Enslaved to God

Jesus and the Just Reign of God
God Sends Jesus
How to Live as God's People

Romans 6:16-23

The Message

What Is True Freedom?

^15-18 So, since we’re out from under the old tyranny, does that mean we can live any old way we want? Since we’re free in the freedom of God, can we do anything that comes to mind? Hardly. You know well enough from your own experience that there are some acts of so-called freedom that destroy freedom. Offer yourselves to sin, for instance, and it’s your last free act. But offer yourselves to the ways of God and the freedom never quits. All your lives you’ve let sin tell you what to do. But thank God you’ve started listening to a new master, one whose commands set you free to live openly in his freedom!

¹⁹ I’m using this freedom language because it’s easy to picture. You can readily recall, can’t you, how at one time the more you did just what you felt like doing—not caring about others, not caring about God—the worse your life became and the less freedom you had? And how much different is it now as you live in God’s freedom, your lives healed and expansive in holiness?
^20-21 As long as you did what you felt like doing, ignoring God, you didn’t have to bother with right thinking or right living, or right anything for that matter. But do you call that a free life? What did you get out of it? Nothing you’re proud of now. Where did it get you? A dead end.
^22-23 But now that you’ve found you don’t have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way! Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God’s gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master.

For Reflection

The Bible is full of paradoxes.  Not the least is this one--that you must loose your freedom to gain it in God.  What kind of freedom is this that inhibits all but Godly action?

It is the freedom to choose.  It is the freedom from the tyranny of our times.  It is the freedom to live the life God intended for you and I.  It is the freedom to err and not fear reprisal.  It is the freedom anchored in the grace of God.  It is the freedom that comes with voluntary enslavement to God. 

Pray

prayers of thanksgiving to God who provides perfect freedom to act as we were created to act, in service to God and to each other.  Pray for all those who are freed to be righteous.  Pray for those who mistake anarchy for freedom, who are enslaved to common culture, who do not yet understand the value of the freedom that comes from accepting God's call for reconciliation.