Jesus comes as Truth to save us from bondage. This devotion looks at one way that Truth provides us freedom.
Nuggets
- The inability to be obedient to the law was to show the Jews that we need a Savior.
- We aren’t freed from our sins so we can just go on our merry way and keep on doing what we’ve been doing.
- More than just keeping the do’s and don’ts of the law, it needs to build character.
- We can’t just sit back and listen to the pastors preach and not do anything.
- The freedom that the Truth brings does not give us license to continue to sin.
Devotions in the What I Believe series
Devotions in the Religious Freedom category
Truth in Freedom
Jesus the Liberator
What Religious Freedom Doesn’t Mean
In this series, we’ve been talking about the freedom we receive when we accept the gift of salvation. We started out by using a passage in John 8.
We are going to pick out verses from that passage again to structure our discussion. We are going to put them with new ones to show how Jesus is the reason we receive spiritual freedom. Hopefully, this will tie up all of the previous devotions in a nice bow.
We’ve been using Sunday School Times’ sermon entitled Bondage and Freedom to serve as the foundation for the last two devotions. We do still have one point to pick up at the appropriate time.
We are going to use a different sermon for this devotion: Sunday School Times’ A Glorious Liberator. It is going to have to be split. I will put in nuggets from previous devotions, so we don’t have to backtrack too much.
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Let's Put It into Context #1
Freedom is, according to the Holman Bible Dictionary, “the ability of a person or group to be and do what they want instead of being controlled by another.” It is also referred to as liberty.
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We talked about liberty before. We said that it runs the gamut, hitting all the things the worldview stresses.
• We do what we please with no authority over us.
• We make our own choices.
• We don’t have to follow rules or limits.
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
Let's Put It into Context #2
“Jesus responded, ‘Truly I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin’” (Jn. 8: 34 CSB).
- Before mankind are children of God, they are sinners. The main issue was Adam and Eve’s disobedience. They did not submit their will and lives to God.
- Satan was there to nudge them into disobedience. The choice was all theirs.
- Satan may be sneaky in tempting us, but his objective is deadly. He wants us to remain spiritually dead.
- It comes down to sin. We disobey God when we don’t follow His laws and commandments. We disobey when He tells us to move somewhere, do something, or don’t do something – and we don’t, don’t, or do.
It comes down to sin because it does come down to submission. “No one can serve two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money” (Mt. 6: 24 CSB).
At first glance, we may refute that statement. How many of us serve spouses and employers at the same time — even if we don’t call them masters?
The thing is we don’t serve them equally all the time. We end up juggling. “Oh, yes, honey. I can take you to your doctor’s appointment tomorrow, but I have to work late tonight to finish up this important project first.”
God doesn’t want to be juggled.
It seems like, when we are trying to serve two masters, we truly serve one and give the other lip service. Instead, we need to serve as Cooper advised: “… with faithfulness and singleness of heart, with a mind wholly given to his service.” Anything less than wholeheartedly is lip service.
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We can’t serve God and Satan because they are polar opposites. Think about it. What are their objectives?
God is only asking us to give up sin. He is not requiring us to starve or go without shelter. He is going to provide for us. He will give us what we need.
God wants to give us love and peace. Satan wants to fill us with hatred and chaos — even to the point of murder. There is no way we can serve both.
But God is asking that we get the obedience to heart level. It has to change our character. That is going to take our full focus.
Changing our character is the opposite of what Satan wants. Satan, on the other hand, gives us the illusion that he will give us what we want. This illusion creates the bondage.
Satan wants us to continue in sin. His objective is mankind’s destruction. He wants us to worship him but not for our sakes — for his.
God requires us to choose a master. We have to choose either to submit to Him or keep going on with Satan’s lies.
We have to remember that God doesn’t really need us. He could do fine without us.
We can’t live without Him.
Truth Brings Freedom
“You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (Jn. 8: 32 CSB).
- Because this was totally different from what the Jews had grown up believing, Jesus was trying to correct was their reliance on tradition and rituals instead of a relationship with God.
- Jesus told them that they would “… know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (Jn. 8: 32 CSB) if they would continue in His Word.
- The Truth will set us free because Jesus is the Truth. He sets us free because He has redeemed us and paid the penalty for our sins.
- Jesus is Truth, but we don’t gain freedom until we know him. But it is more than just head knowledge. It is heart knowledge.
Ooo, baby. I have to process this. I pulled the verses the new sermon said to, and I couldn’t quite figure out how all of this went under truth. So, let’s try this. I found this next verse to try to corral the other ones.
“For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace” (Rom. 6: 14 NIV).
We have to understand why the law was given. Burder reminded us that the law “… was introduced among the Jews, not that they might be justified by it, but that, by discovering how far they fell short of the obedience it required, they might be more deeply impressed with a sense of their abounding sins; and thus it became a schoolmaster to lead them to Christ (Galatians 3:24), and that so, where sin had abounded, grace might much more abound (Romans 5:20).”
Did you get all of that?
- There is no way the Jews — or us — can keep all the laws and the commandments.
- That inability to be obedient to the law was to show them that we need a Savior.
- When we search for our Savior, we will find Him.
- Finding Him will get us access to His grace, which is more abundant than our sins.
Here we are turning from sin to Truth. That puts us under grace rather than the law.
“You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness” (Rom. 6: 18 NIV).
But we aren’t freed from our sins so we can just go on our merry way and keep on doing what we’ve been doing. We are called to change and worship.
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It isn’t that disciples exchange one captivity for another. Liddon explained it as, “A Christian lives under a system of restrictions and obligations; and yet he is free.”
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God is a God of love, not tyranny. He calls us for our good, not His. He is true to us and asks us to be true to Him.
“But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law” (Gal. 5: 18 ESV).
Okay, we spent a whole series talking about being walking in the Spirit as He leads.
- Walking is the term used to describe how we live our lives. It specifically means that we are to live following God’s laws and commands.
- The flesh is our human nature. It is considered naturally corrupt because it pursues what is pleasing, not necessarily what God commands. It is the root of sin and evil.
- We gain salvation by the Holy Spirit taking us to the Father using the Son as the way. He does this by interpreting the Scriptures for us.
- But it is more than just not walking in the flesh anymore. It is not walking under the law, also.
- More than just keeping the do’s and don’ts of the law, it needs to build character. Building character makes it about who we are and what we believe, not do’s and don’ts.
- God through His Holy Spirit will have to bring about any changes in us that come from the victories we experience.
- Our desires are still within us after conversion, which we deal with by working out our salvation.
- God calls us to give our spiritual nature top billing at all times.
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“But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing” (Jas. 1: 25 ESV).
I know. James couldn’t have been any more confusing if he tried.
Elaine-speak. Being a disciple isn’t a spectator sport. We all have to suit up and be on the field.
We’ve got to ABCD and do what God wants us to do. We can’t just sit back and listen to the pastors preach and not do anything. Believing in Jesus as our Savior should make us want to do something.
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to
live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
“Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God's slaves” (I Pet. 2: 16 NIV).
God gives us freedom in a variety of areas. He does give us political and social freedom as well as intellectual freedom, as noted by Liddon.
Most importantly, God has given us moral freedom. Liddon wrote, “He has broken the chains which fettered the human will, and has restored to it its buoyancy and its power. What had been lost was more than regained in Christ.”
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I really like Carpenter’s definition of freedom. He wrote, “Freedom is the educated capacity to live according to the capacity of our being.”
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You mean I have the freedom to be a ballerina? I’ve always thought it would be neat to be a ballerina. Twirling around, gracefully moving from one place to another.
What? There are still limitations on freedom???? What do you mean I have to have the skill??????? Can’t I just point my toes and go???????????
Well, yes. Carpenter did have to tack on that capacity-of-our-being part.
The “… cover-up for evil …” (I Pet. 2: 16 NIV) part is interesting. God doesn’t intend salvation to be a bandaid on the boo boos of our sin. He is doing surgery here. He is removing the sin.
That is why we say we need to change our character. God wants the old out, so it can be replaced by the new.
The freedom that the Truth brings does not give us license to continue to sin. Oh, we may want to keep our pet sin, but we can’t.
Making the Connections
Is it obvious why we need to make a decision? There is only one decision: are we throwing in with Satan or are we submitting to God?
If we go the Satan route, we will find misery. We will have to pay the consequences for sin.
If we ABCD, the consequences have been paid for by Jesus. We are assured eternity in Heaven.
This is why God can expect us to make this decision.
• God created us.
• He redeemed us.
• He knows what is best for us.
Making the Connections to Self-Discipline
We’ve been looking at defending our beliefs when we are witnessing. That means we have to be secure enough to convince someone to accept our beliefs.
Our questions should still serve us to determine on what we need to focus.
- What does the Scriptures say?
- What do I believe?
- Why do I believe the same/differently than the Scriptures?
- What are the talking points when witnessing to a non-believer?
Related Links
I have created a worksheet of the questions above. Click on the button below to access it.
How Do We Apply This?
• Make God our priority.
• Frequently evaluate our relationships with God.
• Conducting our lives with the right motives.
• Exhibit a character pleasing to God.
• Follow God’s laws and commandments as well as the laws our government enforce.
• Use our resources to expand God’s kingdom.
The Truth sets us free – when we accept. When we choose God, He chooses us because Jesus died so that we could.
Father. We hear Your Truth. We accept Your Truth. Amen.
What do you think?
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