What does freedom really look like? Part 1 - the bad news

When we think of the word "freedom", what comes to mind?

I think for most of us, the first thing that comes to mind is the ability to do whatever we like, whenever we like, however we like. We think of "freedom" in negatives: freedom from the things that prevent us from doing what we want. Freedom from persecution. Freedom from anxiety. Freedom from poverty. Freedom from rules and regulations. That sort of thing.

Christians can also fall into this kind of thinking. After all, Jesus told us that "Whom the Son sets free, is free indeed" (John 8:36). Paul told us that "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free." (Gal 5:1), and "All who rely on works of the law are under a curse" (Gal 3:10). We are told that "the righteous will live by faith" (Gal 3:11). Therefore, many Christians are tempted to believe that, as long as we have faith in Christ, we are free to do whatever we want - even if it means sinning. After all, Christ's sacrifice set us free from the results of our sin, all we need is faith! At worst, this means that "faith" has given Christians the excuse to use their "freedom" to do whatever they like. Or, at best, some Christians are confused about whether they need to follow the "rules" as set out in the Bible or not... and how this fits in to their life of faith.

Well, firstly, I'm delighted to tell you that the belief that Christians can commit whatever sin they like because of the once and for all sacrifice of Christ is an ancient heresy called Antinomianism. We are not the first ones to have thought of it -- this heresy has been around even during Paul's time (see Romans 6).

But this article is not going to be a history lesson on Antinomianism (but it is immensely fascinating stuff, feel free to look it up). Rather, I hope that I can convince you that true Christian freedom, as proclaimed by Paul and by Christ, is much more nuanced, much more complex than simply whether we follow the rules or not. I hope that I can show you that true Christian freedom, if and when we can attain it, is so much more free than you could ever imagine.

Freedom from or freedom to?
I love the movie Schindler's List, there are so many scenes that are so good for demonstrating various aspects of the Christian life... and the following scene demonstrates this idea perfectly.

About 1200 Jews, mostly from Poland, are held in a concentration camp / slave factory in Czechoslovakia at the end of the WWII. As news filters through that the Nazi armies are defeated and the war is ending, the owner of the factory as well as the soldiers guarding the camp flee, leaving the Jews alone in the camp, the gates wide open. Having no where to go, the Jews stay inside the camp.

The following morning, a solitary Russian soldier on a horse approach the camp with its wide open gates. "You have been set free by the Russian army!" the rider declares. The weary, starving Jews look up at him who proclaimed to have set them free. "Where will we go?" they ask. "We have no food."

"I wouldn't go East if I were you," the soldier says. "They hate Jews there. And I wouldn't go West either. Isn't there a village over the hill?"

And the film closes, as the viewer come to the realisation that, although they are set free from their slavery and persecution in the camp, and could indeed do whatever they want, their freedom means very little, if there is not much they are free to do, as they are displaced from from their home and have no money or food, having lost loved ones and everything that was once life. In their vulnerable, impoverished state, they very easily fall back into the slavery from which they were delivered. The deliverance from the Russian soldier was really quite laughable.

I hope I can show you that Christ's salvation is so much more powerful than that of the Russian soldier. Christ's saving act is not a one-time event that saved us from death and then leaves us to muddle through life. Instead, Christ's saving act is continually working in us, to bring us to greater and greater freedom to become what God intended us to be, what we were made for, in the beginning.

In the beginning, we were free
The Bible begins with Genesis, and a declaration that our God is a God who creates. God as the creator means not only that God made everything, but also that God is the rightful owner of all of creation, and that He is King and sovereign over everything - man, beasts, heavens, and earth. The Bible begins with a proclamation that God as creator means God is to be worshiped.

From his position as King, God created human life, and made us different from all other creation by putting his image on us. God gives Adam a mandate: rule the earth. Have dominion over all of creation - being under the rule of God alone. Adam was free to rule everything God had made, his work in the garden of Eden being an act of service and worship to God. Additionally, he alone of all creation was described to have the very image of God. Adam didn't have to work hard at being perfect, he was perfect, just by being himself, the way God made him. (Gen 1:27-30, Gen 2:15.)

Adam was in a position to worship God, enjoy God's presence, and also enjoy creation but without being ruled by creation. Adam could act according to his nature, and his nature was perfect. Adam knew what it was to be free.

Freedom exchanged for slavery: Adam's story
What happened at the Fall of mankind was more than just eating the wrong fruit. It wasn't so much that Adam discovered the difference between good and bad - God had already told him (Gen 2:16-17). Instead, Adam rejected the rule of God in his life and chose to decide for himself - and his decision was that a created object was more important than the word of the Creator. His decision cemented the rest of his life and our lives as well - all humankind afterwards, similarly, choose creation over the Creator, serving idols over the one true God. After the fall, Adam (and all humanity) still acted according to his nature, but his nature had fallen and no longer perfect. His heart still yearns for the contentment he had in God back in the garden of Eden, but his heart looks for that contentment in other things - exchanging the glory of God for idols of various kinds (Romans 1:23). Thus, sin is more than just breaking rules - sin is seeking fulfillment, contentment, security, and identity in created things rather than the Creator. The heart of sin is serving idols rather than the creator, and the idol could be anything from the idols of ancient society like carved wood and stone, to the idols of modern society like money, sex, status, or self-actualisation.

Adam would act according to his nature, but his nature was fallen, and bound to sin and idolatry... and could no longer provide him with the true contentment for which he was created. Adam, and now all humanity, was now enslaved to sin. (Romans 5:13.)

If God is King and Sovereign, He can not possibly tolerate a subversion of order in his kingdom as what Adam has done. To tolerate a subversion like this would be simply un-kingly and un-sovereign. And yet, in his mercy, God still seeks people to worship him and know him (John 4:21-25)... I say in his mercy, because God knows that our hearts are most satisfied when we find him (Ps 17:15, or as St Augustine famously said, our hearts are restless, O God, until it rests in thee. Confessions of St Augustine, Book I).

And so, God stages a rescue plan. (The below is, of course, a gross over-simplification of the plan. To get the whole thing in its glorious entirety, you'll have to read the Bible. Preferably cover to cover.)

Slavery exchanged for freedom: Israel's story
At this point you might wonder, where does the law come into it?

As it happens, phase one of God's rescue plan involves a small nation called Israel. God saves Israel out of Egypt to do just what he has created humanity to do - worship (Exod. 3:12, 4:23, 7:16, and so on). God chooses to reveal himself to their ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (whose name was changed to Israel)... Then to Moses, as He uses him to lead the nation out of bondage and slavery in Egypt. Unlike the Russian soldier in Schindler's List, God doesn't free the people from slavery in Egypt and then leave them to their devices. Instead, God initially dwells with his people in their midst while they journey (Exod. 13:21-22), then inside the tabernacle (Exod. 40:35 - the word "tabernacle" literally means "dwelling place"), until they reach the land which God has promised to them will flow with "milk and honey". Once inside the promised land, God promises the Israelites that they will regain some of what was lost from Eden - that is, they will enjoy the fruits of the land, they will enjoy the presence of God in their midst, and they will get to worship him.

The laws were given to Israel as they were on the cusp of entering into the promised land. You might perhaps think, "What a let down. Rescued out of slavery, only in exchange for a set of laws! What kind of freedom is that?". But if that is the way you think, then perhaps you don't really understand the mood of the average God-loving Israelite at the time. The ten commandments start with a declaration of who God is: "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery". The average Israelite at the time knew the full ramifications of that statement - and would have experienced every miraculous deliverance up until that point. The laws which followed would not have been a burden or obligation, but instead a joy to observe (Psalm 119:13-16). "After all," they might say to themselves, "why would we covet when we have the LORD in our midst? Why would we steal, or give false witness, or oppress the homeless? What could we possibly gain that we don't already have in the LORD?"

Freedom exchanged for slavery: Israel's fall

The pattern of idolatry from Adam continues. The problem with Israel is not so much that they could not obey the laws - although they couldn't, but that their hearts are still fallen, like Adam's heart. They forgot about the God who lead them out of slavery, and their hearts again sought satisfaction and fulfillment from idols (Amos 2:4-8, Hos. 2:13, Hos 11:1-2). Their rejection of the right worship of God meant that even when they performed the right sacrifices according to the law, God could not accept them, because their heart was not right (Amos 5:21-24, Micah 6:8). We see that, although they were set physically free from Egypt, they still were not free from the sinful nature inherited from Adam. Once again, God the sovereign King can only act according to His sovereign nature. Israel was taken over by neighbouring countries, and the pattern of slavery continues.

What God lamented the most, over and above the captivity and slavery of the people's physical bodies, was the captivity and enslavement of their hearts. Through Israel's prophets, God tells his people about the next phase of God's rescue plan. God plans to do something completely new - he will give the people a new heart and a new spirit to replace their old, sinful and fallen hearts. (See Jeremiah 31:31-34, 24:7, Ezekiel 36:26-27). 

Lessons from Adam and Israel
You might feel that I have taken a very long detour from Genesis to get to Christ, when a simple "Christ came to set us free" could have sufficed. But I hope that I have demonstrated to you that God's plan for salvation is not simply to set us free from sins or death. God's salvation plan is for us to be set free to greater glory. We will no longer be ruled by the things around us -- our anxieties, perfectionism, legalism. Instead, we will be set free to be truly human as He created us to be - radiant, strong, with the integrity to enjoy all of creation, but not afraid of losing anything because we have God which is greater than all.

Also, I hope I have shown you that the problem is not simply in our inability to obey God's rules. (Exod. 19:8 shows how willing the Israelites were to try.) Rather, the problem is in our very nature - we simply can not worship God in spirit and in truth as he desires. We were born outside of Eden, into slavery. Something very drastic and dramatic is required. We need a heart transplant.

Justification in Narrative form: the story of the Ethiopian eunuch

Students of theology, I think, often feel frustrated that the Bible does not read like a systematic theological textbook. If you are looking for a dictionary-like definition of important concepts such as justification, sanctification, atonement, etc... you will not find it in the pages of the Bible.

Instead of finding an instruction manual or didactic textbook, you will find that the pages of the Bible contain stories, letters, poetry, songs and visions... little bits of law inter-dispersed amongst the joys and lamentations of men and of God. It seems God saw it fit to tell us His story (and ours) not in a systematised manual, but in a form that is more compelling and more invitational. Like a father's stories to his child.

The story of the Ethiopian eunuch, recorded in Acts 8:26-40, is very much one of those stories.

The story begins with Philip the Evangelist being given an instruction from an angel to head South. We know from earlier in Chapter 8 that Philip had just been spending time in Samaria - a region populated by people that are half-Jewish in ethnicity and in faith - a region despised by the Jews and considered to be outside of the chosen people of God. Luke, the writer of the book of Acts, goes to some pains to tell us about how God accepted the Samaritans through the gospel. Having started something of a mass movement in Samaria, the Holy Spirit then turned Philip's attention Southwards.

I had the great fortune to have travelled in Israel a couple of years ago, and one of the things that most struck me was the heat and the dust, especially south of Jerusalem. When the angel told Philip to "go towards the south" (8:26), the Greek phrase could also be translated "go at about noon". I wonder what Philip must have thought when he received those instructions - I remember the dread that I felt whenever it was time to get off the air-conditioned bus.

We know a few things about the man Philip encountered on that hot, desert road. He was an Ethiopian, an official from the court of the Ethiopian queen (actually, queen-mother), and he was a eunuch. He had gone up to Jerusalem to worship, and was reading the book of Isaiah in his chariot... and not really understanding what he was reading.

The Bible doesn't tell us what sort of mood Philip found the Ethiopian man in, but I could only imagine it to be a sad and dejected one. He knew enough about God to want to make the journey from his home in north Africa to Jerusalem to worship. Perhaps he had read or heard about Yahweh's love for his people, his mighty hand and outstretched arm saving his people out of bondage in Egypt to establish them in Israel. Perhaps he was captivated by the thought of the one true God, dwelling with His people in the temple. Or perhaps he was just curious. Either way, he was sufficiently compelled to leave the comforts of the Queen's court to make the slow, hot, and arduous journey to Jerusalem to worship.

The centre of Jewish worship was in the temple, in the heart of Jerusalem. When someone goes to Jerusalem to worship, it usually means they do a few things: pray, listen to teaching from the rabbis, give alms to the poor, and present sacrifices... all at the temple. (Cf Paul at the temple in Acts 21-22, Jesus at the temple in the gospels.) This was usually a joyous occasion (cf Psalm 95, Psalm 24), but when the Ethiopian finally arrived at the temple having ascended the steep hills on the south side of Jerusalem, he would have been disappointed. If there were any group of people the Jews looked down upon aside from the Samaritans, it was surely the gentiles. And not just any gentile, but a gentile eunuch. The term eunuch indicates a man who has been castrated, and such men were forbidden by law to enter the temple (Deut 23:1). The Ethiopian eunuch would have been reminded that, though he may hold powerful positions in the Queen's court at home, by Yahweh's standards he was terribly deficient and powerless to do anything about his deficiencies. He would have been turned away in no uncertain terms before he even got anywhere near the temple courts. Didn't get to pray at the temple. Didn't get to present his sacrifices. Didn't get to give gifts to the poor. Didn't get to hear teaching from the rabbis. What else is there for an Ethiopian eunuch to do in Jerusalem? He had no option but start the journey back home. On the road, he opens the scroll of Isaiah - but even that seems to be a rejection from God, because the passage make no sense to him. When Philip asked him if he understood what he was reading, he replied: "how can I, unless someone guides me?".

Philip was able to interpret the passage to him, because Jesus had previously given the disciples the key to reading the scriptures - that everything is fulfilled in Him (Luke 24:44-47). As it happens, the eunuch was reading from Isaiah 53:7-8, a passage now come to be known as the "passage of the suffering servant":

"Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter
and like a lamb before its shearer is silent,
so he opens not his mouth.
In his humiliation justice was denied him.
Who can describe his generation?
For his life is taken away from the earth.”

And so, starting from that very passage, Philip told him the good news about Jesus. Jesus had once told his disciples that all the Old Testament is fulfilled in Him - and this passage is no different. We don't know what Philip said to the eunuch exactly (I would love to know!), but we could hazard a guess.

You see, a good Jewish person like Philip and a gentile God-fearer like the Ethiopian eunuch both know a few things. They know that humans were created to enjoy the fellowship and the glory of God, but one fatal decision saw the whole of humanity severed from that glory, becoming sinful and naked (Genesis 3). From then on, they knew that humanity's sinfulness and nakedness could only be covered by sacrifice - from the killing of animals for their skins in Genesis 3 to the sacrifice laws in Leviticus 4. Additionally, God would no longer dwell with people directly as in the garden of Eden, but only in the Most Holy Place in the tabernacle or temple, and could only be approached by the most holy of the priests and only after much sacrifice (described at length in Leviticus). 1 Kings 8:11-12 describe how God came to dwell in the temple in Jerusalem, and Jerusalem became the centre of Jewish worship. And hence, the Ethiopian eunuch braved the heat and the dust and the distance, to come to Jerusalem -- to offer sacrifices, and to draw nearer to God... only to find himself turned away.

Philip would have explained, I think, that what the eunuch was seeking in Jerusalem is fulfilled and found in Jesus. The sacrifices that he was going to make in Jerusalem was already made in Christ - once and for all. Jesus has already taken up the eunuch's sins (Isaiah 53:5), his pain (Isaiah 53:4), and presented himself as a sacrifice for them. God knew that no amount of sacrifice of animals could cleanse the stains of Genesis 3, so he Himself came, in his great mercy and love, and provided the sacrifice in his own body and blood. The punishment that came on Him brought us peace with God, and our wounds are healed as He became wounded (Isaiah 53:5,6).

I think Philip would have told the eunuch about Jesus' other name - Immanuel - meaning "God with us" (Matthew 1:23), pronouncing the good news that we are so cleansed by his blood that God Himself can dwell with us directly again. And Philip would have recounted how the curtain that separated the Most Holy Place from the rest of humanity was torn at Jesus' death (Matthew 27:51), signalling the end of God's separation from us. Perhaps, having mentioned Jesus' death, Philip would not have missed the next obvious event - Jesus' bodily resurrection, promising that we are no longer destined for death but a bodily, glorious resurrection much like His (1 Cor 15:21-22). Therefore, in the waters of baptism, we are baptised into His death so that we may die to our sins and deficiencies, our transgressions and sins no longer ruling our hearts and destiny. Instead, our destiny is bound up with His glory and resurrection (Romans 6:3-6)...

It is, perhaps, at this point that the eunuch notices that they are passing "some water" (Acts 8:36) - maybe a stream or a wadi. He asks: "What prevents me from being baptised?", and finds that his spiritual and physical deficiencies were not enough to separate him from the love and redemption in Christ. They go into the water, and when they come out, Philip is taken away from him to the north... and the eunuch goes home, rejoicing... his sorrow turned into joy, like a merchant who found the most precious jewel.

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ... for through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. -- Ephesians 2:13, 18-22

What does this mean for us today?
I remember a time, when I was in my teens, when I knew the "facts" about Christianity (that Jesus is God incarnate, and that he died for the sins of humanity), but never really understood how that actually applies to me and why it should be such good news. It was some years later that I truly understood that the deep ache inside my heart at my own inadequacies, and the deep yearning for true glory, could only be fulfilled by Jesus' sacrifice... and I came to see that it is indeed the good news, the best news. If you have never really understood how the gospel could be good news, I really hope the story of the Ethiopian eunuch could compel you to seek the truth no matter where it may lead you.

For us Christians, the story reminds us that God calls all sorts of people to himself... especially those who have been rejected by us who call ourselves His people. While we are busy arguing about how to arrange the church flowers or whether to sing rock ballads or hymns inside our ivory steeple churches, God is out there calling out to the tax collectors and prostitutes and eunuchs of our society. I have heard Christians say to me, "sure, if I ever meet a prostitute I'll be nice to them just like Jesus was." But these are often the same Christians who are unable to cross the pew to talk with those of a different ethnic background or socio-economic class... and thus, we form cliques within our own churches, and lose sight of the grander vision that captivated Philip and the eunuch.

I must admit, the joke is on us... because the eunuch went away rejoicing.