“Speak and act as those who will be judged by the law of freedom.” James 2:12

“Christ has liberated us to be free. Stand firm then, and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery.” Galatians 5:1

“For you were called to be free, brothers; only don’t use this freedom as an opportinity for the flesh, but serve on another through love.” Galatians 5:13

“As God’s slaves, live as free people, but don’t use your freedom as a way to conceal evil.” 1 Peter 2:16

“They promised them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption, since people are enslaved to whatever defeats them.” 2 Peter 2:19

Freedom has become a generic term you can’t go wrong to use. Americans love the word FREEDOM, and Christians use it in much the same way — to evoke happy feelings, something we can all agree on, to justify almost anything.

When I read about freedom in the Bible, I get a different image. The Holy Spirit has been teaching me lately, and it has ironically reassured me of God’s love and tenderness, although the lesson itself disrupts the warm, fuzziness of what we usually mean when we say freedom.

Let me explain: when I hear that the Christian life is one of freedom, I expect that living under Christ’s banner means I will at all times feel completely out of sin’s control, completely gratified by doing good, and always feel an openness and limitless outlook on my circumstances. I have struggled with this for years because while there are seasons when I do feel these things, there are other seasons when I feel like I am doing all the right things, but I am depressed, it feels unnatural, the call to sin is overwhelming, my own desires confuse me, and when I do good it does not satisfy me in the way I expect.

God is teaching me, gently, tenderly.

Freedom is not a feeling.

He is showing me many things that freedom is not. Freedom is not the ability to choose between endless options, as the world likes to think. There have to be boundaries, as much as people hate them; they are part of good order and bringing real peace among all people, which is a shadow of the greater reality that is coming.

Freedom is not doing whatever feels right or makes me happy as long as it’s not hurting anyone. We are limited creatures — how could we possibly know what hurt our actions could initiate? We need a higher Source of wisdom.

This also applies to those who have the Holy Spirit guiding them. We are still in our flesh; our hearts are deceitful, and sin never terminates on itself. It always spirals bigger and deeper toward death. Even Christians can’t be so arrogant as to think we can just do whatever feels right.

Freedom is not simply the detachment from a yoke of addiction or sin pattern, though that can be part of it. Sometimes God severs a bond to sin completely and people walk away and never struggle again. Often, I think, we continue to confront our demons and temptations as a feature of our daily lives, and choosing right may never, on this side of Heaven, feel better than choosing wrong.

Freedom, I would argue, is not even just what St. Augustine described like a constraint to do right, as if once you are living in Christ you have no choice but to choose good over evil. As if wrapped up in choosing rightly and living in Christ there is this sense of freedom that the biblical authors were talking about. As Christians we would say that unbelievers can choose right, even majority of the time (praise God), but even in that, they aren’t truly free, and it has little to do with how they feel about their lives.

Freedom is not cited in the verses above as some sort of epistemological end to obedience to Christ. Even if freedom itself is our goal in doing right, we aren’t obeying with the right motive.

No, in these verses, I read a paradoxical nature of freedom that has almost nothing to do with how we feel, and more so pictured as something we do the right thing in spite of. Think about the self-denial invovled in Jesus’ obedience: fully God, but made himself nothing and served others. We have freedom, as part of our eternal identity in Christ. But it isn’t a state we currently camp out in, like which flavor of ice cream do I want today? It is something we put aside to serve others, knowing that whether our offerings are big or small, fumbling or assured, they are all going to be judged under the protection of grace because of our faith in Jesus.

True freedom is that when we do the right thing — as difficult as it often is, as unclear the path, as unnatural as it feels sometimes, as ugly or ungratifying as it can be — we can know it counted as righteousness because of Jesus.

Freedom is a knowing faith.