Don’t Take It Just Because It’s Free

Freedom is a dangerous thing.

For freedom to be a real thing, we have to be able to do what we want to do, even things that are not good for us to be doing. Freedom is a right to act in a way that isn’t what others would have you to do. Sometimes that action is a very dumb thing, maybe even a dangerous thing. Yet if we truly value freedom, we understand that it comes at the cost of allowing things that we probably don’t have to have going on.

That doesn’t mean we have to do those things. In 1 Peter 2:16 we read, “Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God”. Freedom may give us the right to act however we want but it doesn’t mean we have to act on that right. Many people in the name of freedom do evil. “You can’t tell me what to do!” they cry assuming that the lack of a prohibition excuses away their actions. You can be within your rights and still be dead wrong.

What we should use our freedom for is to serve God. It might feel good to thumb our nose at authority and claim our freedom to do so. That however isn’t the plan that God has for his followers. Submission, self-sacrifice, putting others ahead of yourself, these are the traits God calls for in his children. We might be free to be selfish, rebellious, and stubborn but we could not do that and still be pleasing to God.

I love that we live in a free land. It is an amazing blessing. However, my freedom doesn’t absolve me from serving my King. Living free doesn’t have to mean living evil.

Comments

I Know All Those Words, But That Sentence Makes No Sense To Me

Let’s say you travel back in time six hundred years or so. Luckily, you happen across a fellow that speaks English. Upon hearing your tale, he describes you as nice, smart, and handsome. Wouldn’t you feel good? You shouldn’t. As Sol Steinmetz in his book, Semantics Antics , explains; Nice originally meant someone who was foolish, ignorant, senseless, or absurd (middle English 1300). Smart for the first 300 years of its use meant causing pain, sharp, cutting, or severe, a sense that survives in the idiom "smart as a whip.” Handsome wasn’t complimentary. When coined around 1425, it just meant easily handled; it didn’t have its current positive connotation until 1590. You might think he said you were a kind, intelligent, good looking bloke, when in reality he said you were a foolish pain easily dealt with. Words have an annoying habit of changing meaning over time in the same language and it becomes even more compli...

Master Your Self

In a contest for the toughest president of the United States, it would be hard to go against Theodore Roosevelt. He was known for his “manly” pursuits hunting big game, climbing the Matterhorn, participating in boxing match while president. (These weren’t play fights, he lost the vision on one eye because of them!) Once before he was about to give a speech an assassin shot him in the chest. Roosevelt refused to go to a hospital and insisted on giving his speech, still wearing his blood-soaked shirt! Teddy might have become tough but he wasn’t born that way. He was a sickly child that suffered from severe asthma that almost proved fatal. As was a young boy, doctors discovered that he had a weak heart, and advised him to get a desk job and not strain himself. He was homeschooled because of his many illnesses and spent most of his time indoors. But then as a teen his father, whom Teddy Roosevelt revered, told his son, “ ...

Until Midnight

In Acts 20, there is the tragicomic event surrounding a young man by the name of Eutychus. He did what a lot of folks before and after him did, he fell asleep during a sermon. Unfortunately, he was setting in in the third story window at the time. So instead of nodding off and hitting the pew in front of him, he fell to his death. The good news was the apostle Paul was delivering the sermon and had the ability to bring him back. I don’t know, however, if we can judge Eutychus too harshly. The sermon had gone on till midnight. Paul wouldn’t finish it up till daybreak. That’s a long lesson. I know some folks that might want to jump out of a window if I had a lesson that long, yet these Christians wanted to be there to hear Paul. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not pushing for all night sermons but I think we might need to adopt these folks' dedication. They knew that Paul was only in town for a limited time only and they were determined to ...

Ecclesiastes 12:10

Search This Blog