through Malachi.
If we add to this the complexities of civil and criminal law developed across the millennia of our earth’s known civilizations, it is clear that we are all in law’s bondage in our times and cultures by forces beyond our control. It has been said that everyone breaks the law multiple times daily just due to these myriad complexities. Additionally, overwhelmingly, in our modern first-world system of governance, we are afflicted with this one over-arching law, found both in the bible and in secular law: *“Ignorance of the Law is no excuse.” (cf. Lev. 5:17; widely quoted by various historical figures.) We are therefore presumed guilty by a system of law that also tells us that we are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Trapped in flesh, the rhetorical question is given rise in our confused soul and spirit: “Is there no redress for our pitiful conditions of circumstance?”
Our heavenly Father, the one who disciplines through love, gave evidence through the prophets of old that he has always intended freedom for us from the underlying condition that afflicts all mankind, original sin. One example of the coming promise of the Covenant of Grace is proclaimed through Isaiah. It speaks to the revelation of the future Christ. “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations… he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth… I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people… to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison, and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.” (Isa. 42:1-6)
The gospel message – the good news of the N.T. – is that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. (c.f. John 3:16, Rom. 10:9-11) That cornerstone of our precious gift of belief leads us to this joy of the realized promise: “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:36) Finally, the captive released, the fettered soul and Spirit set free from all limitations, the hopes to realize the future of our restless dreams set in motion! We spring, literally, to new life, unbound from original sin and with a new objective reality by which to navigate through the inconsistencies of governance of the world below. We are ‘in it, yet not of it,’ (cf. John 17:14-15) Appropriating the words of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, we understand at a level of belief that we are **“Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
And this new reality now emerges in our informed conscious mind, conscience, and Spirit: there are still limitations! We are only free in Christ Jesus, for he is Lord and Master. He exhibits, and is, God’s love as he says, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matt. 11:29) But lest we attempt to accept his salvation without his mastery, the Apostle John cautions and instructs, “The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.” (1 John 3:24)
But this limitation on our freedoms we must best understand as beneficial and liberating, something that the Apostle Paul addresses in this way: “Through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.” (Rom 8:2)
Our response to the freedom that we find in Jesus Christ carries a responsibility that must be seen not as a limitation, but as a force that liberates us from the path of the ‘old man,’ whether seen through the ancient lens of tribalism or the modern one of populist nationalism. And this radically reinterprets how we engage in relationships, clarifying a spiritual pathway that we now travel with a different gait guiding our steps. “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. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Gal. 5:13–14)
We have become citizens of a different realm, one that operates by a much higher set of standards for moral and ethical excellence. As followers of Jesus, we have been set free to participate in and adhere to the forces that shape the greatest good, and that will reshape not just our own life and times, but the cosmos itself. “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)
Q. Have I recognized my own lawless streak of rebellion, and exchanged it for submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ?
*Justinian, “Corpus Juris Civilus,” AD 529; similarly, Hobbes, Thomas, “The Moral and Political Works To which is Prefixed the Author’s Life, Extracted from that Said to be Written by Himself,” 1750 .
**King, Dr. Martin Luther, “I Have a Dream,” 8-28-1963.
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