November Pastor’s Ponderings

John 8:36 “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” NIV

 

As I look to what the world has become, where people take freedom to be able to say and do what they want even at the expense of others and even to the detriment and suffering of others I’ve been thinking about what it means to be free.

The African slaves on those plantations often could only look to death to be free from their white slave owners and sang about it to which we still have wonderful spirituals from those terrible days. Janis Joplin sang, “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.” And there is truth that when everything is taken away from us we truly are free. Freedom is also something that we probably all, at some point in our lives, take for granted.  How do you define your freedom? Freedom to say and do what we want regardless of how it might affect another.  Perhaps we couch those actions in attitudes that we’re just trying to do the right thing.  But what is the right thing?  Is it something that is of benefit to us or is it something that benefits our neighbor.  Soren Kierkegaard wrote, “People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which the seldom use.”  In Martin Luther’s work, “Freedom of a Christian” there are two elements:  Freedom and Bondage.  First “a Christian is perfectly free master of all, subject to none”.  Second “a Christian is perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all” statements from the Apostle Paul in Romans 13, as Luther points out “Love, by its very nature, is ready to serve and be subject to the one who is loved.”  He goes on to write that it is from the word of God that our souls are fed in order to do what we are called by God thru faith and here he writes, “From faith flows forth love and joy to the lord, and from love a joyful, willing and free mind that serves one’s neighbor willingly and takes no account of praise or blame of gain or loss.  We don’t serve so that we put others under obligations.  We don’t distinguish between friends and enemies or anticipate thanks:  We spend ourselves freely…as our God-our Father does, distributing all things to all, richly and freely…We Christians do not live to ourselves, but in Christ and in our neighbors…We live in Christ through faith and in our neighbor thru love.  By faith we are caught up beyond ourselves into God.  By love we descend beneath ourselves into our neighbors.”  Our freedom is given us by God to act out of love, thru love and because of love given to us unconditionally that we to may do the same and in this is true Freedom that we, too, can be a living sacrifice for others. It is God’s Son who makes us free and only through Christ Jesus can we truly be free for with him we need have no fear but have received the faith in Christ through the Holy Spirit we can be truly free to act toward each other and all around out of the unconditional love that we are given by God. I have often said that I’m a follower of Christ, as my father always said, “Christ is my Christianity”. So let Christ be that for all of us, not a person, not a nation, not a movement for those things are still tainted with the world, but rather let us hold to that faith given us in Christ Jesus and share it freely!