Winning Into Freedom
John 8:36
“If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”
Key Passages
We are designed with a great capacity for God; and sin and our individuality are the things that keep us from getting at God.
God delivers us from sin: we have to deliver ourselves from individuality, i.e., to present our natural life to God and sacrifice it until it is transformed into a spiritual life by obedience.
God does not pay any attention to our natural individuality in the development of our spiritual life. His order runs across the natural life, and we have to see that we aid and abet God, not stand against Him and say - “I can't do that”.
God will not discipline us, we have to discipline ourselves.
God will not bring every thought and imagination into captivity; we have to do it.
My Own Thoughts
I have to somewhat summarize this passage to make it more understandable to myself. What I think he is saying here is that we all have an immense desire to know God. To know and be known. We also are a broken people with selfish desires and drives, and sins we fall into routinely. God can and has delivered us from the effects of the sin. If we believe in His Son Jesus Christ and that His death on the cross covered over our sins making us blameless in the sight of God, then God has delivered us from the outcome of sin. He doesn't automatically take away the sin as a source of temptation however. The temptation will still exist to follow our own desires and to commit those same sins that have a foothold in our lives. We have to go about the work of “dying to ourselves” so that we don't follow our own desires, and so that we don't continue to fall into the sins we are prone to wander into. If you struggle with a porn addiction don't imagine that its just going to stop being a source of temptation because you believe in God. If anything the temptation may increase because the enemy wants us to fail and to feel defeated. We have to conquer that temptation by practicing self control and obedience to the Word of God.
2 Corinthians 10:1-5
1By the meekness and gentleness of Christ, I appeal to you—I, Paul, who am "timid" when face to face with you, but "bold" when away! 2I beg you that when I come I may not have to be as bold as I expect to be toward some people who think that we live by the standards of this world. 3For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
We can say we believe all we want, but still have to do the work of dying to ourselves so that we can follow Christ and reflect Him to those around us. You wouldn't just say you believed in exercise and eating right and expect that belief to be enough to transform your body. Even though it is true that these things will transform your body... you have to actually choose to do them yourself. So if you say you believe something, but never follow through with the discipline it takes to actually live that belief, did you ever really believe it in the first place?
John 8:34-36
34Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. 35Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. 36So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
If you were a slave for your whole life, and one day you were set free, would you know how to stop being a slave instantly? You'd no longer have the effects of slavery, but you'd have to learn and choose to be free and to live like a free person. Look at the Israelites when taken out of Egypt. They were made free, they walked for a little while, and decided that freedom wasn't for them because they didn't know how to live it. They wanted to go back to Egypt and live in slavery again. It looked better to them than freedom. How ludicrous does that sound? But its very true that its way easier to sit where things are comfortable and easy, rather than choose to live be free and have to do the hard work of being a free man. But we are called to it because thats what it means to follow Christ. If the world sees and hears us professing to be Christians and supposedly having this “higher standard”, but then they see and hear us living it totally opposite, Christ will be made a joke to them. A late night talk show comedy bit about the failings and hypocrisy of Christianity.
Nobody said it would be easy. But if you believe, tough choices and hard work will follow. That is the life of the honest and true follower of Christ.
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