Freedom in ChristNäide

Real freedom

Is growing up simply learning to accept enslavement – to bills, people’s expectations, work deadlines, our own feelings, fitness goals, family traditions, artificial stimulants and more? So many things seem to erode our sense of personal freedom. Even when we manage to free ourselves from one weight, something else soon takes its place. That’s why Christian freedom can’t be defined as the ability to do whatever we want, whenever we want. If that were so, we’d simply be trading one master for another – becoming slaves to a new tyrant: ourselves. Our fallen desires don’t liberate us but lead us deeper into bondage. Christian freedom is different and is the only real freedom there is. Our greatest bondage is to sin – and sin leads to death, which is exactly what Jesus came to free us from. He bore our penalty, and now we’re no longer under sin’s power or obligation. In Him, we are free from guilt and condemnation.

Yet that’s only one side of the story. Christian freedom isn’t just freedom from sin – it’s also freedom to live rightly before God. It’s the freedom to walk with Him in confidence, to live with a clean conscience, and to rest in the finished work of Jesus. It’s a freedom that reshapes our desires to align with the way God created us to live. This kind of freedom empowers us to lay down our rights for the sake of others. To love sacrificially. To forgive deeply. To serve willingly. That’s not weakness – that’s strength born of true freedom. So today, pause and ask yourself: ‘Am I walking in the freedom Christ died to give me? Am I using that freedom to serve others and honour God?’

Written by QUYNH EASTMAN