Here in Tennessee we sell fireworks year round. Just one of the freedoms we have here in the Volunteer state. Yet, like everywhere else the last few days and the days that follow will consist of loud booms and bright flashes from sea to shining sea.
It is a mark, an indicator of the freedom we celebrate here in the United States.
As you begin your barbeques or make your way to the lake or the slow crawl out of the local fireworks display, you may be reading these words. These are not political statements or conspiracy laced codes to solve. This is a sincere question for my friends who ascribe the life of apprenticeship of Jesus. What is real freedom?
While my country may tis of thy, what does my life tis? What liberty do I hold as a believer?
When Paul penned the letter to the church at Galatia, he writes these words “it is for freedom Christ set us free.” While familiar and verse that I have heard quoted from pulpit after pulpit, it is also a bit of a quandary. Let’s slow the verse down in half speed.
It is for FREEDOM Christ set us FREE. By Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection he paid the price of slavery sin kept us in. It is funny, I think we have read this verse with a ________ in the text willfully writing in why Jesus set us free. It is for prosperity, it is for blessing, it is for ministry, it is for…well whatever you put in the blank. While these are not necessarily bad things, they are even biblical in some ways, it is not what the text says. Jesus set us FREE simply to be FREE. It is both simple and complex.
Paul adds a warning on the end: don’t go back to the burden of slavery to sin. Here is the trouble – as former slaves of sin, sometimes we are not sure how to be free. We retreat to what we have always known. We yoke (a bible word meaning to be tied to) ourselves we what has been familiar even if it keeps us from being free.
So we return to our question, what does it mean to really be free?
The best I can describe it is to walk untethered, unchained, unhinged from the sin that entangles us. It is walking light and not burdened. It is entangling yourself in the one who sets and keeps you free – Jesus.
So as the bombs bursting in air light up your night sky, walk in that real freedom.
