Slaves to Freedom?


Old Leg irons

Image via Wikipedia

All men want freedom to do as they please.  And look how we balk and complain when we are forced, by any means, to do something we don’t want to do.  Listen to how many grumble as they are required to end their weekend and serve others on Monday morning.   Listen to them as 5 pm comes nearer.  Listen how they cheer as the moment comes near for them to be released back to their “freedom”.

Billions have lived their entire life chained to the will of others.  We called them slaves and prisoners; the masses of men, women, and children who lived under the horrible hand of someone else’s ideals.  It was the life they knew from birth to death.  Did they complain also?  Of course they did!  But they were not able to gain even one second of freedom more than the one allowed who ruled over their very breath.

It is not acceptable before God to grumble at restrictions placed on you.  It is honorable, however, before God to accept these restrictions with a certain joy; knowing that we are but a short number of years in this place of testing.  I know I speak the truth in this.  Yet I also know I will find myself grumbling today because I am forced to wait for someone else as they push their way in front of me.  How pitiful is man that he should know to do good yet not be able to find the ability to do it.

Christians are those who are learning to submit to the absolute rule of the One who made them.  We serve Jesus because He shows us that He knows what is best.  We love, because He first Loved us and gave His life for us.  He has said, “Whoever would be first will be last”.  And He has said, “”If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.  24  For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.  25  What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self ?” (Luke 9).

Men crave freedom.  Jesus tells us clearly that freedom in Christ Jesus is not the freedom of man.  We are set free, not of submission as a slave, but set free to serve as a slave to righteousness.  So let us consider how to spur ourselves and others into a life of service to the Most High God through the Spirit.  Jesus plainly said to us that He would ask the Father and the Spirit would be sent to His people to guide us into all righteousness.  Are you a willing participant in the things of God through Jesus?  Or are you still looking to be set free, as men count freedom?