Liberty: Jesus Brings True Liberty

As we celebrate our national freedom, I would like to point us in the direction of our spiritual freedom. In the days of Jesus and the first century church national freedom was at the forefront of every Jewish mind. They were anticipating a deliverer that would free their nation from their oppressors the Romans. Jesus their true messiah did not come to free them from the Romans, but to free them from what got them into captivity in the first place. A plain understand of the Old Testament and the intertestament period provides for us the reality that whenever the Jews rebelled against God, the result was bondage. Therefore Jesus goes straight for the root of the problem, namely sin.

In Romans 7 Paul the Apostle paints a picture for us that we all identify with. That picture is of the fight within us for good and evil. We want to do good but we fail and do the evil that we do not want to do. Reading verse 15 we see the problem, “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but the very thing I hate.”  He goes on to ask and answer the following question in verse 24-25, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

There is much debate over this whole section of Paul’s letter to the Roman church, but it at least means that you and I cannot free ourselves from doing wrong. In many ways instead of relying on and accepting the freedom that Jesus brings, we have simply redefined what we once hated and have fallen in love with our sin. In other words if we can’t stop doing wrong, let’s just call wrong right and bondage freedom.

With this in mind I would like to point out three realities surrounding the fact that Jesus brings true liberty. 

1 . Christian liberty is deliverance from sin and its resulting inner corruption. This is seen in the      

     Gospel of John 8:31-37 in combination with Paul's words in Romans 6:20-22

John 8: 31 So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, "If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 

32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." 

33They answered him, "We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, 'You will become free'?" 

34 Jesus answered them,"Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. 

35 The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. 

36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. 

37 I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you.

Romans 6: 20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 

21 But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed?For the end of those things is death. 

22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.

2. Christian liberty was a large part of Jesus' mission. In the Gospel of Luke 4:16-21 we read of Jesus       speaking as the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah 61:1.

16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom,he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. 

17 And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, 

18 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, 

19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." 

20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 

21And he began to say to them, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

3. Christian liberty is not to be abused. Peter helps us understand this in 2 Peter 2:19-22  

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

20 For if, after they have escaped the defilement of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. 

21 For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. 

22 What the true proverb says has happened to them: "The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire."

Having viewed these three points, the question may be asked, why at times does God not seem to bring freedom when it is sought? There are several ways to answer this question but first I would state that many desire freedom but they are unwilling to following Jesus on the road to that freedom. In other words they want freedom yet without the need for obedience. Still others have a pure heart and willingness to obey however the Lord leads yet liberty does not come. This is a very difficult issue yet one the Bible addresses in 1 Corinthians 12:7-9. Here the Apostle Paul prayed three times for liberty from, "a messenger from Satan". God did not deliver Paul but provided the necessary grace to deal with the presence of the issue. The tough part about this is, sometime God says no. When He  does so, He provides the necessary grace to thrive in presence of difficulty. We must not abandon God and is will for our lives. Every Christian has some temptation that simply will never go away until our ultimate deliverance comes, but that does not mean that giving in to the temptation is permissible. God will give us the grace to stand. 

  

For those of us at Yucaipa Valley Church of the Nazarene, we must be a church that is used by God to bring people to true liberty. We must not misinterpret love as permission to sin, but rightly love with the truth of God's word and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Author John Howard Yoder in The Politics of Jesus stats, "True freedom is not found in insisting on one's own rights, but is freely giving them up by being a servant to Jesus Christ first and the people of God second."

May God grant you liberty through His Son Jesus Christ, and may you stand in His grace in what He allows.