“If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36).

Freedom of choice is a gift God gives to all men. However, after we decide to follow God and accept His gift of grace for salvation, we soon find that we are often too weak to choose what we know to be right.Unless we have the ability to do what we ought to do, instead of merely what we want to do, then we are not fully free. Paul agonizes, “for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. . . . For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members”(Romans 7:15,22,23). But Paul doesn’t leave us hanging; he shares the answer. The answer is the Lord Jesus, the One whom God sent “to preach deliverance to the captives . . . to set at liberty them that are bruised . . . (to make us) free from the law of sin and death” (Luke 4:18; Romans 8:2).

Most of the founding fathers of our country were Christians and understood Jesus to be the origin of freedom. Even those who were not Christians seemed to recognize God as the ultimate giver of freedom. That’s why, together, they could say: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are . . . liberty. . . .” They were able to proclaim this bold Declaration because they had, as they wrote to the earthly king who would soon declare war on them, “a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence.” So then, all freedoms, whether free will, political freedom, or the ultimate freedom of Christ, come from God. But many in our country today seem to worship freedom while ignoring its Author. This is another form of worshiping the creation but not the Creator, and is idolatry. We must remember that, if we are “free indeed,” it is because the Son has made us free. DER