Freedom

Generally, freedom is understood as the unrestrained ability to do whatever one wants. It is the individual liberty to pursue one’s own desires. Any imposition or restriction that keeps a person from what he or she wants is seen as a loss of freedom.

In the Christian tradition, that sort of so-called freedom is viewed as slavery to oneself. The person who seems to have such great freedom is actually bound to their personal longings, and is driven by his or her own wants. They cannot refuse their own desires. Though they think of themselves as free, they are in bondage to themselves.

When Jesus says we will find our life if we are willing to die to ourselves (Luke 9:23-24) he is referring to being free from a selfish and self-defined life. When one’s master is one’s own impulses and wants, we live in competitiveness and strife with one another because the desires of others conflict with our own.

At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. (Titus 3:2)

True freedom, in Christ, means to be released from having to satisfy our own desires and appetites. We become free to love our neighbors and seek their good. We are able to not do what we want, but to live as God wills, and to say “no” to what is inconsistent with God’s own self.

For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age. (Titus 2:11-12)

This is becoming truly free from the limiting nature of our own wishes, and finding the joy of not pleasing ourselves, but God. Regarding teachers who claimed to be spiritually enlightened but encouraged their disciples to indulge selfish desires, Peter remarked,

They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved. (2 Peter 2:19)

Our selfish desires are a corruption of the true nature which God created, so that the sort of self-serving “freedom” we insist on is a slavery to what ruins us. We cannot become wise, mature, spiritually strong people while enslaved to our own desires. This is why Paul talks about true freedom releasing us from bondage to corruption (Romans 8:21). Paul says that the whole creation is waiting for the children of God to be freed from corruption. This occurs when, no longer forced to follow our own wants, we are able to deny ourselves and do the will of God.

Those who lose their life will find it. We could say it this way, that those who give up so-called individual freedom for the freedom of a life guided by godliness, will find true life. That true life will reflect the love, joy, peace, and so on, of having become free from ourselves. We are then, as portrayed in baptism, dead to sin (self) and alive to God (Romans 6:11).