Thoughts on "freedom" this July 4th

Everyone's thoughts around this holiday season center around the blessings of freedom, as they should. We Americans have been rewarded by the efforts of many people over 200+ years to gain and sustain our civil liberties.

Make no mistake about it, as Christians our thoughts about freedom go well beyond civil and economic liberties. There is a song that is popular in churches around July 4th that says, "while the statue (of Liberty) liberates the citizen, the cross liberates the soul."

What do we mean by a liberated soul? Does it mean we can do anything we want? That sounds like freedom that we all would want. We can get perspective on what a liberated soul means from many scriptures, such as "the truth shall set you free." Paul gives us good insight in Romans 7 where he says about himself, "I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it."  (Ro 7: 18 - 20)

This "confession" simply reminds us of the bondage we have to sin as our carnal mind is constrained by our circumstances to make sense of our self and the world around us. Operating in bondage to social exchange, our nature desires that we get our needs met from the world around us, from what we can extract from others that we think we need for well being. No matter how hard we try to do the "right things" in the eyes of God, we can't with our natural way of thinking. 

Josh McDowell has said, "freedom is the power to act rightly." This idea of freedom is obviously missing in this passage in Romans. As Paul continues in his letter to the church in Rome (chapter 8), we find that he reminds Christians that the Kingdom mind (walking in  the Spirit) solves this problem. That is, when we trust (accept by faith) that God has established our soul's well being by the redemptive work of the Cross, we are then free from the magnet of our surroundings, we are no longer bound by what we can get from others to make our self well.


Let's make no mistake about it, while we live in a great country and enjoy civic and economic liberty, we can never forget the truth that sets us free. May it be that "real freedom" of the soul is a soul that makes sense of everything thru harmony with the Heavenlies, or as many say an intimacy with Jesus. 

So while we have a great country, with great founding Fathers, and great patriots gone before us ---- we have a much, much greater God!!   something to ponder this week of celebration ....