Freedom Promised
Paul writes in Galatians 5:1, “It is for freedom Christ set us free.” But are we? If Christ set me free, why am I still addicted to pornography? Why can’t I shake this out of my life? Is freedom even possible?
These questions are an important piece of your freedom because often it can be a question like this that prompts your journey towards freedom. God welcomes the questions and has given us ample wisdom in His word to help us discover the answers.
Promises Remembered
In the first part of this series, we reflected on the lessons from Joshua. He certainly faced his fair share of opposition in the Promised Land but also clung to God’s promises through it all. Joshua took God’s word to heart, and lived out the command to meditate on God’s word day and night (Joshua 1:8). He clung to God’s word while fighting for what God had already promised.
Are we clinging to God’s promises as we face opposition? Do we know God’s promises? Listen, God’s promises are real, and they are a powerful tool in helping you keep your way pure from pornography or any sexual addiction. We must cling to those promises.
Christ is the foundation of our freedom, and the promises help us keep pursuing freedom, even amid strong opposition.
Dead To Sin
“The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:10-11).
Do you see the new reality this verse proclaims? Christ paid the penalty for sin, but here it says He died ‘to sin’ and broke the power of sin once for all. And that victory extends to everyone who receives Him. But now consider the second part. How do we become partakers of this freedom over sin? And how do we count ourselves “dead to sin”?
Look, here’s the reality. No one walking this earth is without sin. And if anyone claims to be without sin, God calls that person a liar (1 John 1:8). But even though we can sin, it is also possible for us to be dead to sin. We are not at the mercy of our weak flesh, or temptation for that matter. And counting ourselves dead to sin is the key to overcoming it. It’s wisdom to see temptation, and know and understand I have died to it. The power of sin has been broken.
But in the heat of temptation, it feels like there is no way to resist that it is a foregone conclusion that I am going to give into the flesh. But in these moments, we must claim the power of the cross promised here, that the power of sin has been broken. The promises of freedom here are conditional, and it is faith in God’s promises that unleash their power. We walk by faith, and we must count ourselves dead to sin.
A Lesson From The Wild
Do you know how circuses used to train elephants to be held by a simple rope and stake? First, they trained them young. Secondly, they tied one end of the rope around the neck of the young elephant and tied the other end to a stake that they hammered deep into the ground. No matter how much the elephant pulled, it couldn’t get free. And the pain of trying and failing to get free eventually convinced the elephant that freedom wasn’t possible.
So even though as a full-grown adult elephant, that could easily rip the stake out of the ground, it never got free because it didn’t believe it could. It gave up. And if it wandered too far from the stake it would feel that familiar pull that it had felt so many times before and it would quit resisting the tug. The adult elephant was free but it didn’t live like it because it didn’t believe it.
Unfortunately, this illustrates the bondage that many are in today. This isn’t about the power of positive thinking that says, “if you just think you can, then you can”. This is about trusting what Jesus said He would do in breaking the power of sin once for all. This is about believing that freedom has been purchased through the death and resurrection of Christ. Are we going to count ourselves dead to sin or not?
However, opposition remains. The world, our flesh, and the devil repeat self-defeating lies nonstop. “You will never be able to resist this.” “You will always struggle with this.” These lies keep us from believing the promise that freedom is even possible. But until we believe the promise of freedom we won’t be able to experience it.
Promises Fulfilled
In the end, when it comes to this promise of God faith alone is not all that is required. To settle the promised land Joshua needed more than faith. He also needed to fight. This is exactly what we must do now. And his fight was driven by his faith in God’s promises. He was fighting more from victory than for victory because of what God had promised. We must learn to do the same.
This will require not only knowing His commands and promises but, as Joshua did, meditating on them day and night. Jesus made this part of the condition of the freedom He provides when He said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32). Holding to and knowing His truth enables us to experience His freedom. In part three of this series, we will see that this faith-driven fighting requires certain parameters to be effective.
This is a series of three blogs. Read Part 1.
