Our Lord said in the Gospel of John: "If you hold to my teaching, you are truly my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (Jn 8:31-32) I suspect this might one of the most quoted verses of the Bible. Yet what does Christ mean when he speaks of being set free? A few verses later he explains it: those who follow him are set free from sin. In other words, we are free from the bondage of wickedness, freed to walk according to the law, in faith, hope and love.
Many people, if not most people, think of freedom as the liberation from rules and restraints. Yet this is not at all the biblical understanding. Those who commit lawlessness are in bondage; Scripture calls them slaves of sin. Those who obey God and serve Him are those who are in fact free. We are made free by knowing the Truth, which is Christ. Once we have been set free by knowledge, we live as freed-men by living as Christ lived, in total obedience to the will of God.
With this in mind about the nature of freedom, the whole rhetoric of the pro-abortion camp becomes transparent. The very term "pro-choice" is their false claim to freedom. Yet it cannot be freedom, because it is a violation of the will and law of God. Certainly, there is a choice involved, just as there is a choice to commit every sin there is. Anyone who steals or rapes or murders or anything else that involves a willingness to break God's law exercises a choice: the choice to do evil. In fact the very nature of sin itself revolves around the use of our free will by choice: someone who does something wrong without willing it, as in an accident, does not sin, but rather makes a mistake. Sin is always a matter of will, of choice. This is not freedom; this is a lie and a caricature of freedom. We must know the Truth, who is Christ, and follow his commands, and only then will we have true freedom: the freedom of the sons and daughters of God.
"Those who obey God and serve Him are those who are in fact free."
ReplyDeleteThis is a powerful sentence. The modern idea of freedom, as eluded to above, is quite the enticing trap. If one is "free" in the sense of the American Society's idea, you are in fact a slave to a myriad of things: materialism, anti-religious propaganda, etc. Once a person realizes that you will serve a master and you in fact have a choice as to whom/what that master is. I believe that choosing the Master is only logical.