What is freedom? When my children were young, freedom was being able to set their curfew. For a prisoner, freedom is being released from jail. These may sound good, but they are not a good definition of freedom. They are examples of what it means to exercise personal liberty because freedom is not just personal or private. Freedom is also public.
The irony is that even as I am writing these words and as we here in the United States have been celebrating the Fourth of July, freedom from tyranny, the Supreme Court of the United States is rolling back freedom at an alarming rate. So, what is freedom?
Galatians 5:13 says, "Brethren, you have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another."
So, we pick up in the text that freedom is a God-given right. Galatians 5:13 says, "You are called to freedom." So, freedom is not rooted in the constitution, and it is rooted in our creator.
In this text, Paul gives us insight into the primary purposes of freedom in his challenge to the church at Galatia, when he admonished them to serve others in homes and churches. We are to use our freedoms to help enable someone else to achieve the purpose that God has for them. When enough people do that in society, society becomes free. Freedom exists so that freedom can exist.
You can always recognize a free person because that person is always a freedom fighter for others. Freedom bequeaths freedom as those who have it seek to increase it in those who do not. Free individuals enable others to be free through acts of love and charity.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes that "freedom is not a quality of man, nor is it an ability, a capacity, a kind of being that somehow flares up in him. Anyone investigating man to discover freedom finds nothing of it. Why? Because freedom is not a quality which can be revealed; it is not a possession, a presence, an object, nor is it a form for existence, but a relationship and nothing else...Being free means 'being free for the other' because the other has bound me to him. Only in relationship with the other am I free."
Galatians 5:13 reminds us that our freedom is bound up neither in ourselves nor for ourselves. Our freedom is bound to God and others. And we are to use our freedom "to serve" others through love.
One of the tragedies of the Revolutionary War centered on freedom. While it is true that the war itself was about freedom, freedom from the tyranny of the King's rule in England. Thirteen colonies desired to be free. Yet one of the greatest ironies is that people who fought for freedom for themselves held other people in slavery who desired and needed freedom just as much.
In other words, there was a flaw in their freedom because personal liberty that does not seek freedom for others through the avenues that it can, both locally and nationally, is not freedom at all. Christian Freedom manifests itself in love or slavery for the welfare of others.
Genesis 2:15-17 [NKJV] is a stark reminder that within the freedom God has given us, He sets boundaries we are not to cross. God told Adam, "From every tree in the garden you may freely eat except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that is out of bounds to you, because in the day you eat of it you shall surely die."
Freedom without limits or boundaries leads to chaos and destruction. When we transgress the boundaries God has set for us, we enter into a deep division that destroys us and our relationships. I am glad that Jesus came not only to reconcile us to God but to reconcile us to each other [Ephesians 2:14]. Be encouraged!
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Rev. Chestine Sims Jr. of White Hall is pastor of Union AME Church at Little Rock. Please join the church for worship on Facebook live at 10:30 a.m. Sundays.
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Editor's note: Pastors, ministers or other writers interested in writing for this section may submit articles for consideration to shope@adgnewsroom.com. Writers should have connections to Southeast Arkansas. Please include your name, phone number and the name and location of your church or ministry.