Romans 7:24-25 Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free
from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So
then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on
the other, with my flesh the law of sin.
Romans 8:2 because through Christ Jesus the law of
the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.
Colossians 2:11 In
him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands.
Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by
Christ,
Romans 6:6 For we
know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin
might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin--
by Charles R. Swindoll
Without becoming needlessly academic, I want to define a
term that I've been tossing around. What do I mean when I declare that the
Christian has liberty? Essentially, liberty is
freedom . . . freedom from something and freedom to
do something. Today I will concentrate on what our liberty gives us
freedom from.
Liberty is freedom from slavery or bondage. It is initially
freedom from sin's power and guilt. Freedom from God's wrath. Freedom from
satanic and demonic authority. And equally important, it is freedom from shame
that could easily bind me, as well as freedom from the tyranny of others'
opinions, obligations, and expectations.
There was a time in my life without Christ when I had no
freedom from the urges and impulses within me. I was at the mercy of my master
Satan and sin was my lifestyle. When the urges grew within me, I had nothing to
hold me in check, nothing to restrain me. It was an awful bondage.
For example, in my personal life I was driven by jealousy
for many miserable years. It was consuming. I served it not unlike a slave
serves a master. Then there came a day when I was spiritually awakened to the
charming grace of God and allowed it to take full control, and almost before I
knew it the jealousy died. And I sensed for the first time, perhaps in my whole
life, true love; the joy, the romance, the spontaneity, the free-flowing
creativity brought about by the grace of a faithful wife, who would love me no
matter what, who was committed to me in faithfulness for all her life. That
love and that commitment motivated me to love in return more freely than ever.
I no longer loved out of fear that I would lose her, but I loved out of the joy
and the blessing connected with being loved unconditionally and without
restraint.
Now that Christ has come into my life and I have been
awakened to His grace, He has provided a freedom from that kind of slavery to
sin. And along with that comes a freedom that brings a fearlessness, almost a
sense of invincibility in the presence of the adversity. This power, keep in
mind, is because of Christ, who lives within me.
In addition, He has also brought a glorious freedom from the
curse of the Law. By that I mean freedom from the constancy of its demands to
perform in order to please God and/or others. It is a freedom from the fear of
condemnation before God as well as from an accusing conscience. Freedom from
the demands of other people, from all the shoulds and oughts of
the general public.
Such freedom is motivated—motivated by unconditional
love. When the grace of Christ is fully awake in your life, you find you're no
longer doing something due to fear or out of shame or because of guilt, but
you're doing it through love. The dreadful tyranny of performing in order to
please someone is over . . . forever.
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