Slave or Free?

“According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free. God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage-managers, who had since made a great mess of it.” 

 

 – G.K. Chesterton

We would be free but on our own.

From Tim Keller's Commentary on Romans:

Yet it is very easy and common to think of our salvation only in terms of the first and not the second, only as the transfer off of our sins, but not as the transfer on of his rights and privileges. 

We tend to think only that Christ has pardoned us and removed our legal liability. When we do that, we are really only “half-saved by grace.” We can get pardon, but now we have to live a good life to earn and maintain God’s favor and rewards.

But this text shows us that not only did Christ remove the curse we deserved, but he also gives us the blessing he deserved. God’s honor and reward is just as secure and guaranteed as our pardon. To use another image. Jesus’ salvation is not just like receiving a pardon and release from death row and prison. Then we’d be free, but on our own. Jesus has also put on us the Congressional Medal of Honor. We are received and welcomed as heroes, as if we had accomplished extraordinary deeds.

Unless we remember this we will be anxious and even despairing when we sin or fail. We think our slate has been wiped clean, but now God’s opinion and acceptance of us is based on our record. That is not the case. When a son becomes heir, that inheritance is guaranteed. It is not a prize to be won. It is his. So is our salvation.

Children not slaves.

The Christian life is the life of sons and daughters; it is not the life of slaves. It is freedom, not bondage. Of course, we are slaves of God, of Christ, and of one another. We belong to God, to Christ, to one another, and we love to serve those to whom we belong. But this kind of service is freedom.

What the Christian life is not, is a bondage to the law, as if our salvation hung in the balance and depended on our meticulous and slavish obedience to the letter of the law.

As it is, our salvation rests upon the finished work of Christ, on His sin-bearing, curse-bearing death, embraced by faith.

— John Stott

Freedom?

It ought to be that simple.  If Jesus said we’re free, we ought to accept his declaration at face value and run with it.  It ought to help us define ourselves. But it doesn’t.  Christians will do almost anything to get away from the simple meaning of the word and the wonderful experience of freedom.

Something about freedom scares us to death.  We continue in our bondage – and that is a major tragedy.  It is a tragedy because Christ went to so much trouble to set us free.  It is a tragedy because there is so much more to being a Christian than obeying rules, doing religious things, and being “nice.”  And it is a tragedy because our heritage is freedom…and we’ve sold it for a mess of pottage.

- Steve Brown, A Scandalous Freedom: The Radical Nature of the Gospel, copyright 2004, Howard Books, page 7

Fear or Freedom?

Robert Capon in The Foolishness of Preaching:

If we are ever to enter fully into the glorious liberty of the children of God, we are going to have to spend more time thinking about freedom than we do. The church, by and large, has had a poor record of encouraging freedom. It has spent so much time inculcating in us the fear of making mistakes that it has made us like ill-taught piano students: we play our pieces, but we never really hear them because our main concern is not to make music but to avoid some flub that will get us in trouble. The church, having put itself in loco parentis (in the place of a parent), has been so afraid we will lose sight of the need to do it right that it has made us care more about how we look than about who Jesus is. It has made us act more like subjects of a police state than fellow citizens of the saints.

Will God Interfere With Our Free Will?

Great Post by Tim Challies:

Some Christians see God as a kindly but passive observer of our choices. After all, God wouldn’t ever interfere with our free will, would He? Ask Jonah and a wry smile would come over his face.” This is how Colin Smith introduces a fictional anecdote from the life of the prophet Jonah:

Would God ever interfere with our free will?

         Hmmm … let’s see.

I had made my choice. I suppressed my conscience, steeled my nerves and, by a free act of my own will, boarded the ship to Tarshish. But God would not let me go.

My will was taking me in the wrong direction. So God made an intervention, graciously messing with my rebellious heart to save me from a life wasted in disobedience.

God stepped into my life uninvited, through an unexpected storm, rolling dice, and pounding waves that pushed me down until, finally, I came to my senses and called on the Lord, only to find that He had already planned and provided for my salvation by sending a great fish.

But that was only the beginning. Having stretched myself out in ministry, I experienced a strange darkness in which I was overcome by resentment. Left to myself, I would have slouched into retirement angry with God and bitter about the events that had shaped my life. But God stepped in and showed me His compassion.

Would God interfere with our free will? I’m glad He interfered with mine! Left to myself, I would still be running from God, and who knows where I would be today? Rebellion and resentment were my foolish choice. Salvation comes from the Lord.

 

Trying to do the Lord's work in your own strength is the most confusing, exhausting, and tedious of all work. But when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, then the ministry of Jesus just flows out of you. ----Corrie ten Boom