What Is Christian Freedom?
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00:00:06.000 | Today we finish up a little three-part series on free will, started back in
00:00:09.400 | episode 307. On Thursday I asked if there's such a thing as free will. No was
00:00:14.640 | the answer, and that led to episode number 308 on Friday. So if there's no
00:00:18.580 | free will, how are sinners held accountable for not doing what they
00:00:21.280 | cannot do? And that leads us finally to today's question. Pastor John, how would
00:00:25.240 | you define Christian freedom? What we've said about free will so far is that when
00:00:33.160 | it comes to choosing Christ, coming to Christ, nobody has this free will. Nobody
00:00:39.760 | has ultimate self-determination that would empower them to overcome their own
00:00:45.520 | bondage, their own blindness, provide the decisive influence, and open their eyes
00:00:52.000 | and see Christ as compelling and come to Him. Nobody can do that for themselves.
00:00:56.720 | Left to ourselves, we are so deeply in love with darkness, we can't come to the
00:01:03.200 | light. We are responsible to come, we said that, because our inability to come is
00:01:08.400 | not natural inability, it's a moral inability. We're not chained to a post,
00:01:13.480 | wanting desperately to come to Christ, but being forbidden to come to Christ.
00:01:17.720 | Nobody's in that situation, and the reason we can't come is because we love
00:01:22.400 | the alternative more. And then Christ breaks in, the Holy Spirit breaks in, and
00:01:28.600 | sets us free. And I want to argue that only Christians know true freedom,
00:01:36.440 | and get at what that true freedom is for just a few minutes. In Romans 6, it
00:01:41.240 | says, "Our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be
00:01:48.200 | brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin, for the one
00:01:54.640 | who's died is set free from sin." So we are a free people, we're not in chains
00:01:59.880 | and bondage to our own lusts anymore. Or Romans 6 17, "Thanks be to God that you
00:02:07.000 | who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard
00:02:12.520 | of teaching." So our freedom is described as a free, joyful, satisfying
00:02:17.960 | obedience to God. Jesus said, "If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed."
00:02:26.160 | I want to get inside that. What is that? What is it like to be free
00:02:29.920 | indeed? Or Paul said in Galatians 5, "For freedom Christ has set us free." Don't
00:02:36.400 | be submitting anymore to bondage. So Christians are the freest of all people.
00:02:42.360 | Free indeed. What does that mean? And here's my answer. I'll put it in
00:02:46.840 | four pieces and then give a picture through the illustration of skydiving.
00:02:52.880 | To be fully free, free indeed, we must have freedom of desire, freedom of
00:02:59.520 | ability, freedom of opportunity, and freedom of no regrets. And skydiving
00:03:07.520 | gives a great illustration of what I mean. So what you want now in this
00:03:12.480 | illustration is the glorious freedom of skydiving, falling at a hundred and
00:03:18.280 | twenty miles an hour, the wind in your face, and then popping your parachute at
00:03:23.440 | the last minute and coming safely to the ground, and then doing it over and over
00:03:28.440 | again in all kinds of conditions. You want that kind of free, joyful experience.
00:03:34.160 | So suppose that you're on your way to the airport to go up for your first real
00:03:39.400 | jump, and your car hits a pothole, bangs into a telephone pole, and while you're
00:03:43.600 | waiting for the truck to come, you miss your appointment and your
00:03:49.080 | opportunity passes, so you lose the freedom of opportunity. So you have to
00:03:53.800 | have a freedom of opportunity to be truly free, and you just lost it. Or
00:03:58.520 | suppose you make it to the airport, but it turns out that you skipped all the
00:04:03.080 | classes, and you don't know the first thing about skydiving, and so you don't
00:04:07.440 | have any basic abilities to do it, and they're not going to let you do it. And
00:04:11.480 | so you don't have the second kind of freedom that you need, namely freedom of
00:04:16.360 | ability. You may have freedom of opportunity, you got there, the
00:04:18.880 | opportunities before you, you don't have the ability, they're not going to let you
00:04:22.000 | jump. Third, suppose you make it to the airport, you go to all the classes, you
00:04:28.240 | got all the abilities you need, you take off in the airplane, and as soon as the
00:04:32.160 | door opens, you look down, and all your desire vanishes. You are paralyzed with
00:04:40.160 | fear at jumping out of this airplane, and you will not jump out. You have lost the
00:04:46.240 | freedom of desire. Now you might dutifully jump out, but that's not the
00:04:53.280 | way we want to be Christian, right? Everybody knows dutiful jumping is not
00:04:57.680 | freedom. It's just another kind of bondage. What you want is, "I love this! I
00:05:02.160 | want to do this! I'm out of here!" That's freedom. But you don't have it, you just
00:05:06.120 | lost it, you're in fear, and so you don't have the freedom of desire. Now, we're
00:05:11.760 | almost done. Suppose you get to the airport, no obstacle, you have the freedom
00:05:16.600 | of opportunity, you have all the know-how necessary, you have the freedom of
00:05:21.600 | ability, you look out the door at the tiny clusters of silos and barns and
00:05:27.880 | farmhouses a few miles down, and you just can't wait to jump. You got all the
00:05:34.800 | freedom of desire. This is what you want to do. So you jump, and as you free
00:05:41.680 | fall, enjoying every second of it, unknown to you, your parachute is defective. It's
00:05:51.920 | not going to open. No matter what you do, are you free? You feel free. You don't
00:05:59.560 | know what's about to happen. This is where most people live. Fully free. Are
00:06:04.480 | you free? You're not free. You're dead. You're dead. In 30 seconds, you will be
00:06:09.880 | dead. Regrets. In order to be fully free, you got to have a parachute in good
00:06:15.320 | working order. You need to be saved. You need to have Jesus Christ, because you
00:06:21.220 | are cruising toward destruction, no matter how free you feel in this world
00:06:26.840 | without a Savior. When Jesus makes us free, He makes us free at every, every
00:06:33.800 | single level. He's given us the freedom of opportunity. He died for us, and the
00:06:39.360 | freedom of ability. He gave us the gift of faith, the freedom of desire. He put a
00:06:44.320 | new heart in us and wrote His law on it, and caused us to have new desires and
00:06:49.560 | new loves. And He gives us the freedom of no regrets in a thousand years. We will
00:06:55.800 | we will jump out of this airplane forever with Jesus at our side, and the
00:07:00.720 | parachute always open, lands in green pastures. If the Son sets you free, you
00:07:06.960 | will be free indeed. And only believers in Jesus have this kind of freedom. Yes,
00:07:12.120 | that's a great illustration. But to be clear, you're not advocating skydiving as
00:07:15.440 | a hobby, right? I don't think you should skydive, because... We've got an entire
00:07:20.560 | episode on that. Oh yeah, okay, we don't need to go into that. Yeah, yeah, and that
00:07:24.960 | episode was titled "Safety is a Myth." It's episode number 10 in the Ask Pastor
00:07:28.760 | John podcast series, way back in the beginning. If you have an iPhone or iPad
00:07:32.440 | and the free Ask Pastor John app, you can listen to it by scrolling down the list
00:07:36.120 | of episodes to that early episode, episode number 10, "Safety is a Myth." And
00:07:40.280 | speaking of fear, what does it mean for a Christian to fear God? Tomorrow we'll
00:07:44.960 | tackle that. Until then, I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.
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