Are We Really Free?
Meditation for the week of July 4, 2010
John 8:44 "You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.”
The Lord says that the Truth sets us free (John 8:32). Of course He is the Truth (John 14:6). The Lord cannot lie to us (Titus 1:2) and He would not lie to us if He could (John 14:2). But Satan is a different story. He is clever in the way he gets us to lie.
I have recently been at a Bible camp for young children. One of the songs that they loved singing was, “I’m going to heaven, can’t wait!” Now I liked the song and I am not criticizing anyone for singing it, but I realized that I personally am quite content to wait. I quit singing that song because it was making a liar out of me. A year and one-half ago I found out through a routine physical exam that my heart was on the verge of quitting. I had a stent put in before any damage was done and I thanked the Lord for watching out for me. But If I really couldn’t wait, I suppose the doctor did me a disservice. However, I am really happy that I get to stay here for a little while longer. I can wait!
Sometimes we Christians sing, “I surrender all!” I quit singing that song some time ago because I realize that no matter how much I want to surrender “ALL”, I have only surrendered “SOME”. Again, to be honest, the song was making a liar out of me.
This has made me realize how subtle Satan is. As Christians we have been set free from sin according to Romans 6. But no matter how devoted we are to the Lord, Satan who is the Father of lies (the originator or source), knows how to deceive us into lying. But thank God we were the slaves of sin, but we who are saved are now the slaves of righteousness (or of Christ) according to Romans 6:18. Sometimes we don’t act like we are free, but God says we are, so we are. And that means that we should act like we are.
Sometimes it takes a battle or a war to set people free from tyranny. That battle was fought for us at Calvary. Christ died to save us from the penalty, the power and ultimately from the presence of sin. Christians may get tripped up once in a while, but Satan is no longer calling the shots. We have been set free! And of course lying isn’t the only thing that Satan uses to attack us. We all have places where we are vulnerable and where we are deceived by Satan into acting like he is still the boss. But he is not our boss any more.
If we are trusting in the Lord for salvation, we have a new master and we are now free to serve Him. We could not serve him as unbelievers. But as believers we can serve the Lord, not because we HAVE TO as was the case with our old master, sin. But we can serve Him because we WANT TO!
We serve a far better master than we had before. And when we get tripped up, the fact that it bothers us is proof that we now serve the Lord.
Bruce Collins