Freedom is like a root word. In other words, it must be viewed in terms of contrasts in order to understand its meaning and application. Can you know what light is if you have never been in the dark? Can you appreciate health unless you have experienced illness? Can you understand good without having been exposed to evil. Can you know satiation without having been hungry? The answer to these questions are no, or at least not very likely.

Freedom has more than one aspect to it as well. There is political freedom so that one may own property and dispose of it as he/she pleases. One may walk about unencumbered with any restrictions, and speak freely without being silenced. So, how do we understand freedom? We can only understand it in terms of the contrast of slavery. Slavery is being into submission to constraints or restraints by another. Therefore, freedom would be without submission to constraints or restraints by another; able to think, speak and act as you wish.

The other form of freedom is of a spiritual nature. Now, here’s the rub, neither unqualified nor unlimited political freedom is possible, nor spiritual which is our objective in this writing. Oh, you say – that’s not fair! Fair is a weather report or a Socialist’s erroneous view of reality.

According to Scripture (something many reject) we are either slaves of Christ or slaves of Satan. In Christ, we are free to obey Him. Under slavery to Satan, we may think we are free because we do as we wish and satisfy our pleasures at will. If you observe anyone living that way, you will find that their lives are actually very miserable. At the very least, they have no peace. They are never satisfied with anything. If they have a billion dollars, they want two billion dollars. If they have one vacation home, they want two. And when they get the two, they want three and so on. If they have a spouse, they want a lover on the side, and with that it will not be enough. If they hold a high political office, they want a higher political office.

The wicked are never satisfied no matter how much they have or accomplish. They have an emptiness in themselves that they cannot fill materially. It is a spiritual problem that requires a spiritual solution. Satan oppresses the spirit and drags people into the gutter of life (even though it may appear as high society). Perversion, greed, promiscuity, avarice, licentiousness, glutony, alcoholism, drug addiction and so on plague the wicked who are slaves to the aforementioned.

We are told in the book of Ephesians 5:12 that we are in a spiritual warfare. Now, how does the unbelieving person handle a spiritual war? They don’t! They surrender to the evil desires instilled in them by Satan and his minions But they and all of the believers have hope because in Galatians 5:1 we are told we have liberty in Christ, and He has made us free! On the other hand, John 8:34 says we are a slave to sin if we commit it. So, if we are free, it is only in the sense that the unsaved person is free to obey Satan while the saved person is free to obey Christ, and God has free reign to bring us into His camp at any time He pleases, or He can let us wallow in sin – for a time, or forever!

Understand this! Life is eternal – it manifests its temporal end in either death (life without God in Hell), or eternal life with God in Heaven. There is no Purgatory, no middle ground, no gray area. Throughout Scripture, the options are always contrasted between good and evil, right and wrong, just and unjust, righteous and wicked, sheep and goats, wheat and chaff etc. etc. Nobody is part righteous or part saved – it’s all or nothing!

Pensiamento Peligroso