Christ Has Set Us Free
This past week was Juneteenth. It’s a day we celebrate with Black Americans the arrival of the news on June 19, 1865 that all enslaved persons in Texas—around 250,000 at the time—were emancipated by executive decree. We thank God for the freedom we have in this country, and the freedom that was extended to even more of God’s image bearers on that day 158 years ago. Just imagine hearing the news that your years, decades, of hard labor and abuse and being treated as property, were now legally put to an end. And as we consider Paul’s words to the Galatians here in what we just read, I want you to also imagine, how sad it would be, if an enslaved person had never got the news of their release. Or, even sadder still, if upon hearing news of their freedom and release, just kind of shrugged and said, “I think I prefer to go back to slavery.”
This is Paul’s concern for all of us as Christians—do we truly understand and have we truly embraced our freedom as sons and daughters of God that we have in the gospel? Now freedom is actually quite a complicated thing. When the world hears ‘Freedom’ they usually think one of two things—either political freedom from oppression and slavery, as we recognized this past week, Or, perhaps more commonly, the ability to do whatever you desire to do with no one telling you how to live. This is not the Christian view of freedom.
When Paul speaks of freedom, he speaks of freedom from slavery to sin. He speaks of freedom from the enslaving need to justify yourself by your performance, your good works, the yoke that the law of Moses presents on our shoulders when we read it. He speaks of freedom from the fear of judgment to come and the pangs of death. All this freedom we celebrate in the gospel of Jesus Christ. But what I want to exhort us with today, is that our Christian freedom is not just a freedom from, but it’s also very much a freedom to.
When Christ sets his people free, he also sets us free in order that we may now go love and serve God and love and serve one another without the burden of a shackled conscience. Where we were once bound by Sin and the Law and Death, we are now yoked under a different burden—the light and easy burden of the law of Christ. Under this law, we have been loved eternally and sacrificially first, and so we are free to love. Under this law, the King of kings stooped down to earth to serve, and so we lay aside our rights and privileges in order to serve with a joyful and thankful heart. Under this law, we have been set free from the power of sin, and so we willingly make ourselves slaves to righteousness under a different master.
How have you used your freedom this week, Christian? Has it been a week of joyful service to your king and his people with a clean conscience and a willing spirit? Or have you instead indulged the flesh and acted only in your own self-interest, not looking to the needs and concerns of others? Conversely, have you been riddled with a heavy and guilty conscience, wondering if you’re doing enough for God, doing enough for others, fearful of judgment and anxious about your performance?
To both, I say to you today: For freedom, Christ has set us free. Freedom from slavery. And freedom into a new and better kind of slavery—to Christ and his righteousness. So now, let us go to our Master and Lord and confess to him privately the ways that we have not fully embraced his freedom, and then I’ll lead us in a prayer of corporate confession.