Freedom – Are you Free?
Are you Free? Perhaps you say you are, but live as if you’re not, wanting to be free of
worry, free of aches & pains or free of debt. Jesus Christ promises to set us free but I wonder how many of us who have been freed actually embrace that freedom to the extent we should and to the extent God would want us to? Scripture clearly teaches us this truth and no where in the bible will you find it more clearly expressed than in John 8:36. “If the Son shall set you free, then you are free
indeed”.
During the last month, I’ve had reason to think about freedom quite a lot. I was invited to attend the Guildhall in London and receive the Freedom of the City of London. Historically, completion of a long and successful apprenticeship in your chosen trade resulted in the trade guild that represented that industry conferring the Freedom of the City on that individual. Being made a Freeman helped
livelihoods prosper and also carried a number of other local rights and privileges. A Freeman could carry his sword unsheathed and if convicted of a capital offence, could insist on being hung until dead with a silken rope. I guess that was a “one off benefit”. The most famous right today is to drive sheep across London Bridge which used to be the old entry point with fields for grazing animals outside. Unless sheep could be brought to market, they couldn’t be sold or redeemed.
It’s a paradox that Freedom in Christ is free, but to the one who bought it for us they had to pay the ultimate cost. In other words true freedom is free and costly if you get what I mean. And our response to this?
Well it takes us back to the question I posed at the start of this month’s thought; Are you free or do you just know about the one who can make you free? If the answer is the second part of the question, then my challenge to you is to take that step and ask him for forgiveness and your freedom. If you did say “Yes” then my challenge to you is this, are you living as a freeman with the “freedom of heaven”?
Kevin Borrett
Elder
March 2012
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