Freedom in Christ provides freedom indeed

Matthew 5, I Corinthians 6

July 2, 2000

Introduction: Collins H. Haines was a Navy pilot when he was shot down over Hanoi on June 5, 1967. That day in June began a tortuous 5 years and 9 months confinement as a prisoner-of-war. On March 4, 1973, Collins Haines walked out of his Hanoi prison toward a homeward-bound C141 Air Force transport jet. Captain Haines remembers, “Those were my first steps to freedom… how very precious they were.”
Everyman’s first step to freedom has always been very, very precious.
On July 4th of the year 1776, 56 men of courage from 13 American colonies took their first steps to freedom by affixing their signatures to a declaration of independence.
Their first steps taken toward freedom, though precious, would be costly ones indeed. In the months that followed this declaration of independence, “five signers of the Declaration (of Independence) were captured by the British and tortured before they died. 12 had their homes… sacked, looted, occupied by the enemy, or burned. Two lost their sons in the army. One had two sons captured. Nine of the 56 died in the war, from its hardships or from its bullets.”
The steps to freedom have always been very, very precious.
In the case of these founding fathers of our great land, consider the magnitude of the impact of their steps toward freedom. There is no other country in the world that has developed the concepts of republic and democracy like this one has! Even 200 years ago, Thomas Jefferson said, “My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!” Of course, with the hindsight of 200 years, we know more than they did! The initial steps to freedom taken by these 56 men and their countrymen started a journey that is beyond compare in history.
There is another dimension to their declaration of independence that many of us are aware of and all of us should be. These 56 signers also affirmed their dependence upon Almighty God. The closing words of their proclamation, the climax to their bold statement to the world, read like this: “With a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”
These great men knew that God plays a role in the affairs of men and countries and nations. These early leaders knew that there was a Redeemer who proclaimed a Gospel that set people free to be free indeed.
John Quincy Adams wrote in that era, “From the day of the Declaration (of Independence)… the American people were bound by the laws of God, which they all acknowledged as the rules of their conduct., and (the American people were bound ) by the laws of the Gospel, which they nearly all acknowledged as the rules of their conduct.”
James Madison would also write in that day, “We have staked the whole future of American civilization not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”
Some of the parting words of George Washington are these: “…you do well to wish to learn our arts and way of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are.”
What Mr. Washington, Mr. Madison, and Mr. Adams were communicating was the truth of the Scriptures. What they were communicating was a spiritual freedom that went hand in hand with their experiment of political freedom!
It was the Lord Jesus who had said in John 8:36, “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” It was the apostle Paul who had written in Gal. 5:1, “It was for freedom that Christ set us free…” The great prophet Isaiah had looked forward to the coming of the Redeemer and wrote, “(He will come) to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners…” (Isa. 61:1)
So what about the magnitude of the freedom Jesus offers? What did He have in mind when He offered a freedom that would make us free indeed?
When we look at His Sermon on the Mount, we get great exposure into the extend of the freedom He offered. To those poor in spirit (Mt. 5:3 ff.), He offered the kingdom of heaven. ‘Poor in spirit’ describes those who have no clue about spiritual things, no clue about religion. They are spiritual paupers with no spiritual qualifications and no spiritual abilities. Spiritually, they are bankrupt, deficient – beggars without a clue or a hope. To these, the Lord Jesus offers the gracious touch of heaven, a relationship with the One Who is now present in their midst.
To those who mourn, the Lord Jesus offers comfort. To those with broken hearts -- the heartbreak of rejection, the heartbreak of death, the heartbreak of financial loss, there are a thousand ways we are brought to grief…. To all these the freedom Jesus offers bursts forth in comfort and laughter. Tears are turned to joy; mourning gives way to comfort, tragedy becomes blessing. When Jesus sets us free, we are free indeed.
To those who are meek, gentle, they shall inherit the earth. (Mt. 5:5) The freedom Jesus offers takes the shy ones, the reserved ones, the unassuming, unassertive, intimidated people of the world and gives them standing as children whose Father holds it all in His hand and gives it as they have need. When Jesus sets us free, we are free indeed!
To those who are pure in heart, they shall see God. (Mt. 5:8) To the ones who are perfectionists, who can never see a thing without seeing its imperfections, who are never satisfied, not with everyone and everything else, most of all themselves… To those who constantly complain… the food isn’t cooked right, this dress doesn’t fit right, these colors don’t match and they don’t complement… To these miserable souls whose everyday is one frustration and disaster after another, the Lord Jesus offers the prospect of seeing God, the One who is perfect, the One who is good enough, the One who is able to satisfy all their expectations without fail. In the Lord Jesus, freedom is freedom indeed!
There is much more that Jesus offers, not only in the Sermon on the Mount, but in the rest of the Scriptures, but this is enough to help us begin to see the magnitude of the freedom that He intended that we experience in our relationship with Him.
And remember what Paul wrote to the Corinthians on this issue of freedom in Christ? “Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” (I Cor. 6:9-11)
Where the Gospel is proclaimed and believed, men and women are set free. They experience liberty! They are let loose from the bonds of sexual lust. They are set free from the constraints of perversions. The chains of greed are broken. The shackles of co-dependency are unlocked. They know freedom from the fetters of swindle. The handcuffs of contemptuous, abusive language are removed.
The steps to freedom are precious indeed. When the Lord Jesus sets us free, we know a freedom that is beyond compare.
July the 4th is certainly the day to celebrate our freedoms in this great land. The steps taken to provide these freedoms have been precious and costly. They should not be disregarded nor downplayed; they should not be overlooked or forgotten. They are our joy and the envy of the world.
But as great as these freedoms are, as far into our lives as they reach, as profound and blessed as we hold them, they cannot compare to the freedom we can know that was made available by the death of the Savior.
Today, friends, some of us need to heed the words of the Lord Jesus found in the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. The Savior said, in Mt. 4:17, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” The Savior, representing God’s rule in our realm, the kingdom of heaven, invites us to change the direction in which we are headed. That’s what repent means! When the rule of heaven comes down upon our lives through a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus, we are set free!
Some of us, in our heart of hearts, would have to say today, “I don’t know the kind of freedom I’m hearing about today!” My life is one of hopelessness, characterized by day after day of quiet desperation (Thoreau). We don’t do much that counts, we haven’t been able to reach our dreams, we don’t feel secure, we are more frantic than peaceful, we are more despairing than delighted. “Repent, for the Savior is at hand.”
July 2, 2000, would be a good day to make a personal declaration: “From today forward, I’m going to make it a priority to develop a relationship with Jesus Christ. Lord, I’m ready to take freedom’s road—I want to be under the rule of the Liberator.” Won’t you make that decision today?


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