For freedom, Christ set us free.
Galatians 5:1
For you were called to be free, brothers and sisters; only don’t use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love. For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement: Love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, watch out, or you will be consumed by one another.
Galatians 5:13-15
Freedom that fills and satisfies your heart is never found in setting yourself up as your own authority. True freedom is not found in doing whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it. True Freedom is never found in putting yourself in the middle of your world and making it all about you. True freedom is not found in resisting the call to submit to any authority but your
own. True freedom is not found in writing your own moral code. True freedom is not the result of finally getting your own way. When you attempt to do these things, you never enjoy freedom; you can only end in another form of bondage. – Paul David Tripp
What is the source of wars and fights among you? Don’t they come from your passions that wage war within you.
James 4:1
Freedom that fills and satisfies your heart is never found in setting yourself up as your own authority. True freedom is not found in doing whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it. True Freedom is never found in putting yourself in the middle of your world and making it all about you. True freedom is not found in resisting the call to submit to any authority but your own. True freedom is not found in writing your own moral code. True freedom is not the result of finally getting your own way. When you attempt to do these things, you never enjoy freedom; you can only end in another form of bondage. – Paul David Tripp
Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon
their own appetites… Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be
placed somewhere… It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate
minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters. – Edmund Burke
I say, then, walk by the Spirit and you will certainly not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you don’t do what you want.
Galatians 5:16-17
Self-determining freedom ultimately gives way either to a higher form of freedom—the freedom to be creatures whose love defines them—or the lowest form of bondage—the inability to participate in love. We become beings who are irrevocably open or irrevocably closed to God’s love. The former is eternal life; the latter is eternal death. – Greg Boyd
Freedom not just to be able to choose, but to choose the good over the bad… freedom isn’t about autonomy from authority but about liberating loving relationships from sin [to] overcome strong desires for self-gratification and fulfill our deeper desires of self-giving love. – John Mark Comer
Does this view of ‘freedom’ jive with Jesus?
It’s all about what makes you feel good.
Flee sexual immorality! Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the person who is sexually immoral sins against his own body. Don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought at a price. So glorify God with your body.
1 Corinthians 6:18-20
Does this view of ‘freedom’ jive with Jesus?
‘My body, my choice’
Therefore, as he was coming into the world, he said: You did not desire sacrifice and offering, but you prepared a body for me. You did not delight in whole burnt offerings and sin offerings. Then I said, “See — it is written about me in the scroll — I have come to do your will, God.”
Hebrews 10:5;9
Does this view of ‘freedom’ jive with Jesus?
‘Don’t tread on me’
“You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I tell you, don’t resist an evildoer. On the contrary, if anyone slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. As for the one who wants to sue you and take away your shirt, let him have your coat as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to the one who asks you, and don’t turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.
Matthew 5:38-42
in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others. Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited. Instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death — even to death on a cross.
Philippians 2:3-8
Philippians 2:3-8
