How to Understand and Use Christian Liberties

The Complicated Blessing of Freedom

The gospel brings glorious freedom to those whom it saves.

As Paul explains in detail in Romans 6–8, Jesus’ death on the cross frees us from the curse of the law—both from its enslavement, and to the death it ultimately brings (cf. Romans 6:23; 7:3–4; 8:2). Elsewhere, Jesus, Paul, and the other apostles connect this freedom with the practical reality that it is unnecessary to observe the Old Testament food and separation laws as Jews had traditionally done (Acts 10:9–15; 15:6–11; Gal 2:4; Rom 14:2–3).

In the United States, in addition to Christian freedom, we also enjoy civil liberties. Many of us were raised to (rightly) prize the political freedom that has been won and preserved for us at the cost of many lives.

However, as those who rejoice in our Christian freedoms—and in the political freedoms we enjoy living in a “free country”—we have an unfortunate tendency to neglect the central purpose the apostle Paul saw for our liberties. We would do well to heed Paul’s summary warning and exhortation to the Galatians, and to understand better how this worked out in Paul’s life:

“For you were called to freedom, brothers; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another” (Galatians 5:13).¹

To What Were We Enslaved?

To be free means to be free from something that would otherwise be enslaving. This is indeed the case with Christian freedom: every Christian was formerly enslaved to death (Romans 6:9), the law (Romans 7:3–4), and selfishness (Titus 3:3).²

Of these, death is perhaps the most obvious—since everyone dies. But a sinner’s slavery to death is not merely a matter of what happens at the end of life; recall that there was at least a sense in which Adam and Eve died in the day when they ate the forbidden fruit (Genesis 2:17).

You see, we were made—in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26–27)—to have life in ourselves, and, thus, to be a life-giving blessing like the single water source that welled up from Eden to give life to the whole world (Genesis 2:6, 10). Instead, we sinned, and brought not just ourselves but the whole world under the enslavement of death (Romans 8:20–22).

Our slavery to death is closely connected with our slavery to the law. As with the choice before Adam and Eve in the garden, so was the choice before Israel: keep the law and live and be a blessing to the whole earth (Genesis 12:3; Exodus 19:5–6; Leviticus 18:5); or disobey the law and become a curse to yourselves and to the whole earth (Deuteronomy 28:15, 37). Long story short, Israel became a curse to themselves and to all the earth—and that includes all of us, apart from Christ (Jeremiah 29:18; Zechariah 8:13).

Finally—and most practically for our consideration—every one of us is born a slave to selfishness. Augustine and Luther famously characterized the essence of sin as being an incurvatus in se—a turning in towards oneself. Starting with Eve’s obedience to her own desire (she saw “that the tree was desirable to make one wise” [Genesis 3:6]), each one of us has known this inward curvature. Rather than being a spring of blessing to others as we were made to be, we (by nature) take for ourselves, until the cisterns of self and the creation run dry, as they inevitably do (Jeremiah 2:12–13).

From Enslavement to Freedom

As I stated at the top of this post, the gospel wins a glorious freedom for Christians. All three of our enslavements—which, it should be clear by now, are closely connected—meet their demise at the cross.

First, enslavement to the law—specifically, to its curse—is removed in Christ (Galatians 3:13–14). God had included in His law the means for the removal of curse: the king (representative) of the people under curse was to be hung/pierced on a tree, and the removal of his body according to the law would remove the pollution of curse from the land and its people.³

Secondly, enslavement to death is removed in Christ (Romans 6:9). United with Jesus in His death, we are also raised to life as He was, so that we can be a life-giving blessing (like a fountain of living water!), just as we were originally made to be (Romans 6:5; cf. John 4:13–14). Later in Romans, when Paul gets to the crescendo of this section, he says that we “overwhelmingly conquer” even death, which now becomes our slave to bring us to Christ (Romans 8:37–38; cf. Philippians 1:21, 23).

Where It Gets Practical

Third—and this is where the rubber meets the road in terms of how Paul would view the practical use of Christian liberty—enslavement to selfish desires is removed in Christ (Titus 3:3). The pattern we have known apart from Christ since the garden, where we indulge our selfish cravings even though they bring death and misery to ourselves and others, no longer characterizes us if we are in Christ.

So, what does this means practically?

Well—and this is where it might get challenging for the average American Christian—it is the opposite of a mindset that says, “As long as it’s not hurting anyone else and doesn’t go against my conscience, it’s okay with me—I have freedom in Christ, and it’s a free country.”

On the contrary, Christian freedom means that I am now free to serve the preferences and tender consciences of others. In Christ, my greatest needs have been met. I have such fullness knowing that the curse has been removed, I have eternal life, and all the riches of Christ belong to me, that I have no need to take for myself—or to feed myself with—all the fleshly pleasures and joys and satisfactions the world says are desirable, or even necessary, for a fulfilled life. I can now sacrifice any of those things (even if their enjoyment is not inherently sinful) in order to serve others.

The apostle Paul gives a pointed example of such freedom in 1 Corinthians 8. I have to imagine that Paul was a man who might enjoy a nice, juicy steak. And living as he often did on a shoestring budget, it’s likely the only way he could afford to eat steak would be to buy the discounted meat that had been “sacrificed to idols.” However, Paul knew that eating steak that had been used in that way could bother the consciences of other believers. And just when you might expect him to explain that they shouldn’t bring their weak consciences to bear on his freedoms, Paul does the exact opposite: “Therefore, if food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat again—ever, so that I will not cause my brother to stumble” (1 Corinthians 8:13).

Conclusion

I hope you see the radical nature of Paul’s understanding and use of his own liberties.

Have you been tempted to eat, drink, dress, enjoy entertainment or other pastimes, or engage in any other freedoms or activities that might bother your Christian brothers and sisters?

Rather than seeing these as opportunities to enjoy your freedoms, see them as opportunities—from the fullness that is already yours in Christ—to freely surrender your preferences and rights for the sake of others. As you do you will find that, as Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).

¹ Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations in this post are from the Legacy Standard Bible (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 2021).

² Of course, as Paul says repeatedly in Romans 6, we are enslaved not just to selfishness but to sin (which is a broader category that includes selfishness). As Romans 6 implies, enslavement to sin and death are interchangeable, and there is a sense in which these are interchangeable with enslavement to selfishness and to the law/curse also. Likewise, when any of these enslavements are removed, all are removed.

³ For more on the lawful removal of curse, see Jason Kruis, “Vertical Forgiveness – Part 1,” CBCD Annual Conference Lecture, September 12, 2021, https://thecbcd.org/resources/vertical-forgiveness-part-1.