Freedom!

Recently, My thinking has been taking a significant change on the subject of freedom.
When I was younger I was engage by many liberal to leftist on the subject of freedom from their point of view.
The secualr view of freedom means that we can make up the rules as we go along. "Does God exist? You decide!" "Is the bible in infallible? You decide!" " what is right or wrong? You decide!"

I realized the idea of man being the measure of all things is stupid? Because while man may judge, yet he can never affect reality.

So I though that we must instead bow down before the Rule of God and hope he has mercy upon upon us.

I would experiment with the mystical christian view of freedom. Because it puts a positive spin on living and says that we are set free by christ.
Yet, Christian mystics(many times charismatic, though not always) tend to emphasize a subjective move of the spirit. Now I have come to the conviction and have debated repeatedly that we can personally be led by the spirit of beyond our mental facilties and scripture knowledge. However if this movement of the spiritis the final authority we are lost because it is the responsibility of the believer to interpret our experiences. Mstics often have a tendency to interpret the bible in a way that is very lose and only allows philosophical principles and not speacific rules or answers. So the letter of the Law is rejected for the sake of the spirit.
Yet our Lord in Matthew 5 clearly teaches the complete authority of the Bible down to the jot and tittle.
so I rejected the Christian mystic view of freedom.
I resorted back to a guilt based freedom and ethic where we have been set free to be God's slaves.

Yet two things have slowly awakened me to a new understanding of freedom.
The first was an article by John Piper entitled "Brothers, Beware of the debtors ethic"
Piper argues that since we have been Justified by the grace of God we need to be free from a debt mentality. Because, if we live out our morals based on guilt then we will be essentially trying to act on the same works based self-righteousness that the Judaizers did which ends up in the sins of the flesh.

Now Piper's answer basically ends up in the mysticism camp where we focus on inner spirituality. We focus on gratitude, but we are still dependent upon our experiences to serve God. If the spirit is not moving then what? Do we break God' law in the spirit? Or do we refuse to follow christ and stop ministering because the spirit didn't move us?

At the same time Piper's critic was did on the money.

Second over the pas few years I have been studying the subject of church government. As well as government and administration in general. I have seen where, when a group is given liberty they are capable of competing and serving at higher levels than ever.

Read Baptist theologian E. Y. Mullins I came to realize that God's Sovereignty places our sole repsonsibilities to Him. That all people are under his direct and Sovereign rule. That when we let tyrants rule over others that they are infact becoming God's and idols.
The it hit me!

Freedom is the goal of the Christian life.
God is our ruler, yet he is not a tyrant.
His rules are not the oppressive rules of slavery.

God alowed people to call Him El or Elohim. This title was one canaanites used of other gods, it simply meant "God or god". Yet God never accepted the title "Baal" which means "master"

I remember once read a promotion commercial page for the NLT Bible comparing the views of Romans 1. In the NLT it sad Paul was a slave to God. However the literal translation was bond-servant. I liked the emotion of the word slave. Yet the Bible literally says bondservant. Because a bondservant freely serves their master not out of compulsion.

We are Gods servants not His slaves!

Gods laws set us free!

If we serve only one God we do not have to serve any other God!
If no one steals we have property rights etc.

But you see man's laws are the laws which enslave!
Most of our calamities in life is due to the enslaving of our selves or others.

God wants us to not only follow his laws but to be free from the laws of the world!

The problem which we have been running into over the years is that we have been breaking God's laws to serve other gods. Whether they are in Government, business, family, or even... Church!(that's right especially church)

You Christ set us free from these things in order that we freely serve Him.

Yet we want to go back to Egypt!
Because if we are free then we have to be responsible, but slavery is so easy!
Look at the liberation of black slaves in the south. Many blacks stayed slaves for after the civil war, why?

Free housing! Free health care! Free food! They had every thing they needed except freedom!
This is what is happening today we have thousands of undercover slave masters.
Yet Christ wants us free to serve him.
But we can not be free if we our slaves to sin.
I am going to work on a biblical case for this ( I have read the material I just am not able to write it down now)
But my view of Christian freedom is as such.
Christ gives us freedom in the gospel as such.
1. Being Justified we are free from the wrath of God.
2.Being enlightened by the Word of God we are free to serve God.
3. Belong to Christ we are free from serving all false gods, false idols and all tyrannical authorities.

If we are freed by Christ, we are free indeed.

In Christ,

Matt