A Whole New Take On Freedom // You Have Been Set Free, Part 1

Christianityworks Official Podcast

What does the Word freedom mean to you? Well – think about it. Is it being able to do whatever you want … or is it more about being free from the things that are holding you back? Hmmm.

A Revelation of Freedom

Most of us, I guess, would define freedom as being able to do whatever we want whenever we want, and that definition right there is what brings a whole world of pain crashing down on our lives. I don’t think there’s a single person on this planet who doesn’t want to be free. Do you want to be free? Well, of course you do; me too, but if freedom is that important to us, you have to ask yourself exactly what is it. Sure, there’s political freedom; freedom of speech; freedom of association; the freedom to gather; to protest; to live where you want to live; to marry who you want to marry; to choose to have children or not.

In this day and age, we live in a world that’s more and more fixated on our individual freedoms, our rights as individuals. After all, I’m entitled to enjoy my life. Right? So it doesn’t take too long to start imagining that freedom is being able to do whatever we want whenever we want. Anything that cuts across that is a restriction of our inalienable right to be free, and yet if you travel to any kind of place where that freedom is practised, what you discover is lawlessness and anarchy. There’s no safety; there’s no protection; there’s no security because that anything, anytime kind of freedom is a terrible thing. That’s what the rule of law is all about: To keep us safe and secure.

So when you think about it, what we actually need is a different definition of freedom: One that really works. Try this one on for size. Galatians 1:3-4:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins to set us free from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.

It seems that God takes our freedom so seriously that He sent Jesus to suffer and die to set us free. From what? Well, from our sin, and from this evil age. So according to God real freedom, the sort of freedom that Jesus purchased for you on that cross, is about setting you free from the devastating consequences of your sin, and the evil that pervades every nook and cranny of this age, so that you can live in grace and peace. Not such a bad definition when you think about it.

So here’s a question for you: What sin, what evil, is robbing you of the freedom that Jesus came to give you? Because that sin, that evil, is what God is calling you to hand over to Him today. His will for you is to be free to live in the grace and the peace of Jesus Christ, but that’s not always an easy thing to do. One of the things you discover when you set your heart on following Jesus is that the rest of the world is not going to be standing by and cheering you on. In fact, far from it.

Not long after I became a Christian, a few decades ago now, the IT consulting firm at which I was a partner had the opportunity to bid for a rather large government project in the developing world, but the simple reality was that unless you paid the bribes to the various officials, you were completely wasting your time in bidding. As you can imagine, as a brand-new Christian, I was faced with a real dilemma. And can I tell you, I came under quite some pressure to compromise?

It happens in every corner of our lives because when you decide to believe in Jesus, when you decide to follow Jesus, when you decide to live your life for Him, let me tell you, the world is not going to be all that happy with you. They’ll criticise you; laugh at you; persecute you, whatever fits best at the time. You see, those people want you to believe that their way is the way of freedom; of success; of enjoyment. The world wants you to believe that following Jesus somehow is going to rob you of your freedom.

What do you believe? Who are you trying to please; Jesus, or those naysayers around you? Paul the apostle made a very clear decision on that question in his life. Galatians 1:10:

Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ.

People are so fickle. Have you noticed? Jesus did. That’s why we’re told in John 2:23-25 that:

When He was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in His name – because they saw the signs that He was doing, but Jesus on His part would not entrust Himself to them, because He knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone, for He Himself knew what was in everyone.

At some point, in every corner of our lives, every thought, every decision, every action, each one of us has to decide who we’re trying to please; people, or God. And the way it tends to work is that it’s not so much the big decisions that we make upfront that matter; it’s the little decisions that we make a hundred times a day, that together tell us who we’re really trying to please.

Come on. Who are you trying to please with your life? Because if you’re still seeking human approval, if you’re still trying to please people, you wouldn’t be a servant of Christ. Look. To experience freedom, real freedom, we need to stop focusing on the world. What we need is a spiritual revelation. The fact is that the freedom that only Jesus Christ can bring is a fantastic thing, but whilst the facts are incredibly important, you don’t find freedom in facts.

The apostle Paul was an interesting character. He was a member of the Sanhedrin, the ruling religious body in Jerusalem, and there’s a reason that he made it to the top of the pile. Philippians 3:4-6:

If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more. Circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews. As to the Law, a Pharisee. As to zeal, a persecutor of the church. As to righteousness under the Law, blameless.

So Paul’s heritage, his breeding, his upbringing, ticked all the right boxes. He studied the Old Testament Law; he knew it from back to front; he worked hard at it. You know the sort of person. He had all the head-knowledge that you could ask for, all the discipline that you could ever expect of anybody. On-top of that, he was a Pharisee. Now, this sect took the idea of following the Law to incredible lengths. The very word Pharisee means to be a religious separatist. He was absolutely full-on, and yet the one thing he didn’t have was freedom, until one day on the road to Damascus, Jesus appeared to Him, and that encounter with Jesus was the turning-point of his life. This is what he writes years later, looking back on it. Galatians 1:11-12:

For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin. For I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

So it wasn’t something that he’d learned through years of study; it was a revelation. The original Greek word used there for revelation is the word 'apocalypsis'. In other words, it was an apocalyptic revelation. Dramatic! Powerful! Completely life-changing, and it wasn’t a revelation about Jesus; it wasn’t words from a book. Come on, Paul knew all those words in the Old Testament books; he’d studied them for years; he’d made it to the top of the religious pile that way, but that’s not what changed his life. It wasn’t a revelation about Jesus; it was a revelation of Jesus, through a personal encounter with Him.

Have you had an apocalyptic revelation of the person of Jesus Christ? Have you had a dramatic, powerful, life-changing encounter with Jesus? No? Then get a revelation. Jesus is waiting for you, now. He wants to turn your life upside-down, now. All the head-knowledge in the world won’t do that for you. Only Jesus.

Freedom is a Tricky Thing

Freedom is a tricky thing. So often, we’re our own worst enemies: Our perspective; our thoughts; our behaviour ... They all rob us of this elusive thing called freedom. Try as we might, we just can’t grasp it. You’ve had that experience. Right? You know what it’s like. There’s something in your makeup, an Achilles heel if you will, that’s constantly your undoing. For each one of us, it’s something different, but at the end of the day, it trips you up again and again and again. Mine is perfectionism, which has a tendency to fuel anger. Yours?

Well, you probably know what it is. Maybe it’s insecurity; gossiping; a lack of compassion; selfishness ... Hey, the list runs as long as my arm, and then some. God has a simple name for it: He calls it sin. The devil loves to rub your nose in it, and just when you’re feeling weak or tired, emotionally spent, he pushes your button and there you go again.

For the apostle Paul, it was an obsessive hatred of the church. He, of course, was a Pharisee in the Jewish religion. Then Jesus came along and turned everything he’d ever believed in, everything he’d ever worked so hard for, completely upside-down. No wonder he hated Christians, but then ... Then he met Jesus and something changed in him. People were talking about it. Galatians 1:23:

They heard it said, ‘The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy’, and they glorified God because of me.

And he had been, too. He was a terrible persecutor of the church, until that day he met Jesus on the road to Damascus. You can read about it in the book of Acts, chapter 9.

Ok. So he met Jesus, but what happened to turn him from a man breathing threats against the early church to the guy who ultimately wrote almost half the books of the New Testament? That’s quite a turnaround, you’d have to admit. I’ll tell you what happened: Jesus changed his heart. You know and I know that when we have a change of heart, our thoughts and our actions flow out of that, just as God promised in the days of old through Ezekiel. Ezekiel 11:19-20:

I will give them one heart and put a new spirit within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh so that they may follow My statutes and keep My ordinances and obey them.

When you encounter Jesus on your road, when you draw close to Him, when His Spirit fills you to overflowing, He does what you were powerless to do. He changes your heart which, as it turns out, changes everything.

Sometimes though, it feels as though nothing’s happening. Nothing! So what; has God forgotten me now? Has He left me on the shelf? We all want to feel as though God has some great plan for our lives. So in those months (even years) when nothing much seems to be happening, it can be terribly disheartening.

Jesus: "I came to set the captives free".

You: "Yeah, right. It feels like you’ve forgotten me!"

Other people, they seem to be powering on. You, on the other hand, feel as though there’s nothing really exciting ahead.

Saul is on the road to Damascus, off to persecute some more Christians; he meets Jesus along the way. That’s pretty exciting! But then, he loses his sight and for three days, he’s completely blind. Now that doesn’t sound like such a long time, unless you’ve been struck blind; in which case, it probably feels like an eternity. Adversity has a way of doing that, which is why when you feel as though you’ve been left on the shelf, it does seem like an eternity. Am I right? "Freedom – what’s that?" you ask yourself, in this prison of inactivity. When we get to that point, there’s something we need to be reminded of. It’s what Paul says himself in his letter to the church in Galatia. Galatians 1:15-17:

But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son to me so that I might proclaim Him among the Gentiles, I didn’t confer with any human being, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me. But I went away at once to Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus.

In other words, God already had a plan for Paul, even before he was born. Along the way, people tried to kill the guy; they rioted against him; he was imprisoned; beaten; shipwrecked; bitten by a viper of all things, and eventually, he rotted out the remainder of his days in a Roman dungeon on death row. But that powerful encounter with Jesus, that incredible revelation of Christ Himself when he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, that changed everything. Because no matter how dire his circumstances became, he knew that God had a plan. So in the middle of those difficult circumstances, Paul had the freedom that Jesus promised.

You know, God still has a plan: A plan for today; for tomorrow; next month; next year, and indeed, for the rest of your time on this earth. God hasn’t forgotten you. He hasn’t lost the plot. God has a plan and that fact gives you freedom, even if you’ve been locked away in a dungeon or forgotten on a shelf, and that’s a promise that God wants you to take into your heart today. The only sort of hope the Bible talks about is certain hope, so may the Holy Spirit write that hope on your heart.

Overcoming the Old Ways

Ok, the subject for today is circumcision. I know it’s not exactly something you want to be thinking about, but stick with me. There’s an important point to be made, and what we’re really chatting about is freedom: Your freedom here, now, today. But first, let’s head back to first-century Jerusalem. You see, there’s a rocky transition underway for those who believe in Jesus from Judaism (the religion of their forefathers) to Christianity; from the life lived under a complex set of religious rules to a life of freedom in Christ. A lot of the things that seem pretty obvious to us today had to be nutted out back then; it wasn’t easy. One of them was male circumcision, which to this point had been part of God’s Law for His people. Let’s take a look at how the apostle Paul puts it in Galatians 2:3-5:

But even Titus, who was with me, was not compelled to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. But because of false believers secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy on the freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might enslave us. We did not submit to them even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might always remain with you.

You see, there’s a tussle here between the old traditionalists who didn’t believe in this whole nonsense about grace through Jesus, and Paul to whom the gospel of grace (the fantastic news of God’s unmerited favour towards us) had been revealed by Jesus Himself. Circumcision was just the flashpoint. The real debate was between the slavery of living under the set of rules, and the freedom that we have through our faith in Christ, and it’s a struggle that continues to this day in the heart of many-a believer because grace is so radical; so counter-intuitive.

We live in a 'dog-eat-dog' world, and there seems to be plenty of dog to go around, yet along comes Jesus and says in effect, "Look, it’s not about following a bunch of rules. It’s about experiencing My love and so that you can, I’m going to pay the price on a cross for all the things that you’ve done wrong in your life."

The reason Paul takes this so seriously is that it strikes at the very heart of the gospel of grace; the truth. Besides, have you noticed? It’s pretty much impossible to follow the rules anyway. We all fall short. That’s why we need Jesus, so if you’ve been struggling under a bunch of rules, do yourself a favour. Ditch them. Go to Jesus instead. Start having a rich, dynamic relationship with Him, and your unbounded freedom will flow out of that relationship. Don’t let rules enslave you.

And you and I, we aren’t the only ones that suffer from this problem. Take Peter, the apostle. We think of Peter as one of the New Testament’s 'A'-list, yet he made quite a few mistakes along the way, not the least of which was political correctness. This age of rampant political correctness isn’t something new in the twenty-first century. It turns out that there’s nothing new under the sun.

Now look. It’s absolutely a good idea that we shouldn’t deliberately go out there to say or do things that’ll hurt others, but it’s a very bad idea to take that to the ridiculous Nth degree to the point where we curtail our freedoms in order to appease those with an agenda, and that’s exactly what was going on in the first century as Christianity was being birthed out of Judaism. There was a tussle between the two. There were difficult issues to work through.

For instance, most Jews believed that the God of the Old Testament was for them and them alone. Many of the apostles stayed in Jerusalem for that very reason, but Paul was called to be an apostle to the Gentiles, to take the good news of salvation in Jesus to people whom the Jews referred to as dogs, so Peter is happy to dine with the Gentiles until some other legalistic old-school Jews show up, at which point he does the politically correct thing – retreating, only to eat with Jews again. Well, at this point, Paul pretty much has a pink fit. Galatians 2:11-13:

But when Cephas” (that’s Peter’s other name) “came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood self-condemned. For until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles, but after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction, and the other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy

To the extent that you believe in Jesus, you are free in Christ to live out your faith. Sure; in this age of political correctness, in this age of pluralism, you will be derided for it; you’ll be laughed at for it; you’ll even be persecuted for it, but let Peter’s mistake be a lesson to us all. Let’s not be hypocrites. Let’s not compromise our freedom in Christ to appease the sinners of this world. Sure; the issues today are different, but the principle remains the same. People will disagree with you because you believe in Jesus. They just will. There’s nothing new in any of that ... Live out your faith in Jesus anyhow. Don’t let the fear of what others will think or say or do rob you of the freedom that you have in Christ. Don’t let your life compromise the truth of the gospel of grace.

Isn’t it funny how our old ways keep coming back to haunt us? Peter spent three-and-a-half years with Jesus! He saw the miracles; he heard the sermons; he experienced the radically different way that the Son of God approached things. Jesus wasn’t afraid of upsetting religious leaders. Jesus wasn’t afraid of offending people, yet still Peter falls back into his old ways. No wonder Paul took him on! It’s a good thing and as I said, it’s a sobering lesson to you and me about the power of the old ways to rob us of the freedoms that Jesus came to give us. Jesus said that if He sets us free, then we are free indeed. Don’t throw that freedom away so easily.