By David ReayMonday 5 Feb 2018LifeWords DevotionalsFaithReading Time: 2 minutes
Read Galatians 5:13
13 For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. (NLT)
Freedom seems a good thing. Prisoners long for it. Those trapped in poverty seek to be free of it. Those with cancer wish to be free of it. Anyone in an abusive relationship wants to be free of it.
But there is another sort of freedom that actually contains an element of danger. It is the freedom granted to us by our creator when he made us. We were made to love him and others. God didn’t program us to inevitably do so. This means we are free to love him and others and free to not do so.
To be free to be good is to be free to do evil. So human freedom is a two-edged sword. We cannot demand that God make us free only to do what is right. That is not true freedom. And if we want to further protest that God is thus bringing evil into this world, we are overstating the case. God has made a world in which doing wrong is a possibility. He is responsible for making us free to do wrong but cannot be held responsible if we do go wrong.
We choose and we are responsible in our choosing. God has paid us the enormous compliment of giving us freedom. He did not want to create robots or puppets, for their love and virtue would not be true. Love can only have meaning if it is freely given, and so can only have meaning if it can be freely refused.
If we want to complain that this is not the state of affairs we would prefer, then we are really at a dead end. This world is all we have. This God is the only one going.
Blessings
David Reay