Freedom for All

Freedom, Liberty, these words are found on the lips of men whenever and where ever you look. The object of everyone’s life is to find this attainment, whether you try it in barbaric superstitions, Muslim jihads, Communist government control, or liberal atheism. When asked what freedom means, they scarcely can tell you even though they’ve devoted their life to finding it. The closest they get is stated by some poet as, “Master of my fate, captain of my soul.”

Douglas Bond, in his book, The Accidental Voyage, states “Man is not free when he thinks he can do whatever he wants; he is free when he wants to do, and can do what he ought to do, what he was made to do-to glorify and enjoy God. That is freedom.”

But how is this freedom produced? I mean, can we, as men bring this liberty on ourselves?

2 Cor. 3:17 “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”* Granted, the context of this verse is talking about spiritual freedom from sin. And yet, consider this for a second, could this also apply to the physical world?

Could what we believe and the freedom we’re experiencing in the spiritual actually play into what’s happening in the physical world?

One of my favorite quotes is from John Witherspoon. He states, “There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire. If, therefore we yield up our temporal property, we at the same time deliver the conscience into bondage.”

When we have the freedom only found in Christ from our fetters of sin, it must show in our lives or does not exist. We will begin taking dominion over everything-including, but not limited to, civil government.

The seventeenth century was one of remarkable vision. 100 years or so earlier the reformation of Europe was in full blast. Men such as Calvin, Luther, Knox, and Bucer began a vision that bloomed to its full extent 100 years later. They began a vision that would change the western world so instead of a dying French population here in America, or a Rex-Lex, British, mercantilistic economy we have a distinctly different society. Not only was this because of vision such as John Calvin’s city on a hill, but because of their children’s courage to live out that plan-and die for it. Joseph Warren, doctor in the battle of Lexington and Concord, and first militia leader in the war, had such a vision. In a letter to parliament he wrote, “Our all is at stake…we determine to die or to be free.” His last journal entry before he died read, “With but a handful of men, full of courage and certainty…we have determined a course, which may in the annuals of history change the world…but as the Scriptures plainly teach, if God is for us, who can be against us? This is a cause worth dying for.”-Joseph Warren, 1775

Only a man who understands true freedom can write such words faced with an impossible task-what many said was certain death or shame. Faced with the same circumstances, what legacy would you leave? What hope is there in the after-life that you might risk it for freedom? This freedom is not to make more money, or have more say in what’s going on, but freedom from the only true bondage-sin.

The dictionary defines freedom as, “A state of exemption from the power or control of another.” Since the fall, which by the way was only about 6,000 years ago, all have been controlled by sin, both original and practiced sin.

There is only one to be free, and that is Christ. He alone can truly free us to serve him alone. This is the power that enabled men such as George Washington and Joseph Warren to be world-changers.

1 Peter 2:16& 17 says, “As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as servants of God. Honor all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king.”