Rejoice in the Freedom of the Cross

Tom Shrader explores the paradox of Christian freedom: believers are freed from sin's consequences and bondage to sin, yet are not free to do whatever they want. Instead, Christians are called to enslave themselves to Christ as "under-rowers," freed to do good works and be the unique person God created them to be. True freedom leads back to bondage to righteousness.

“We are freed, but we are not free.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: How to Stay Straight in a Crooked World (2001)

Recorded: March 22, 2001

Duration: 42 min

Themes: freedom, bondage, righteousness, service, obedience, authority, purpose, identity, struggling with sin, new believer, questioning purpose, feeling enslaved, seeking identity, parent, young adult, doubting freedom

Scripture: Romans 3:10-12, Romans 6:11-14, 1 Corinthians 4:2, Ephesians 2:8-10, Philippians 2:8-13, Matthew 5, 2 Corinthians 1, Colossians 4:2

Theological Themes: sanctification, becoming holy, biblical authority, christian freedom, slavery to sin, good works, spiritual bondage, divine calling

Full Transcript

Week 9 of what I think is probably 12 weeks of a series titled How to Stay Straight in a Crooked World. That's the working title. Nobody's come along with anything better. I'm open to that. Somebody came up with some idea about effective living in the new millennium, which sounds so much like me. My point to them was really simple. From a marketing perspective, I understand that. But what was helpful is this is not for effective living in the new millennium. Whether it's 100, or 500, or 1000, 1999, 2099, this is the only effective way to live this life. That's the whole point of this series.

The idea here is really simple: the world is corrupt. That's not the main point. But in a place that's lost its moral compass, in a place where what was 10 years ago taboo is today edgy, and 10 years will be mainstream, how do I stay focused in that? Let me add a sister thing to that, for those of you that are Christians. Not only how do I stay focused, how do I not get bitter and angry? I find so many Christians that are bitter and angry at the world, and everything's wrong. Well, God didn't put you here to be bitter and angry either. He put you here to live, and He put you here to be salt and light in the midst of that. You've got pagans. These are pagans. What is it you expect them to do? Why would you expect them to behave in a way other than pagan?

Starting with Biblical Authority

So we said, here's how it starts. Accept the Bible as the final authority in your life. When we talk about the Bible, we continually come back to this same point again and again. We can't get away from it, that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. We can't move on this. Either it's true, cover to cover, or it's not. If we get into the position that it contains the word of God, then we have a real problem. Because now we've got to try to figure out what part's true and what part's not. When we do that, we make the reader God. Because now the reader determines what's true and what's not.

So we establish the Bible as the final authority in our life, and now we're ready for life. The progression that we've had, and I think it's been logical, is we commit to learning, then we make good decisions, which are godly decisions. We live life boldly. We don't compartmentalize our life. We make the invisible God visible. We speak the truth boldly. Last week we talked about one of my favorite topics, and that's contentment.

Rejoicing in the Freedom of the Cross

Today we're talking about point nine: rejoicing in the freedom of the cross. Rejoice in the freedom of the cross. I've really struggled with this. I've been down two or three different paths in trying to figure this lesson out. So let me just kind of let this thing go, and it's even evolving in my mind as I'm driving over this morning, from teaching it already yesterday.

Here's Webster's definition of freedom: Liberation from slavery or imprisonment. Exemption from necessities in choice or action. In other words, the freedom of will, freedom of choice. Synonyms: liberty, independence, license. Antonyms: bondage, slavery.

When we talk about freedom, we're talking about one of the key ingredients for life on this planet. Dr. Asmus is often here on Thursday morning. I don't see him this morning, so I'm more comfortable using his name. But Barry will tell you, as he looks at the world, that the issue that really drives how he views a place or a country is freedom. Economic and political.

Freedom's Global Impact

Barry was just in Orlando speaking to IBM. They brought in 7,000 people from around the world. His task was to talk about every continent, which would be a great assignment. But he said basically the only continent for which he had a negative future was Africa. The reason was very simple. There's virtually no political freedom and there's no economic freedom. If there's no political freedom and there's no economic freedom, that nation, that country is not going to prosper long term.

I have lived to see the Berlin Wall come down, the Soviet Union be destroyed, basically as we understood it. When we talk about really success on a global basis, economically, politically, we always come back to freedom. You know that even in our country. When you start to regulate things and you start to tie them down, let's say something like energy in California, you immediately screw it up. That's why you're free market advocates. We want free market the best we can. We want little government, not because government is bad, though it is. We want little government because it's going to screw it up when it gets in there and starts to manipulate prices and all that goes with it.

A Different Kind of Freedom

So freedom. Well, now we're talking about the Christian life. We're talking about a different kind of freedom. In fact, the whole concept of freedom is different in the way we're talking about it. Let me take you through this. Again, I apologize if this sounds choppy. I hope you get this because I think it's right.

Webster says freedom is liberation from slavery or imprisonment. I was in my daughter's car the other day and she was driving me somewhere and I was in the back seat and her sister was in the front seat. So there was her journal and I figured she'd want me to read it. I mean, it would seem to me. So I opened it up and here's the first entry. She journals in a bunch of different places. So this only has two or three entries in it. But this is an entry from November of last year.

Here's what she wrote: "We feel that to follow Christ is to lose everything and gain nothing, when in all reality it is to lose nothing and gain everything. But once we've been given this freedom, we as Christians often forfeit that freedom and return again to slavery by pursuing our own desires and obeying and following..."

Our freedom looks nothing like the freedom the world seeks. The world looks for a freedom to do as they please no matter what, no matter who they hurt along the way. Our freedom is a freedom to love as Christ loved, to serve as Christ served. Many say this sounds like bondage, but in following the truth, the truth will set you free.

So here we are in this process. When Scripture speaks of liberation from slavery, it is in one sense, but not in another. A Christian is somebody who has been freed only to enslave themselves to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Freed but Not Free

Here's the distinction I want to make. As Christians, we are freed, F-R-E-E-D, but we are not free. We're freed, but we're not free. There is a sense in which what we do is take ourselves and our freedom and not do whatever we want to do, but we take our freedom and we submit ourselves, indeed, enslave ourselves to the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the whole point.

Several hundred times in the New Testament, you'll see this idea of servants. It comes again and again. There's a passage, 1 Corinthians 4:2, where Paul talks about us being servants of Christ. He uses a word there in the Greek that's only used 20 times in the New Testament. It's different than the other words. The other words carry with it the idea of submitting to or trying to comply with somebody's will. This is a very strong word. The word means literally under-rower.

You've seen Ben-Hur, or you've seen these movies where they depict some slaves in a galley, and they are rowing. They're all looking in one direction where they can see this guy, and this guy will tell them to speed up. You know the old joke, the boss wants a water ski today. It's always bad news for those guys. So they'll tell them to speed up, slow down, stop, whatever it is. And their job is singular in purpose. It's to obey the direction of the master. Well, in 1 Corinthians 4:2, that's the word Paul uses to describe—I think He's talking specifically here about preachers and teachers, but we could apply it to Christians. We're under-rowers. Our job is very simply to do whatever it is that Christ commands us or wants us to do.

Three Areas of Freedom

So let me give you the premise again. We are freed, but we are not free. I'm going to talk about three specific areas. We are freed from the consequence of sin. We are freed from the bondage of sin to do good works. And something we rarely think of, we're freed to be the person God created us to be.

I thought we were going to go down the track of, is it all right to drink a beer, is it all right to do all these things? I don't want to get in that stuff. I want to stay on these things, because these are bigger issues than that. You go figure that out. I'll give you the punchline. It's not right to get drunk, so you figure out the rest of it.

It's just like marrying a nonbeliever. Can you marry a nonbeliever? No. Now, should you date one? I'll tell you what, in that area especially, I think no is the answer. Evangelistic dating is stupid. Dating in itself is a pain. Male and female relationships are hard. They're confused. They're complicated. They're emotional. If you add to it a believer-unbeliever, where one side has to manipulate to convert the other, that's a very, very hard relationship. Are you free to do it? Yeah, you are. But, you know, you're free to go down and jump off Bank One building, but we don't advocate it. You need to restrain yourself at the same time.

Freedom from the Consequence of Sin

Let me stay on this. Freedom from the consequence of sin. At church it's been interesting. Every week in the bulletin, you know, you have this lot. You have them in all of your bulletins at church. You know, body life stuff. Here's what's going on at the church. Every Sunday, there's a birth. I mean, there were three of them two weeks ago. There were two of them again Sunday. There were three the week before that. So, consequently, we do a lot of baby dedications.

And when we do these baby dedications, so they bring up this baby, and there's this little baby, and, you know, you hold her, and it's just, aw. Aw. And I just wish one time, all of a sudden, we'd be holding that baby, and little teeth together. That's what I'd like to see. Because that's what we're really holding there. We get deceived. We get lulled into thinking, oh, this is just a cute little baby. This is a cute, sinful, wretched little creature. That's what the Scripture says. That we come into the world as sinner. When we hear the Bible talk about God and sinner reconciled, the reason is, is because all of us fall short of the glory of God.

This is an absolutely crucial point. Let me just read to you from Romans chapter 3. And it's a difficult section in that Paul is building a case here, and this is the summary of this case. What He's saying in Romans 1, 2, and now in chapter 3, is that every man is a sinner. In fact, He concludes this by saying, all have fallen short of the glory of God. All sin, all fall short of the glory of God. But here He's bringing this together. He's talking about the man that's out there, the Aborigine, the guy that never sees. He's talking about the pagan that lives in this sophisticated Greek culture. He's talking about the Jew.

Here's His conclusion. "There is none righteous"—this is Romans 3:10—"There is none righteous, not even one. There's none who understands. There's none who seeks after God. All have turned aside. Together they have become useless. There's none who does good, not even one."

Deliverance from Sin's Consequences

When we talk about salvation, we need to understand that this word literally means deliverance. Saved from what? Delivered from what? Delivered from the consequence of that sin. Our minds are not very good at comprehending this stuff, and in our lostness, we don't like it.

If you were to sit here—obviously, we have a very different clientele in this room now than we'll have 12 hours from now—but if you come back in here tonight around 7, and you're sitting around the bar, and you've got your Diet Coke, and they're having a beer, and they're watching a ball game, and you say to them, "What do you think you've got to do to go to heaven?" and they engage you in that conversation, what you're going to hear back will be something like this: "Be a good person." That's the dominant thought.

You may hear a variation. Here's a religious variation that you'll get: "Keep the Ten Commandments. I go to heaven if I keep the Ten Commandments." I'm just telling you, whenever anybody says that, you've only got to ask one question, and it closes that conversation. Here's the question: "My memory's not clear. What were those Ten again?" And then you're done, because they're going to go, "Ah, murder and stealing. Something like that." The obvious thing is, how do you keep the Ten? You've got to go to heaven based on keeping these Ten things, but you don't even know what they are.

The Concept of Grace

What we need to get our arms around, and the world will never get their arms around this—only believers can—is the concept of grace. Heaven is not secured based on something we've done or something we've earned. Even religion will come along and say, "Well, Jesus died on the cross. Jesus did this. Jesus did that. But you've got to do something." And the Bible comes along and says, "No, we are saved by grace through faith, and that's not of ourselves." We're not involved in that process in any place. We're the recipient of this. This is the issue that, to me anyway, we've got to come to grips with.

When we talk about salvation, we talk about three aspects—and if you're new to this study, we're going to lose you for about 120 seconds, but we'll be right back to you. When we talk about saved, we're talking about something that has a past, a present, and a future to it. So as Christians, we were saved, justified, at that point of conversion. That's the technical term there for the past: justification. We are being saved right now. Technical term: sanctification. We're being set apart. God's doing His work in our life. The future component is—want to guess? Glorification.

Those are all part of our life. As Christians, that's all a certainty in our life, that we're justified, sanctified, and glorified. But salvation is not something—and I'm afraid, especially as evangelicals, we sometimes lose this—we think of being saved, and we think, well, we're done with that. Check that off our list. We don't have to go through this again. No, I am saved. I cannot be any more saved. Now my life begins to look like it.

Understanding God's Holiness

Before we go to the look-like-it part, I want to close this deal. We're saved from the consequence of sin. What you deserve is death. We have a very, very distorted view of God. I don't have it with me, but I was just going through some old files last night, and I found where HBO was doing this special on understanding God. They had a Buddha, and they had a Confucius, everything. What we've even done, which has trivialized God, is basically, you know, "Jesus is my friend. God's just the old buddy." It's like I'm going to swing by, pick Him up, stop by, grab a little Mexican food, and head down to the ballgame. We've trivialized the holiness of God.

Somebody gave me, a couple of weeks ago, a great gift. There's a guy by the name of Max McClendon, I think is his name. He's a dramatic reader. R.C. Sproul's using him a lot. This guy has done the entire Bible on CD discs. So there's like 34 discs. I'm listening right now, and I'm listening on the way up this morning. I'm listening to Exodus 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. This is when God is saying to Moses, "Go tell Pharaoh, let my people go."

I'm telling you, along comes—now we've got blood in the water, we've got frogs and gnats and flies and dead kids. I found myself going, "Pharaoh, how stupid are you? What do you need to see, man? The whole country's covered with frogs. He's telling you this is what's going to happen." But it's a great picture of the people that you sit at the coffee shop and have a cup of coffee with and you say, "How can you not see this?" You can cover this planet with frogs and they're not going to get it.

In the middle of this, God says, "Moses, let me tell you why I'm doing this. I'm doing this so you can tell your kids and your grandkids about the holiness and the power of God." That's what we've lost. We've lost that holiness and power of God so that when we trivialize Him, the inevitable thing is we trivialize our sin. We miss the fact that we need a Savior, we need someone to remove from us the consequence of sin.

Christ's Finished Work

When Jesus died on the cross, we're just several weeks from you having to listen to these words and it will be a privilege when He says, "It is finished." At that moment, He captured for His people their salvation. That meant that though the wages of sin were death—physical death, but eternal death—we've been saved or delivered from that. Does that make sense? Do you see that?

When we're freed, we're freed from the consequence of sin, but we're not free men. Because the minute we're freed from the consequence of sin, we submit ourselves to the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Freedom from the Bondage of Sin

Here's the second point: freedom from the bondage of sin. In other words, I don't have to sin anymore. As a non-believer, all you can do is sin. That's just your nature. Everything you do is sin. You love sin. When you have the choice, you will always take sin. As Christians, our life is different.

Paul writes this in Romans 6:11: "So consider yourselves dead to sin, alive to God in Christ. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts. Do not go on presenting your members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourself to God as those alive from the dead and your members, your body, as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, you are under grace."

Freedom from the consequence of sin was the first point. The second point is freedom from the bondage of sin. In other words, we're now free to do good works. Our life can now be what God wants it to be. We are now in a position where, as Jesus told us in Matthew chapter 5 in the Sermon on the Mount, to let your light shine, let your life display itself in such a good way that people see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

The Universal Bondage of Sin

As a non-believer, no one does good, no not one. No one understands. No one is seeking God. It could not be any more clear in the language that God speaks. It's universal and it's all-encompassing. Every person on the planet is a God-hater in their natural state and they do not seek God.

Wait a minute. I don't buy that. I've seen guys who have stacks of books on Eastern mysticism. They've got a Bible. They're all seeking God. No, they're not. Unless God intervenes in their heart, they're seeking something because they know there's something bigger than themselves. They know there's something larger out there. But what they're seeking is a God that's made in their own image. That's why they reject this and reject that. They want their own God.

Well, wait. No one does good? Come on. I know this guy down the street. He doesn't go to church. He doesn't read the Bible. But I see him all the time. He's a good guy. You should see him with his kids. You should see him with his wife. You should see him with his mistress. He's a very good guy. He's a very kind man. You should see him at business. You should see him at the holidays. He's serving the poor. He is a good guy. He does good things.

God Looks at the Heart, Not Just Actions

Let me help you understand what's going on here. You and I, as men, can only look at the action. God, as God, looks at the heart. So when we look around and say he's a good guy, we see him feeding the poor—that's a good thing. He takes his kids to Disneyland—that's a good thing. He brings his wife flowers on Valentine's Day—that's terrific. But God says, why is he doing it?

God, again, in this passage in 1 Corinthians 4—it's so fresh on my mind because I just taught it—Paul's talking about judging, and he said we ought not do a lot of judging. We've got to judge sin when we see it. That's clear. Somebody's involved in sin. Somebody robs a bank. That's sin. We need to deal with it. But he said you ought not judge a lot of the other things. And he said, here's why. Number one, you don't see everything. Number two, you don't know their motives. That's why God's the judge, because God sees everything.

I'll tell you how I see it. I see this frequently with high-profile Christians, and somebody will approach them, and they'll try to get them involved in their ministry, or they'll try to raise funds for something, and the person will either not be involved or just slightly be involved. And I'll talk to the people receiving this response. I don't understand it. This guy's got to be making a bazillion dollars or whatever it is. And my point to them is, but you don't know where he's spending it. You don't know what he's doing.

When you ask a guy to come and host a dinner, and he says no, do you know that that may be his 15th night in a row out? You don't know. Is it a big thing to just show up and do something? Not necessarily in and of itself, but you don't know what that person's doing. You can't judge his heart.

The Contrast Between Jeffrey Dahmer and Mahatma Gandhi

Now you've got to put these together, or you'll never understand the lostness of man. And that's why I cannot build a more graphic case than Jeffrey Dahmer and Mahatma Gandhi.

When I bring out Dahmer, we bring out a guy—let's not sugarcoat what he did. He lured in young boys, he had sex with them, he cut them up, he put their heads in the refrigerator, some of them he boiled and ate. This is a bad guy. I don't need to look at his heart and say, oh, he's got a good heart. He's a bad guy. The reports are—don't know if they're true—the reports are that a year before he was executed, he gave his life to Christ, and he was baptized in the prison. Don't know if it's true or not. But if it is, Jeffrey Dahmer's in heaven.

The antithesis to me of Jeffrey Dahmer humanly is Mahatma Gandhi. There's a classic picture of Gandhi. It's a classic picture of his earthly belongings after his death. I don't know if you've ever seen it. A walking stick, a prayer book, and a pair of glasses. That's it. That's all that's left. I mean, some of you, we're going to have 14 garage sales and still have to give it away to Goodwill, and they're not even going to want it. You've got so much junk, and you look at this, and you look at Gandhi, and you say, look at a prayer book, a walking stick, glasses. This man, he was not held captive by this world.

There's a little side note. There's a great scene in the movie Gandhi where Gandhi's being imprisoned, and somebody's interviewing him and talking about being held in this, really, this mansion. And Gandhi had a great line in there. I do not know if it's true, but the line that Ben Kingsley spoke as Gandhi was, "My friends tell me it costs them a great deal of money to keep me in poverty," which has become my motto, and I like that idea.

Here's Gandhi, walking stick, prayer book, glasses. Now, here's what I know about the Mahatma, because I've read a lot of his stuff. Here's what he said: "I read and follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. I read the Gospels every day. But I refuse to believe that Jesus—"

No other person could die in place for my sin. Now, I know that's true because He says it. If he died with that in his mind, then the Mahatma is in hell. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Now, look at this. Look at this picture. And understand how hard this is. Because you may be going, "Amen, Amen, Amen." Look at it. There's a whole lot of people, the majority of people in the world, they don't buy this. Look at what you've got. Look at what you just said yes to. You've got Jeffrey Dahmer eating people and going to heaven. You've got the Mahatma giving up everything and going to hell. How can that be?

Great question. Because it's not about our judging, it's about God's judging, and God looks at his heart, and he's a sinner who needs a Savior just like you. Both of these guys need a Savior. Let me tell you another thing. It's a mistake to think this one needs more of a Savior than this one. How many sins does it take to make you a sinner? One is what we say, and I'll give you the right answer. None. You come in a sinner. You're already a sinner. All that one does is confirm what we already got. But we'll go ahead and be kind and say one.

The Narrowness of Orthodox Christianity

See, now what you're coming to is the narrowness, the hardness of Orthodox Christianity. It's very narrow and very hard. That's why it will never be a dominant popular religion. The fact that you can have 90 million people in this country say they're Christians tells you they don't know what it means.

What you're dealing with here is something called grace. And what this ought to do more than anything else, I think, more than anything else, this ought to move your heart to a sense of gratitude. You deserve judgment. You deserve punishment. You deserve hell. And God gives you grace. And God gives you mercy.

That's why when we have all these discussions about Christmas, what's the meaning of Christmas? Every year we get it wrong. The meaning of Christmas is about giving. It's not. The whole point of Christmas is about receiving. If you don't receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, you miss the whole point of Christmas, which was Christ getting here for what is the real deal, and that's Good Friday and Easter. If you miss that, that's why these days are so important. No Good Friday, no Easter. It's 1 Corinthians 15. No Good Friday, no Easter. You and I are going to hell. We've got no chance.

Freed to Do Good Works

Now, and I know I belabor that point, but it shows on your face. What Paul writes in the book of Romans is, now you've been freed from that sin. It does not have to reign in your body anymore. Now you can do good works. You are free to be the person that God called you to be.

And I read from the Apostle Paul in Philippians 2. And Paul's just been talking about, let me just read to you, Ephesians 2, verses 8, 9, and 10. Paul says, we're saved by grace through faith, that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God, so nobody could boast, to perform the good works that God prepared for us. In Philippians 2, he says, the mind of Christ that's also in you, now you begin to live this way.

And here's what he said in Philippians 2, verse 12: "So then, my beloved, just as you've always obeyed me, not as in my presence only, but much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling." Let me stop there a second. Many of my religious friends will go, "There it is. Work out your salvation. You're supposed to work this thing out. You're supposed to earn it." The word that's translated "work out" here means to continually work, to bring about something that has already been faithfully completed. God's already saved you. Now look like it. That's what He's saying.

Living as Children of Light

Verse 13: "For it is God who's at work within you to will and to work for His good pleasure. Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent children of God above reproach, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation." One of the paraphrases says this: to be innocent and blameless in the midst of a bunch of crooks and perverts. Sound like your office? Sound like the club? And then He goes on to say, because you're the light.

Freedom, you get it? Freedom from the consequence of sin. Freedom from the bondage of sin. In other words, free to do good works. Free to do the things that God created you to do. Not free to do whatever you want to do.

Grace vs. License in Dating

I get no better examples than from the world of singleness. Dating always presents these dilemmas, and they're always so graphic. Two ladies tell me two stories that are very similar.

The first one was a gal who was married to a minister. She ran off with a gal. She was done with guys, and after years of not dating, decided that she might go out. There was a guy, a high-profile guy in a high-profile singles group. Happened to be right here in this high-profile valley of the sun. And so he asked her out, and she thought, "You know, I'm going to try it. I've heard him teach Sunday school. I'm going to try it."

They go. They have a date. They're on their way home, and he said, "When we get home, are we going to sleep together or not?" And she said, "I don't think so. I know we're not." He said, "Listen, there's been a little tension. I don't know if you've picked it up all night. Kind of an undercurrent. There's a little tension. We know if we go out five or six times, we're going to sleep together. Why don't we sleep together tonight and just kind of get it out of the way so we're just freed up from this?" And she said, "No." And then she did the thing: "I thought you were a Christian." And here's what he said: "I am, but I'm not under the law. I'm under grace."

See, that would be license. There it is again. That's the synonym that Webster uses. License. Do whatever I want to do. And another gal, virtually the same, this is my favorite, virtually the same circumstances, they get home, and he said, "Are we going to go to bed now?"

Or not? And she said, no, we're not going to go to bed. And I thought you were a Christian, which is always a dumb thing to say, by the way, because you're going to get, although you get great illustrations out of it. And what his answer was, I am, but when I get horny, I just close the Bible.

Now, as married people, we go, oh, that's terrible, so let's not leave it there. It's tax time. When it's time to pay my taxes, I just close the Bible. When it's time to just love the unlovable, I just close the Bible. When it's time to speak the truth in love, I just close the Bible. You fill in the blank. It's easy to throw darts at these single people and all those circumstances, but you miss this.

And this is the end of it. I'm done belaboring this. True freedom leads us back to bondage. It's the point that Paul's making. My life in its true freedom is not the freedom to do whatever I want to do, but it's now the freedom to put myself in bondage to Christ. Freedom from the consequence of sin, freedom from the bondage of sin, free to do good works.

Free to Be Who God Created You to Be

Here's the third thing. And I never had this in this equation until a couple of years ago. Free to be the person God created you to be. Free to be the person that God wants you to be.

When we do that talk, What Are You Afraid Of?, it always strikes me, and I'm not kidding you, I've done that talk with as many diverse groups as you can, and I'll say what are you afraid of, it blows me away the answers, because in every setting, I hear the same thing without exception. Failure, rejection, loneliness. See, we care desperately what others think. We desperately care.

That's why, hey, I'll prove this to you. I guarantee you, over the last two months, three months, you've made a purchase of an item that was driven by what people think. You bought a shirt, here you go, you bought a shirt with a logo, knowing that people would look at that logo and they'd have some view of you. I guarantee you, you've made a major purchase that way. You bought a vehicle.

Well, not me, not me. I didn't go buy some highfalutin car. I bought a little Volkswagen. See, and that's my point. That's why you bought it. Bought a little Volkswagen so you thought people would say, oh, there's a humble person driving that little Volkswagen. See, I guarantee you, you have. You've made a purchase, and my point here is to say, we seem to care desperately what other people think.

Now we come into the spiritual world, now we come into the things of God, and we care very much what other people think, and we become very jealous of one another. So now, rather than be the person God created you to be, you spend all your time wishing you were someone else. Oh, if I could only sing like that person. Oh, if I had hospitality like that person. If I could teach like this person. God didn't make you to be that person. God made you to be the person you are.

God's Purpose in Our Past

God has allowed all sorts of junk. Do you ever wonder why God allowed all that junk in your life before you were a Christian? All that selfishness, all that pride, all those stupid mistakes, all that drugs, all that sex, all that cheating. Do you ever wonder why He did that? Do you ever wonder why He let that divorce in there? Do you ever wonder why He let that? Do you ever wonder?

I'll tell you why. So that now you're prepared to minister to one another. 2 Corinthians chapter 1. Because now I've suffered. Now I've suffered. When you talk about suffering, man, I can deal with it.

What happens is rather than be the person God called us to be, we become focused on being something else. And we start to think about ourselves. One author writes this, Humility is just as much opposed to self-abatement as it is to self-exaltation. In other words, whether I'm tearing myself down or building myself up, in either case, humility is the antithesis of this.

The Essence of Humility

I've mentioned to you before, in Colossians 4:2, Paul begins to try to describe humility. And in one of the footnotes, John MacArthur makes the point that as he's writing, as Paul's writing, in the Greek vocabulary, there was not even a word to capture this idea. Now just to see how lost we are, the essence of the Christian life demands a humble spirit. We come along to the world and we try to talk about it, and the world says, we don't have that word in our vocabulary. We're saying it's the central part of living the Christian life, and they're saying, we don't even have that word. That shows you how lost we are.

When we talk about coming to Christ, we're talking about turning everything to Him. Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Him. So all of a sudden, you don't have to worry about bigger or smaller or better or worse.

Here's the sentence, and then we close. You're freed... I wish I could write like this. You're freed from the crushing blow of criticism and from the headiness of flattery. You don't have to worry about either one of these things. You're unique. And I don't say this in some power of positive thinking way or something to build you up or blow smoke at you. God's made you unique and different. He's given you a gift set. He's given you talents, and He gave them to you for a reason. He gave them for you to use.

The True Nature of Christian Freedom

Freed from the consequence of sin, freed from the bondage of sin, and freed to be the person God made you to be. When we talk about the freedom of the cross, we're talking about freedom that really is not the freedom that Webster defines. Again, Webster, liberation from slavery or imprisonment, exemption from the necessities of choice or action. He didn't liberate us from slavery. He did in one sense. He liberated us from the slavery of sin to enslave us to righteousness.

I'll say it one more time. I'm freed, but I'm not free. I hope that makes sense. I hope that has some sense in there. That to me is the freedom of the cross right there. Now you've got the freedom to live. Now you're trying to figure out, should I have a drink

The driving force is, does it glorify God? That becomes the whole issue. Is that what God would do? You're trying to figure out what house to buy. We get this all the time. How much house should I have? What do you think? What kind of house would Jesus buy? What kind of house would Jesus want you to be in?

I don't know those answers. I don't need to know them. Because He made me different than He made you.

What's Coming Next Week

This week, we talk about something that you instinctively run away from, that if you know it's coming, you run and hide, and yet I think God in His Word says, if you don't have this, you're never going to grow spiritually. It's the thing that terrifies many and inevitably sets us on a run. And God says, don't run away from it. In fact, He says, you need to welcome it. Because if you don't have it, you'll never get mature. Next week, we look at that.

Father, help us see this. Help us see the truth of this. God, help us understand that we are freed from the consequence of sin, that we are freed from the bondage of sin, that we can indeed be freed to do good works, which we could never do before. And God, we're free to be the people that You've called us to be. Teach us that. Help us learn that, Father. We pray that to You this morning. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Have a great week. We'll see you next week.