Real Freedom

We love our freedoms, don’t we? Can you imagine the alternative?

From the very beginning, to be Christian was to be free. In the ancient pagan world, though, it meant freedom from having to appease the gods. In the Roman world it meant freedom from the fear of death and the tyranny of Caesar’s rule. As they went to the Colosseum, the Christians did not fear death, unlike the Romans.

The Apostle Paul was a great champion of freedom, with warnings like this, “See to it that no one takes you captive,” (Colossians 2:8). In the original language, the word captive was almost ‘violent’, like capturing a slave and carrying them off. Specifically, he was speaking of hollow or deceitful philosophies, ideas that could captivate and take control of them.

It is a timeless warning, one that is equally true for the first century as well as the twenty-first. People were then (as now) telling believers that they must follow this tradition or that ceremony if they want to be genuine and ‘proper’.

I often find myself reflecting on how this might apply to church life today. Are we captivated by human traditions, like saying, “this is the way we’ve always done things?” Or could God be doing something new?

Traditions need to matter to us as they matter to Christ— not more, not less.

Jesus has taken the regulations and all that could stand against us, nailing it above his cross as if to say, “I am here because of the sins of this believer.” So we can be confident of our freedom. He was utterly victorious so we could be utterly free. —Rev. Greg Webster

‍