Liberty

Do you remember how free or liberated you felt as you walked out of the classroom on the last day of school each year?  For some reason I always remember one particular year in Junior High.  I am not even sure what grade I was in, but I clearly remember plopping down on my bed after walking home and glancing over at the pile of school newspapers that I had collected over the course of the year.  It was a warm spring day, the sky outside my window was bright blue with a few lingering white clouds and my heart was literally leaping with joy!  It seemed like the possibilities for that summer vacation were limitless and that nothing would be impossible to achieve.  The thoughts of the endless hours of playing baseball at the local elementary school with the neighborhood kids, the football games in the street, the adventures biking with good friends, and the ability to do whatever I wanted to (after the daily chores were completed!) danced around in my mind!

Well, things are a little different now…  I’ve grown up and have responsibilities that do not necessarily allow me to do whatever I want to do, whenever I want to do them.  In fact, my daily schedule is now pretty much dictated by the needs of my wife.  But, as I discovered this morning, I still can rejoice in that same kind of freedom or liberty that I felt back on that first day of summer vacation in Junior High.  James 1:25 says “But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.” (NKJV) 

According to Thayer’s Greek Definitions of “liberty”, this verse means that as believers we have the freedom “to do or omit things having no relationship to salvation”… but there is a caveat declaring that “true liberty is living as we should not as we please.”  The Jamieson, Fausset and Brown Commentary adds to this thought by stating that the perfect law of liberty refers to “the Gospel rule of life, perfect and perfecting… The principle of love takes the place of the letter of the law, so that by the spirit we are free from the yoke of sin, and free to obey by spontaneous instinct.  The law is thus not made void, but fulfilled.”

That explanation is what makes the Christian walk so special and so liberating to me.  The perfect law of liberty makes the relationship between me and God very personal.  I may be a free moral agent, but my love for God and maybe more importantly, my understanding of His love for me, makes me instinctively want to do what is right in His eyes, thereby freeing me from the bounds of the law as well as from the bounds of the world system in operation all around me.  Talk about freedom!  The temporary freedom that I felt on the last day of school is a fleeting moment in comparison with the eternity of freedom we have in Christ through His finished work!

Now I can wake up each morning, no matter how I feel, no matter what I am facing, and no matter what curve might be thrown my way and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that my possibilities in life are limitless and that nothing is impossible to achieve.

I am living within the unending boundaries of the perfect law of liberty, and as a believer, SO ARE YOU!  Wow!  Let that sink in for a moment here!  A reality of this magnitude cannot help but etch a permanent smile on your face!  The Message Bible paraphrases James 1:25 by saying “But whoever catches a glimpse of the reveled counsel of God --- the free life! --- even out of the corner of his eye, and sticks with it, is no distracted scatterbrain but a man or women of action.  That person will find delight and affirmation in the action!”

So… respond today to that call for action and find the new freedom and a sense of delight and affirmation that only He can provide!  Have a great day.  Stay in tune to His Word, and keep asking yourself… “What am I expecting today?”