Stand Firm - The Freedom We Stand For
- Paul Downie
- 25 minutes ago
- 23 min read
Galatians 5:1 NIV
[1] It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
In 1990, the Soup Dragons, a Scottish band from close to where we live had a massive hit with a cover of a thirty-five year old song by the Rolling Stones. But then, 1990 was a very exciting year. Former Communist dominoes had tumbled all over Eastern Europe. Dictatorships had fallen one after the other with astonishing regularity. So a song called ‘I’m Free’ just hit the zeitgeist and was played just about everywhere. It was almost anthemic.
It had a chorus line that resonated with the culture at the time. It was just so optimistic and upbeat. It was the words ‘I’m free to do what I want any old time.’
Just one problem:
It’s not true.
It was never true.
It will never be true.
You see, nowadays we have a pretty warped idea of what freedom is. To be fair, we can’t blame this generation: previous generations have had the same view for as long as anyone can remember.
People view freedom like the Soup Dragons viewed it, and the Rolling Stones before them. They view it as the freedom to determine what I want to do and to do it.
The problem is, as we have found out in our modern day, that my freedom often infringes on your freedom. And so what develops is not freedom, but a situation where the strong bully the weak and take away their freedom.
Freedom becomes freedom only for those who can afford it.
Some have become freedom ‘absolutists’. They believe that everyone should have the freedom to do whatever they want and say whatever they want without anyone restricting that freedom.
It sounds like paradise.
It’s actually hell.
Human beings cannot be trusted with that level of freedom. It’s just not in our nature.
That is not freedom, that is anarchy. In an anarchic system, people are not free. Instead, they are tyrannised by those who have more resources than them.
So we come back to a freedom only for those who can afford it, and no freedom for anyone else.
We are left, then, with some very big questions:
What is freedom?
How do I know if I am free?
How do I become free?
Galatians is a book about freedom.
It’s a book about breaking free, what it means to be free and how to remain free. It tells us what we should break free from and how to ensure that we stay there.
But before we go any further and examine this glorious book, we must first define our terms by asking ourselves What is Freedom?
What is Freedom?
John 8:36 NIV
[36] So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
When you learn another language, you very quickly learn that words that sound the same in both languages do not mean the same . For example, the English word ‘No’ is a negative response, but in Czech, ‘No’ does not mean ‘No’, it actually the shortened version of ‘Ano’, which means ‘Yes’.
If a Scottish person tells you they are ‘cald’, they are cold, but if a Romanian tells you they are ‘cald’, they are warm.
You can imagine the many misunderstandings.
Freedom, as I said before, means different things to different people.
Particularly in certain countries, where freedom seems to be defined by the right to live your life as you choose without government interference or taxation.
A kind of civilised anarchy, if you will. Which quickly becomes uncivilised. Which is why those countries often have very high rates of gun ownership and violence and a sense that humans are disposable.
It should come as a sizeable relief to us all that this is not at all the Biblical view of freedom.
Because, as much as it is a huge insult to our independence, we are not free to do whatever we want.
We live in a universe of cause and effect, of gravity and entropy. The things we do have consequences. We cannot always do whatever we want because there will be consequences for our actions. We have to weigh up decisions and consider what could happen.
We are not free of nature, no matter how much we might fill ourselves with silicone and collagen and chemicals and vitamins. It will make no difference in the end.
Ecclesiastes 9:11 NIV
[11] I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.
Jesus Christ did not set us free from them.
We are also not free of government. The New Testament could not be more clear: we are to respect the leaders God has placed over us, whoever they are (Matthew 22:15-22; Romans 13:1-7; Titus 3:1-2; 1 Peter 2:13-17).
There is no get-out clause in this command. There is no exclusion. There is no excuse for withholding taxes or failing to obey the authorities, except where to do so would place the authorities over you in a higher position than God.
There is no excuse for any Christian to rise up and overthrow any government anywhere.
Jesus Christ did not set us free from them.
We are also not free from morality.
This is very important. Our faith does not confer on us the right to behave as we wish and simply take Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for granted. As Paul told the Roman church:
Romans 6:1-2 NIV
[1] What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? [2] By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?
As we will see when we move into James, our faith should fuel our behaviour, not be a licence or an excuse misbehaviour. If someone sees you behaving badly and says to another person, ‘You’ll have to excuse him, he’s a Christian’, then the only conclusion I can reach is that you are not.
So what is freedom for Christians? What does it actually mean?
Jesus explained it:
John 8:31-32 NIV
[31] To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. [32] Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
We are set free to be the people God made us to be by obeying Him and keeping His commands. The freedom we have is a freedom do the right thing, not a freedom to do the wrong thing.
Why?
Think about it: what happens when we sin?
Don’t we quickly tie ourselves in knots of lies? Don’t we become dependent and addicted? Don’t we diminish our freedom and that of other people?
The only true freedom that can ever be found is freedom in Christ. Everything else is just another form of slavery to sin (Romans 6:16-18).
True freedom is not doing what we want. That will eventually result in a loss of freedom.
True freedom is living life how God wants.
How can we understand this?
Near where we live there are some fields. In those fields, there are some sheep. Around the fields with sheep there are fences. Within the fields, the sheep have a lot of freedom and more than plenty of grass. Outside the field, there is danger, with steep inclines down to the bottom of a ravine, where there is a river.
Now, a slightly confused animal rights activist might consider that the sheep are not free. They might decide to cut the fence and let them go, but that would be a mistake. Outside of the confines of their field, the ‘freedom’ for those sheep would be ‘freedom’ to be harmed and potentially killed. Inside the fields and behind the fences, they are safe.
That’s how it is with us. Within the confines of God’s commands, we are safe. We are free. We are provided for. Our life is good.
Outside of His commands, there is danger: danger of harm, dependency, addiction. Danger of living under the lordship of a pretender who does not have our best interests at heart and will happily exploit us for their own gain.
That is why Jesus said this:
John 10:10 NIV
[10] The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
True freedom only comes with obedience to God.
But, you see, there is another form of freedom that is talked about in Galatians. It’s a type of freedom that is not talked about so much nowadays for fear that it might be misunderstood, but it is still a freedom all the same.
That freedom is freedom from dead ritual and religion.
Paul should know better than anyone what that meant. He was part of the most strict Jewish sect, the Pharisees (Philippians 3:1-6). Yet God had called him to surrender all that he was and be made new (Philippians 3:7-14).
He stated to a different church that these rules had actually little value when it came to making him a better person:
Colossians 2:20-23 NIV
[20] Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: [21] “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? [22] These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings. [23] Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.
Worse, Paul noted that the very existence of the laws of his previous life as a Jew became for him a temptation that led him to be trapped in sin (Romans 7:7-13).
The Galatians were being infiltrated by a group of Jews who were trying to convince them that they, as Gentiles, had to become Jews before they became Christians. This idea would soon be discussed and rejected (Acts 15:1-29). However, there were plainly many who would not agree with the Apostles’ decision and sought to impose their way of life on other people.
We don’t see that type of legalism too much nowadays. However, it rears it’s ugly head in other ways. There are those who insist on political affiliation or membership of a denomination or performance of certain rituals or agreement with narrow theologies or adherence to dress codes before they accept you as a Christian.
Paul tears that apart in Galatians (Galatians 3:26-29).
Because it is wrong. Completely and utterly wrong.
That is captivity.
We have been set free.
That kind of thinking is just not for us anymore.
Now we understand the nature of true freedom, we need to look at Who Freed Us.
Who Freed Us
Galatians 5:1 NIV
[1] It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.
Not long after we got married, we got involved in a bit of a family situation. My wife’s aunt had decided, without consulting with anyone, to take a job caring for an elderly couple in Taiwan. We thought this was likely to be a good thing when we heard about it.
But we were wrong.
She had taken out a loan to pay the recruiter’s fee so she could go. After a year of hard work, the profit from the job was small, because she had to pay back her loan. When my wife’s family heard, they were really concerned.
So we decided to club together to pay her to cook and clean for my wife’s parents. That way she could earn extra money and still stay in the Philippines.
We freed her from a bad financial situation.
The consistent picture in Galatians, and beyond, is one that may trouble us. And we should be troubled. Slavery is wrong. It was never right. There is no justification. We should be scandalised and horrified by it.
But in Paul’s day, it was said that around a third of all people alive in the Roman Empire were slaves of some description, which is an incredible statistic.
Paul is not condoning slavery. Not one bit. But he is using it as a picture to explain what Jesus did for us on the cross:
Romans 6:15-23 NIV
[15] What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! [16] Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? [17] But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. [18] You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. [19] I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. [20] When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. [21] What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! [22] But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. [23] For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
It’s a picture of two masters: one selfish, hate-filled and abusive, the other selfless, love-filled and nurturing. We were enslaved by the former. That master represents sin. The latter master saw our pathetic state, took pity on us and offered us the opportunity to be bought by Him, so He could set us free of the abusive master to serve Him.
That is what Jesus did on the cross. He paid the price for us to be set free from sin and serve Him.
The Bible teaches that He not only paid the price to redeem us from slavery, He also raised up to the status of adopted sons:
Galatians 4:1-7 NIV
[1] What I am saying is that as long as an heir is underage, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. [2] The heir is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. [3] So also, when we were underage, we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world. [4] But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, [5] to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. [6] Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” [7] So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.
Again, Paul is using a picture from his day to explain something so utterly glorious that it would be hard for us to comprehend it otherwise. We were in thrall to sin. Jesus died to set us free to serve God. Because of His glorious work on the cross, we are not just nameless slaves. Instead, we are elevated to the heights of being children of God:
John 1:12-13 NIV
[12] Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— [13] children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
Galatians 3:26-27 NIV
[26] So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, [27] for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
1 John 3:1-3 NIV
[1] See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. [2] Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. [3] All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
This is glorious!
So we have been freed from slavery to sin and dead religion by Jesus Christ.
But let’s double back again. After seeing the meaning of freedom and who freed us, let’s look at From What Are We Freed.
From What Are We Freed
1 Peter 1:18-19 NIV
[18] For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, [19] but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.
If you’ve ever been snagged by something – maybe a bush or a vine or a rope – it’s normally pretty obvious what it is that has snagged you.
But there are times when it isn’t. Fish are often caught unawares in nets. One of the Psalmists used a quite vivid picture from their culture of someone having been caught unawares and escaped:
Psalms 124:7 NIV
[7] We have escaped like a bird from the fowler’s snare; the snare has been broken, and we have escaped.
The writer to the Hebrews talks of two things that ensnare us:
Hebrews 12:1 NIV
[1] Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.
Peter, as we have seen, describes them as being the ‘empty way of life handed down to us by our forefathers’.
Paul picks up that idea in Galatians, but extends it. The church in Galatia is, just like the warning in Hebrews, caught up in two snares.
One of them is the empty way of life handed down by their forefathers: that of sin:
Galatians 5:16-18 NIV
[16] So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. [17] For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. [18] But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
They had come from an idolatrous Graeco-Roman background where paganism and immorality were rife. The temptation to return to it was always strong.
Likewise, we live in a culture where ignorance of God and the worship of idols is rampant, and where this had become true:
Isaiah 5:20-21 NIV
[20] Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. [21] Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight.
The pull of our immoral pagan culture will always be there. However, we have been freed from that abusive, hate-filled situation. Going back there would be like approaching a kidnapper to kidnap us again because we don’t like freedom.
It would make no sense at all.
That life is not for us anymore.
But, as we saw earlier, there is another empty way of life, that of religion – dead religion and vain rituals.
These are situations when we carry out religious acts again and again and again with the idea that they will somehow improve our standing before God and get us into heaven.
They won’t.
This is what the writer to the Hebrews says about his former religion, and about Jesus Christ, who is ‘this priest’ in these verses:
Hebrews 10:11-14 NIV
[11] Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. [12] But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, [13] and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. [14] For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.
The Jewish sacrificial system, with its blood sacrifices, was meant to point to the greater sacrifice Jesus would make on the cross (Hebrews 9:11-14). Jesus fulfilled it perfectly (Hebrews 8). He rendered it obsolete. There was, and is, no further need for it.
Jesus also fulfilled the needs and the longings of every other religion in the world. Religion is mankind’s search for something beyond themselves, for better, for the eternal. Jesus is all of that and a lot more.
Take Him out of the equation and every religion, every philosophy, every way of life, is hollow and empty. It is as confused as a compass without a magnet.
The thing is that without Jesus, religion becomes like a runner on a treadmill. We might be getting fitter. We might be getting better. But we actually aren’t going anywhere, certainly not to heaven.
We are stuck in a cycle of doing the same things over and over and over again that bring us no closer to God. All the time, the idea remains in our head that somehow that might work; that somehow something we do will make a difference.
But it is arrogance to think so.
Why?
Because we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone.
We are saved by God’s work, not ours.
And to even suggest otherwise is an insult to all that Jesus achieved on the cross.
So Jesus set us free from a mindset of sin and a mindset of dead, useless religion.
But there is also the question of why? Why Did He Free Us?
Why Did He Free Us?
Colossians 2:13-15 NIV
[13] When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, [14] having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. [15] And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’.
That’s what they say anyway. There is a ring of truth to it. There are so many people out there who seem to be providing us with a great offer, but we soon see they have ulterior motives.
There is a good reason why drug dealers offer the first hit free of charge.
Some of us might bring that cynicism to the Gospel. ‘Why did Jesus free me? What was His angle?’ they might ask.
The answer is: He didn’t have one.
Right from the beginning, Jesus was a paragon of absolute and complete integrity:
1 John 1:5 NIV
[5] This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.
There is no hidden motive. There is no commercial angle. The Bible says Jesus freed you so that you would be free, and He did it because of this reason:
Galatians 1:3-5 NIV
[3] Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, [4] who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, [5] to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
What’s more, it brought God pleasure to do so (Ephesians 1:3-10).
Imagine that: your freedom makes God happy!
But why does it make Him happy?
Because God loves you.
1 John 4:9-10 NIV
[9] This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. [10] This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
This is a truly astonishing situation.
We were slaves to sin – to everything our God hates, because sin is hatred and God is love.
Yet God loved us and sent His Son to die for us, bearing the punishment we deserved, to free us from that sin. He purchased us on His own blood so that we can go free and serve Him.
So, for me, that leads to two conclusions:
Number 1: Why don’t we accept His offer and go free?
Number 2: Why would we ever choose to be enslaved again?
Having seen, then, what freedom is, who freed us, from what are we freed and why He freed us, we have one final point we need to understand: How do we stay free?
How Do We Stay Free?
Galatians 5:1 NIV
[1] It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
A few weeks previous to my writing of this blog post, we had a guest preacher in our church. He told of how his church had tried their best to win drug addicts to Christ. That much had worked. They had made their confession of faith and been baptised.
But the pull of their addiction was strong. They had all lapsed back into taking drugs.
Leaving sin and addiction behind is hard. Temptation is a constant threat to our feelings of security.
However, as we saw in an early study, temptation is something that comes from us and so we can control it (James 1:13-15). The key to beating temptation to sin is to firmly believe in the goodness of God (1 Corinthians 10:13).
That is where we see two pieces of firm advice in our text in Galatians that tell us how to maintain our freedom.
The first of these is to stand firm. The Greek word here is in a continuous tense. That means this is not a ‘one off, one and done’ action. It’s something we need to keep doing every day.
We need to stand firm. We need to resist.
The same type of language is used in the famous passage about the Armour of God, and it’s used four times (Ephesians 6:10-20).
We, as believers, should not defend our God-given freedoms with violence. That is not our way:
Romans 12:19 NIV
[19] Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.
Hebrews 10:31 NIV
[31] It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
The call here is not at all to attack those who threaten our freedom. We are not called to make a pre-emptive strike. That is not God’s way.
Neither is it a call to campaign to remove things that encroach on our freedoms: the casinos, gambling shops, bars, drug dispensaries, loan sharks, pawn shops, lap dancing clubs, red light zones or even the pornography producers. These things are not healthy for our cultures. They are only ever a source of harm. Nothing good comes from them.
But this is not a call to campaign to rid our lands of them.
The job of counsellors and politicians to restrict these things and run them out of town. It is not the job of rank and file Christians.
Instead, it is a call for us to stand firm, for us to keep standing firm, for us to model the free way of life.
Christians in the past have been known as killjoys, as those who campaign for abstinence from things this world thinks are fun. We aren’t known for living free with a smile on our face and showing that we enjoy life.
But that is what we should be. We should stand firm and show the world that we are free, and that our freedom is to be enjoyed.
We should be providing a viable alternative. We should be holding out the Word of Life.
We should be offering them the freedom we have with a smile on our face.
Maybe the reason why they don’t accept what we have to say is that we are too joyless. We don’t entice them to freedom because we don’t look free.
But we should. Because that is how we stand firm.
However, we should also stand firm against killjoy, legalistic religion that teaches the only way to heaven is by following their rules. This includes both churches like the Orthodox church in Sighișoara, Romania that had ‘This is the gate to heaven’ written over it.
No, it isn’t.
But it also includes Protestant preachers like one I saw in the Philippines who had the audacity to preach that the truth could only be found in his church, and all other churches were liars.
That isn’t true either.
Both are wrong.
Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. It cannot be added to. Nothing can be taken from it.
So insistence on dress codes, versions of the Bible, niche theologies, rituals, rites and special prayers are all wrong. All of it.
None can save you.
Only Christ.
We are called to stand firm against such things.
But we are also called to not submit to them again.
And the picture here is shocking.
The picture is of a wooden yoke, to which slaves were fettered like beasts of burden and made to carry a heavy load or to plough a field.
It was degrading. It was dehumanising. It was utterly wrong.
Yet Paul is saying that when we submit to slavery to sin or empty religion, that is what we become: less than human. A beast of burden.
We degrade ourselves.
Despite having already been there, having already borne that yoke of slavery.
The very idea should shock us to the core.
And that is why we must keep standing firm.
Conclusion
Galatians 5:1 NIV
[1] It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
There is such a thing as Stockholm Syndrome. It occurs when a kidnapping victim has been in captivity for a long time. They get used to the regularity, the routine, however negative it is. They develop an empathy for their kidnappers and an understanding of their cause.
So when they are freed, they find freedom overwhelming. As crazy as it might seem, they actually long to be captive again.
They would rather be kidnapped than free!
I have even seen a version of it in former Communist countries, where people decry the deprivations and the loss of dignity they experienced in their early days under capitalism and actually long to lose their freedom under Communism once more.
Paul is asking the Galatians to guard themselves against a spiritual Stockholm syndrome: against a longing to be in captivity once more.
It wasn’t a new phenomenon.
Lot’s wife suffered from it (Genesis 19:26).
The Jews suffered from it when they left slavery in Egypt (Acts 7:39).
And now the Early Church was facing it – not just in Galatia, but across the known world.
As illogical as it might sound, often when we have broken free of the sin that held us captive, we are sometimes tempted to go back.
The very idea stunned Paul. That’s the reason for this direct and uncompromising plea for the Galatians. He gave them five sound reasons to stay free:
We are free to do what is right, not what is wrong.
We have been freed by God Himself, sending Jesus Christ to die on the cross to pay the price of our freedom. It didn’t come cheaply.
We have been freed from a hate-filled, abusive life, where people were taking advantage of us for their own ends.
We were freed because God loves us and longs for us to have the best possible life
We should remember the life we once lived, stand firm in our new life and not go back to being enslaved again.
I was listening to some music on Spotify when an advert came on from a casino. It was for ten free spins on their virtual slot machines. It sounded very enticing. But then, after setting our their lure, they issued their terms and conditions so quickly that they were easily missed.
You could only win a maximum of £100. Well, that didn’t sound so bad. Better in my wallet than theirs.
But then came the real kicker: you had to gamble your winnings at least ten times before you could withdraw them.
That was really sneaky.
You might win some money, but what was the chance you would keep it over another ten bets?
In casinos the house always wins. That is just a fact. Gambling is not set up to make gamblers money. It is set up to make gambling companies money.
Do you seriously think they will set up the games and calculate the odds to make you rich?
Of course not!
It’s the same with loans. Most lenders are not charities. They don’t loan money so you can fulfil your dreams. Their primary aim is to make money. Your dream fulfilment is just the lure to make you want to give them your money.
It’s the same with empty religion. Can they honestly deliver on their promises? Of course not! They aren’t God! The whole thing is designed to make you serve them and provide them with your hard-earned wealth.
But real religion, real faith, real love liberates. It frees from the demands of addiction to sin or to empty religion. It sets us free to worship God and live a worthwhile life.
Which is why we have to stand form and not let anyone take our freedom from us.
There is a good reason why the first drug deal is free, or why credit card providers offer free balance transfers or low interest for a few months, or why casinos have free games, or why supermarkets offer cheap deals on alcohol, cigarettes or vapes, or why free porn is so easily available.
These things are addictive.
There was a reason why the first version of Coca Cola contained a cocaine derivative.
It’s all for the same reason. Addiction, while grossly immoral, provides businesses with guaranteed repeat customers. Repeat customers mean profit.
They have little care at all about the effects their products have on us.
Why would they?
They can’t even see us from their yachts or penthouse suites. They don’t have to contribute to our health care from their offshore accounts.
There is a reason why empty religionists make promises they cannot keep and ask for our devotion. The donations in the offering plate pay their salaries. And more.
If you have something precious to you, then you treat it with care. You keep it safe. You lock it away. You don’t let just anyone handle it.
Your freedom in Christ is of inestimable value. It cost your Lord His life. It is the most precious thing you own.
Don’t give it away.
Not to anyone.
Least of all for free.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, I confess the times when I have surrendered my freedom for nothing and have ended up being caught in behaviours that were wrong, or in a false religion which taught me my salvation could be earned. Please forgive me. I accept the freedom You bought for me. Help me to see off any threats to take it from me,. Amen.
Questions
What are the things Paul says in Galatians can take away our freedom in Christ? What aspects of modern life can do the same?
What five reasons does Paul give us to stay free?
Where do you need help in standing free and maintaining your freedom? How can you get this help?
Comments