Forget not all [The Lord’s] benefits—
Psalms 103:2-5 (NIV)
who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion,
who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
One of the themes that has characterized my life with Jesus is freedom. I do not mean I have insisted on it. I mean that the Holy Spirit has insisted on it when I am least likely to grant myself freedom, when I am content to live a life of routine (or not so routine) religious devotion. In those moments and at various times throughout my walk with him (as I shared in my last post) God has interrupted my routine and insisted the freedom he has given me is far greater than my God-fearing mindset has imagined.
Freedom is a tricky word. We fear it at believers because we think it means freedom to do whatever we want, and doing whatever we want is what got us into this mess in the first place. But properly understood, freedom means living in the fullness of the new life Jesus has made possible, and that includes, most importantly, freedom from sin. The message of the Cross is that we are not free without the freedom he makes possible, no matter what choices we make. That is, the thing that prevents us from being truly free is not on the outside but on the inside. This is why doing whatever we want only ends in misery. It is why casting off all so-called “social constructs” to do whatever we want only results in a worse state, for us personally and for society. We think it is others that prevent us from being “who we truly are,” when in fact it is ourselves. For it is only by God showing us who we truly are, based on how he created us and intended for us to be, that we can be truly free.
When God shows us this, we are empowered to step into the beautiful. Think about freedom for a moment. When people fight for it, against whatever tyranny they imagine, it is not for the purpose of simply doing whatever they want. Even criminals could fight for that, and no one would think that a worthy cause. Rather, freedom is considered a worthy cause because it holds the promise of allowing us, as human beings, to step into the fullness of who we truly are. And there is beauty in that. The idea we can live in a way we were created speaks more of just choice: it speaks of being aligned with the created order. And being aligned with the created order speaks of beauty. It is a glimpse into a world where things are as they should be, the ideal in a world under the tyranny of all that is not.
To step into the freedom only Jesus can give is to step into the beautiful. Far more than religious duty, it is finding ourselves becoming all we should be, and also finding ourselves in a life that is increasingly as it should be: forgiven, healed, redeemed from the pit, crowned with love and compassion, and satisfied with the things our hearts truly long for, that our youth may be renewed like the eagle’s.
D. Patrick Collins 