From Legalism to Freedom: Part 2
In Part 1 of this series, we took a look at legalism. Now we are going to turn our attention towards freedom.
It can be argued that the chief aim for many of us is freedom. It is what we long for and desire, from the youngest to the oldest of us. The toddler wants to be free to explore everything in front of her, the teen wants to be free to do what he wants when he wants, and the adult wants to be free from the burdens of adulting (amen somebody).
The Christian wants to be free to live the Christian life, whatever that means. So what is Christian freedom? Paul says in Galatians 5:1 that it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Jesus said in John 8:36 that if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
Jesus died to set us free. We are free from sin (Rom. 6:18), free from death (1 Cor. 15:55-57), free to do good works (Titus 2:14), and free to live in a way that glorifies God and honors those around (Matt. 22:-34-40).
Christians who live in freedom have the whole word before them. Nearly everything that is not explicitly sin (and we know there is much debate here) stands before us. People who lean more towards freedom rather than legalism tend to recognize there is a lot more grey to life than the simple black and white than the legalist will.
The Danger
The danger in freedom is found in going too far. The Apostle Paul talks about everything that is permissible is not always beneficial. What we fail to recognize often is that what we deem as permissible may vary from region to region. In the south a Christian should never cuss but smoking is on the table. In other parts of the country, cursing is the exercise of liberty in speech while something like smoking is viewed as destroying your body and therefore not honoring the Imago Dei in you.
You see examples of this all across the spectrum from what we eat to the kinds of work we do down to the ways in which we choose to educate our children.
In our freedom, we must start from the question: Is it beneficial? We can often hurt our witness in this world by the things our freedom has allowed us to do. That may mean tempering your language around certain people, abstaining from certain activities, and even picking up new ones. I like to think of Paul’s words where he says I have become all things to all men in the hope that I might win some (1 Cor. 19:19-23).
The goal for Paul was always to win people to the cause of Christ. He exercised his freedom when and where he could but never put it before the sake of the Gospel.
The last thing we want to do is give people the wrong idea of what it means to be a Christian. While we are free, we are not lawless. Christ has set us free but has also given limits to that freedom for his glory and our good. It is the reason that we do not keep sinning so grace may abound.
Up next is balance. Tipping too far to either side is unhealthy, so what does a balance between the two look like?