True Freedom

The Sunday morning message in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish.  The Bible verses used are Galatians 5:13-26.

            The Fourth of July will be in two days.  I hope you enjoy your holiday.  If you or your family is planning to shoot off any fireworks, please be careful.  Even though we got some rain recently, there’s still always a chance of a fire.  Fireworks can be beautiful, but we’d sure hate to have this most American of holidays end with a tragedy.

            The Fourth of July is the day we celebrate our freedom as Americans.  We have a lot of freedoms in our society.  We tend to take those freedoms for granted, and we should not.  As we’re seeing in recent times, it’s not guaranteed that we’ll always have those freedoms.  They can be taken away.  Plus, there are many people in the world who do not live in the freedom that we do.  We need to remember to thank God for the freedoms we have living here in the United States.

            As Americans, you and I can, for the most part, live in any way we choose to live.  There are certain restrictions, of course, and some of them are necessary.  But even today, we still can pretty much live the way we want to.  We can live where we want to live, and we can do what we want to do.  If someone else thinks the way we’re living is stupid, well, they can think that, but we don’t need to pay any attention to them.  As Americans, we can still basically live the way we choose to live and do what we want to do.

            As Christians, we also celebrate our freedom.  But the freedom we celebrate as Christians is not the freedom to do what we want to do.  It’s the freedom to do what God wants us to do.  It’s not the freedom to live the way we want to live.  It’s the freedom to live the way God wants us to live.

            The Apostle Paul says that Christ has set us free.  Free from sin.  Including our own sinful desires.  But, Paul says, we cannot just take that freedom for granted.  We have to stand firm, so we don’t fall back into the slavery of sin.

            It’s a constant battle.  Freedom in Christ versus the slavery of sin.  You and I have to fight that battle every day.  Jesus will help us.  In fact, Jesus will be there and will fight the battle right alongside us.  But you and I still have to do our part.

            Paul puts the battle in pretty stark terms.  He says, “Walk by the spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh.  For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh.”

            In other words, we must choose one or the other.  We either walk by the spirit, or we gratify the desires of the flesh.  We cannot do both.  We cannot compromise.  We cannot walk by the Spirit some of the time, and gratify the desires of the flesh some of the time.  In other words, we cannot be slaves to sin some of the time, and be free some of the time.  

            Because that’s what sin tries to convince us of.  Sin tries to convince us that we can give in to the desires of the flesh once in a while, and then go back and walk by the spirit as if nothing had happened.  But it does not work that way.  The more we give in to sin, the easier it gets to sin.  After a while, we don’t even think about it anymore.

            Let me give you an example.  I have, a couple of times in my life, been on a low-carb diet.  Basically, on a low-carb diet, what you do is give up eating potatoes, breads, some fruits, and pretty much all desserts.  What you can eat is meat, most vegetables, some fruits, and a limited amount of dairy products.  Now, it’s more complicated than that, and if you’re thinking about going on a low-carb diet I urge you to do more research on it rather than just going by what I said here.

            But the point is that it works.  Both times I’ve tried it, I’ve lost weight.  And at first, I do pretty well on it.  Because, as I said, you get to eat all the meat, and I really like meat.  So that satisfies me.  For a while.

            But after a while, I start remembering how much I like ice cream.  And chocolate chip cookies.  And chocolate brownies.  And so, I cheat on my diet.  Just once.  I won’t do it again.  In fact, I feel kind of guilty about having done it once.  

But then, after a few days, maybe a week, I start thinking about how good the blizzards at Dairy Queen are.  And so, I do “do it again”.  I cheat again.  And again, I feel kind of guilty about it.  But not quite as guilty as I felt the first time.  And so, a few days later, I cheat again.  And this time, I don’t feel much of anything about it.  And pretty soon, I’m off that low-carb diet completely, and I’m not even really thinking about it anymore.

Now, I’m not saying that eating ice cream and cookies is sinful (although there certainly are Bible passages that talk about gluttony).  But the point is that what Paul calls “the desires of the flesh”--sin--works exactly that same way.  The first time we do it, we probably feel guilty about it.  The second time, not quite so much.  The third time, we don’t feel much of anything.  And pretty soon we’re constantly giving in those desires of the flesh, and we’re not even really thinking much about it anymore.  

That’s why Paul says “the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh.  They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.”  It’s why Paul tells us to walk by the Spirit, so that we will not gratify the desires of the flesh.  We have to choose, one way or the other.  That’s not to say we’ll be perfect.  We’ve said before that perfection is not possible for human beings.  But that’s why I said we have fight the battle every day.  We cannot just make the choice once and be done with it.  Those sinful desires of the flesh will keep coming back at us, trying to enslave us.  We need to keep fighting them, day after day after day.

But we’ve been talking in abstract terms.  What are those desires of the flesh?  Paul lists some of them, although he says it’s not a complete list.  Sexual immorality.  Impurity.  Debauchery.  Idolatry.  Witchcraft.  Hatred.  Discord.  Jealousy.  Fits of rage.  Selfish ambition.  Dissention.  Factions.  Envy.  Drunkenness.  Orgies.  All of those won’t apply to all of us, of course.  But I’m pretty sure each one of us has at least one of them that applies to us.  We may not always give in to it, but we have to keep fighting it.  I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone--including myself--who was not subject to some of those things sometimes.

We need to fight those things, and we need to ask Jesus for help.  But here’s the thing.  There’s an old saying that you cannot defeat something with nothing.  If our entire focus is on the things we should not do, we will probably fail.  We cannot spend our lives just avoiding negative things.  We need to fill our lives with positive things, the fruit of the Spirit.

What’s the fruit of the Spirit?  Paul lists that, too.  Love.  Joy.  Peace.  Forbearance.  Kindness.  Goodness.  Faithfulness.  Gentleness.  Self-control.  Those are the things we need to focus on.  Those are the things we need to spend our lives trying to do.  If we do those positive things, we won’t have time to focus on the negative things.  We will defeat the desires of the flesh, simply because we don’t have time for them.

It’s not as easy as that sounds, of course.  As the old saying goes, if it was easy, everybody would do it.  We cannot do it by ourselves.  We can only do this with the help of Jesus.  Jesus helps us ignore the desires of the flesh and focus on the fruits of the Spirit.  In fact, it’s more than that.  As Paul says, Jesus sets us free from the desires of the flesh.  We are no longer enslaved by them.  

Living in the United States, we have the freedom to choose how we want to live.  We can choose to live in slavery to the desires of the flesh.  In fact, society often encourages us to.  How many times have you heard things like, “Follow the desires of your heart” or “Do whatever makes you happy?  That sounds good.  But our hearts are unreliable guides.  There are a lot of sinful things that will make us happy--in the short term.  But they have consequences, and those consequences will come back to bite us in the end.  And we will end up in slavery to the desires of the flesh, and we’ll find that we’re neither happy nor free.

But we can also choose to live by the Holy Spirit.  We can follow the desires of God’s heart.  We can do things that make God happy.  And God’s heart is a reliable guide.  And the fruit of the Spirit will make us happy in the long term.  And we will find that we are both happy and free.

I hope you’ve enjoy the Fourth of July.  I hope you are able to celebrate the freedom we have as Americans.  But let’s use our freedom to live by God’s Holy Spirit.  Then we will have the ultimate freedom--freedom from slavery to sin.  When we have that freedom, we are truly free.