Freedom and law
July 4 is celebrated each year in the United States, commemorating the birth of our nation at the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. It gives us an opportunity each year to think about freedom and national independence.
Now, come to think of it, the political leaders who signed the Declaration of Independence talked a lot about liberty, but they didn’t use the word freedom, and there is a difference in meaning between those two words.
For example, when it comes to Christianity, we have freedom, but not independence. Paul says that we are interdependent – we are dependent on one another. I am dependent on you, and you are dependent on me, and if I ignore you, then it is to my own detriment. Since God has distributed spiritual gifts to his people and no one has all of them, I am going to miss out if I am completely independent of everyone else, and you are going to miss out if you are completely independent. God made us in such a way that we should be with one another helping one another and being helped by one another.
OK, here’s another illustration. I saw on the news the other day that some people were arrested for selling illegal fireworks – firecrackers that were dangerous to the people that used them and dangerous to the people around them. I remember a long time ago when I was a college student and I had a summer job in the National Forest in southern Illinois. I was helping at a camp for teenage summer workers, and on the 4th of July I drove a small bus to some place where they had a fireworks show. Well, somebody threw a firecracker just behind my seat, and since it was inside the bus, the noise was pretty loud. My nerves were so shot that I cried for several hours.
And we hear stories of fireworks causing physical damage, too – burns, blindness, house fires, or other problems. These fireworks can be a problem, so the government regulates what kinds of fireworks can be sold and used in each city, and these guys had been selling illegal and dangerous fireworks.
And it occurred to me that there is something strange about people breaking the law in order to celebrate the birth of the country. Maybe they are taking this freedom thing a little too far – thinking that they have the freedom to sell dangerous stuff. They would like to be a little more independent, it seems – free from the laws of the state or city we happen to be in.
But the Declaration of Independence never imagined a nation that didn’t have any laws. In fact, the signers of the Declaration were official representatives from the legislatures of the various American colonies. They had been selected by legal means, and they were complaining that the King of England was not following the laws that he was supposed to. The American colonists wanted to be ruled by laws and not by the whim of a king.
So it seems to me that something has gone wrong when people want to celebrate the day illegally. They have forgotten that we are not independent of all law, but only independent from Great Britain. We are an independent nation, but we are a nation, and not a chaos in which everyone can do whatever they want. That’s because some people want to be dictators, and we cannot give them the freedom to do that.
Well, this is a worship service and not a discussion of political philosophy. So I would like to talk today about the role of freedom and law in the Christian life. In Galatians 5 verse 1, Paul says, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” Why did Christ set us free? So that we would have freedom!
So Paul says, “Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Christ has set you free, so be free! In verse 13 he says, “You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free.”
But what does this mean? Does it mean that we are free to do anything we want? Is Paul giving us liberty to take stuff from our neighbor? Is he giving us permission to kill people we don’t like? Is he saying it’s OK to be greedy and selfish?
Well, yes and no. If you want to be greedy, God won’t stop you. If you want to worship other gods, God won’t stop you. And if you want to commit adultery, God won’t stop you. But he won’t stop the consequences, either. If you jump off of a tall building, then God won’t stop the law of gravity. If you dabble in pornography, then God won’t stop the consequences of distorted ideas about sex. If you use any of God’s gifts in the wrong way, then God will not prevent the disappointments that are sure to follow.
God gives us permission to do what we want – we have had that permission for thousands of years. People do want they want to now, just like they did before. And the consequences are still there: When we ignore the advice that God gives us, we are going to get hurt, or we are going to hurt someone else, usually both, often in ways that we could not foresee. We might think, Oh, this isn’t going to hurt anyone, but God knows that it will, and that’s why he tells us not to do it. We can take his word for it, or we can find out for ourselves.
In verse 13, Paul says, “You were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.” If we let our carnal desires rule us, then we are in bondage rather than being free. Being totally free is simply not an option. The laws of biochemistry still operate within us, and if we use our liberty to eat too much junk food, then our physiology is going to suffer. We are free to do it, but we are not free from the consequences. We are free to insult our neighbor, but we are not free from the consequences if we do it. There are physical penalties for some things, social penalties for others, psychological penalties for others. It’s going to affect how happy we are.
And Paul is saying that if we use our freedom to act in a selfish way, it’s going to be bad for us. The best use of freedom, he says, is to “serve one another in love.” That is what will make us happiest in the long run. Freedom should be used to help other people.
Now, in the context of the book of Galatians, Paul is saying that we are freed from the law of Moses. Those laws and rituals do not apply to us. But that does not mean that everything Moses wrote can be thrown out the window. That’s because Moses wrote some laws that existed before he did. For example, he wrote that we should love our neighbor, and that we should love God. Those principles existed before the law of Moses was written, and they exist after the law of Moses came to an end, too.
We are free from the rituals that were added under Moses, because those rituals came to an end with Christ. But the other principles are still true, and that is why Paul tells us to use our freedom to serve other people. In verse 14 he says, “The entire law is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” Just as political freedom should not be turned into a license to do whatever we want, the freedom we have been given in Christ, in the same way, should not be turned into an excuse for selfishness and sin. With freedom comes responsibility. So when you celebrate your freedom, so do responsibly, whether you are celebrating the political freedoms we have in this country, or the spiritual freedom that we have in Christ.