If the Son
therefore shall make you free,
ye shall be free indeed.
This is one of the most well-known verses and concepts in Christianity; the idea of being set free. We talk about it all the time. We speak of the freedom we have in Christ Jesus on a regular basis in the Christian world. For God to have taken the steps to send his son down to suffer and die to set us free there must have been something that we have been set free from, right?
So romans 8:2 says we are freed from the law of sin and death. What is the law of sin and death? What is sin? Whatsoever is not of faith is sin we are told in Romans 14:23. So anything we do, say, or think that does not include, recognize, thank, and/or glorify the Lord and put Him first is sin. This is actually the default state of mankind. In Romans 3, Paul quotes the old testament in v 10-12, “As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” We all tend to seek our own way; look out for old number one: ourselves. This attitude of the heart is what leads to lying, cheating, stealing, murders, gluttony, and any other “sin” you can come up with. It all starts in the heart.
God has a standard though, Jesus lays it out in simple terms when asked in Mathew 22: 37-40, Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. Paul further expands this concept to show that this state of the heart does lead to righteous action in Romans 13:8-10 ~ Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
We, in our natural selves are incapable of fully living in the way God would have us to live. To be in the presence of perfection, one must be perfect. Since we have not been perfect (or have been sinful) we are unable to enter into Gods presence. This manifests itself in death. Sin leads to death, or as Paul puts it in Romans 6:23, the wages of sin is death. So, what we are set free from is sin, our natural desire to have self as number one, and the result of that sin, death; or separation from Yahweh.
But, we were not set free from sin and death just to be free. We are not given a license to do whatever we want to. Before we accept Jesus, we did not have a choice whether we sinned or not. John 8:34 Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. It was our nature to sin. We were bound to it and are now set free from that to… commit more sin? No! (Romans 6:1) We are set free from sin so that we may do what is right. Romans 6: 17-8 ~ But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. Did you catch that? We then become servants of righteousness. A sinner saved through the grace of Christ by his death and resurrection becomes free from being bound to sinful selfish ways and is freed to love others and seek to serve others, putting self aside, just as Christ put his own desires aside to serve us.
In the words of the Bob Dylan song:
But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.
The Devil really doesn’t care who you serve as long as it is not the Lord. There are a million paths to hell, but only one way that leads to heaven; Jesus. The devil will even try and trick you and tell you that staying away from Yahweh and His son is freedom, when the truth is it is only death. Choose this day whom you are going to serve. As for me and my household, we serve the Lord.
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