Transcript:

Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to “The Kingdom Perspective”.

As modern Americans we tend to think of freedom in what the philosophers call “negative” terms. By “negative” they mean, the freedom to do what we want without (i.e. negating the presence of) interference from others, especially from some authority (e.g. governmental, parental, cultural, religious, etc.).

However, this is not the most basic way the Bible speaks of freedom. The Bible speaks of freedom more so in what the philosophers would call “positive freedom”—not merely, what are we free from, but what are we free to. The Bible assumes that as human beings, we have a design/purpose. We were made to do something in particular—to fulfill some purpose. And so, we are free to the degree that we are fulfilling that purpose. A train is designed to run on tracks, and only to the degree that it is confined to those tracks is it free.

Now, what tracks were we as human beings designed to run on? We were designed to run on the twin tracks of 1) Loving God with our whole being and 2) Loving our neighbor as ourselves. We were designed for love. And only to the degree that our souls are confined to these twin tracks of loving God and loving our neighbor—only to the degree that we obeying these commands—are we actually free.

Are you free?

Something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.

“Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

~ Romans 8:1-4 (NASB)