biblical meaning of freedom essay

• July 16, 2020

What Is The Biblical Perspective On Freedom?

• written by Tamara Chamberlain

We all want to be free. I can’t think of anyone who would disagree with that. But it seems like everyone’s definition of true freedom is different.

Is freedom the right to own land? To make your own choices? To drive whatever speed limit you feel appropriate? To wear or not wear a mask? To speak your mind on any topic in any setting? What is freedom?

There’s recently been a lot of talk about guarding the freedoms given to Americans. Unfortunately, in the debate of whether or not “they” are taking away your rights, we often lose the true meaning of liberty. Right now, freedom means the benefits of the individual and the ability to do what pleases him or her.

This isn’t the freedom we read about in scripture. And the Bible is all about freedom. In fact, it says that Jesus came for the very sake of true liberty. Yet I don’t think Jesus would be standing with the current cries for a particular brand of freedom.

Jesus is all about freedom. So it’s important that we understand the kind of freedom we should truly be fighting for. Here are three truths to help us develop a biblical understanding of freedom.

1. Christians experience freedom from sin. 

When we’re talking about freedom, it’s important to understand what we’re free from. Here’s what Paul has to say about it in Romans.

But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. (Romans 6:22)

There’s one thing that holds every single person on this earth captive and enslaved. It doesn’t have any bias towards geography, race, age, or language. It’s sin. Each and every person who has ever walked this earth can relate to the bondage of sin. No matter how hard you work or how educated you become, you can’t outrun sin. It is the destroyer of all things and the taker of lives.

This is what Jesus sacrificed his life to free you from. When Jesus first began his ministry, he went to the synagogue in Nazareth and read scripture. The passage he read was significant because it revealed what his mission is.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:18-19)

This is what Jesus came to bring, but it wasn’t in the way they expected it. Their physical situations didn’t immediately change, but their spiritual situations did. You see, the poor didn’t instantly become stacked with cash and the people suffering in prison didn’t run free that night. But freedom was declared.

Certainly, Jesus will bring the fullness of liberty, but even now we walk in freedom. It is the liberty of everlasting life. It is the freedom to live an abundant life even if your physical circumstances don’t change.

The truest form of liberty isn’t dependent upon your location or what’s physically happening around you. It’s freedom for those things to not control your joy and to rob you of the rich life Jesus has for you. Freedom isn’t about the right to free speech, owning your own property, or going about your day however you see fit.

Freedom is about your eternal state being changed and rewritten . It’s about redeeming you from the weight of the dirtiest and darkest thought you’ve ever had. It’s about so much more than making you comfortable.

2. Your freedom is for the good of others.

While we’ve been saved from the eternal weight of sin, the freedom that Jesus has given us is also meant to be used for something.

You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Galatians 5:13)

Many of us view freedom as an individual benefit, but that runs counter to how scripture describes freedom. The most beautiful and truest form of freedom is that you would have the ability to better love and serve others. At the heart of the freedom Jesus intended for us is living out his command to care for others.

I recently spoke with a dentist who explained the reason it’s standard protocol for him to wear a mask while working. He informed me that it had nothing to do with his own benefit, but it’s a measure of care he takes for his patients. As he works within the close personal space of another person, the mask acts as a barrier between him and his patient. When you’re talking and leaning over someone it’s very likely that you might unknowingly have saliva or even secretion from your nose fall out onto the other person. So as an act of care for his patients he wears a mask. Even though there is no medical benefit to himself personally.

Paul’s warning to the church of Galatia is that there is a temptation to see their liberty as an opportunity to fulfill the desires of their flesh. An opportunity to fulfill their personal desires and justify it in their freedom given by Christ.

Paul knows this is happening, so he reminds them that their liberty isn’t a pass to indulge in their own selfishness but needs to be used to love others. They are no longer bound to the law, but that doesn’t mean the law doesn’t matter. Jesus came to fulfill the law, not abolish it. So as you walk by the Spirit and live in the freedom of Jesus to love others you are fulfilling the law.

Freedom in Jesus has always been about your ability to better love others.

So as we live in a time when it feels like your freedoms are being challenged, I encourage you to stop and think about the kind of liberty you are fighting for. Is it for the benefit of your own desires or for others?

3. Freedom comes with responsibility.

As we understand what we’re free from and what we’re free for , what we begin to realize is that freedom really is a responsibility.

“I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything. (1 Corinthians 6:12)

In the church of Corinth there was a lot of sin and ungodliness happening among believers. One of their arguments was that they were free in Jesus and were thus allowed to do anything. Paul reminds them that just because they are able to act in a certain way doesn’t mean exercising that measure of freedom is beneficial.

The purpose behind the freedom Jesus has given you is that it would be used for his glory. As we desire to be more like Jesus, we have to start viewing our freedom as a tool for his glory, rather than a reason to push forward our own agenda.

The Christian life has always been about laying your life down in surrender to Jesus. Even in our liberty, we must surrender the way we would like to use that freedom at the feet of Jesus. Because what we have been given is powerful and we must care for it responsibly.

Use your liberty wisely. 

Our freedom is a gift and with every gift Jesus gives we must not squander it or use it foolishly. When biblical freedom is viewed more as a responsibility and less as something we deserve we will care for it better.

There will be moments when your personal liberty is challenged and that’s uncomfortable. The desire to fight back and push forward your freedom in spite of who it’s benefiting is a natural response. But Jesus wants us to use our freedom for the benefit and love of others and not for our personal desires.

Biblical freedom is far more about loving others and living a life of godliness than it is about exercising the power to carry out your own desires.

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• 4 Things the Bible Says About Freedom

By BGEA Admin   •   June 29, 2020   •   Topics: Holidays , Lifestyle

As the United States of America celebrates Independence Day on July 4, it’s worth noting the nation was founded upon the idea that God created human beings to be free. The Declaration of Independence states that people “are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

But what is “liberty,” exactly? Is freedom based upon the country where you live, or can it have a deeper meaning?

Here are some key ideas from the Bible about freedom—including how to find true freedom in your life.

1. People have been searching for it for thousands of years.

The quest for freedom is a theme found throughout the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. Just three chapters into the story of God’s creation, humanity gave up its freedom by choosing to rebel against God. From that time forward, the perfect freedom God created in the Garden of Eden was gone, and the long-term effects were both physical and spiritual.

The Old Testament of the Bible records how God’s people lost their physical freedom time and again as various empires overtook them (most notably the Egyptians, as recorded in the book of Exodus).

The loss of physical freedom was often tied to spiritual disobedience like worshiping false gods. But time and again, the one true God forgave His people and rescued them. When God freed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, He was foreshadowing the arrival of Jesus Christ, who came to free humanity from sin—the spiritual slavery that leads to death.

Today, many people are living in spiritual slavery without realizing it. They chase false gods of money, success, personal comfort and romantic love—only to realize they still have an emptiness that can’t be filled by any of those things .

>> Everyone worships something. Read Billy Graham’s short answer about the definition of an idol.

2. God’s answer to our loss of freedom has always been Jesus Christ.

When Jesus began his short period of ministry on the earth, He announced He was the One that God’s people had been waiting for since the fall of humanity. He did this by reading a particular passage from the book of Isaiah—a passage his listeners knew was referring to the Messiah, or the Savior of the world.

The words had been written hundreds of years earlier and spoke of a new freedom that was coming in the future. When Jesus stood up to read, He was saying the future had arrived. Liberty would come through Him.

“And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,      because he has anointed me      to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives      and recovering of sight to the blind,      to set at liberty those who are oppressed,   to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’

And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, ‘ Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’” (Luke 4:17-21, emphasis added).

>> Read Billy Graham’s short devotion, “Truth Brings Freedom.”

3. Jesus came to free us from death, sin and anything that enslaves us.

The core message of the Christian faith—the Gospel—is that Jesus Christ rescues us from the slavery of sin and offers true freedom in this life and beyond. This is what Jesus said:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life ” (John 3:16).

The Good News—the best news ever—is that faith in Jesus frees us from the death we deserve for sinning against God. It frees us from the punishment that would be inflicted upon us at the end of our lives for the evil things we’ve thought and done.

While Christ followers still battle with sin, they are no longer slaves to it. Through the power of Christ, His people can be set free from the bondage of greed, vanity, pride, pornography, addiction , abusive behavior, gluttony, selfishness—and any other sin under the sun. Here’s what Jesus said about the freedom He offers:

“If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” ( John 8:31-32).  

“Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:34-36).

>> Watch Billy Graham’s powerful message, “Truth and Freedom,” from his 1969 New York City Crusade.

4. God gives us freedom to choose our own path.

God created human beings, not robots. We don’t have to accept the freedom He offers us through Jesus Christ. He gives each person the free will to accept or reject His salvation. But the Bible warns that hell is a real place where real people end up when they knowingly reject the truth.

Likewise, those who choose Christ are not forced to obey Him at every turn. But God makes it clear: the best life is one that’s devoted to honoring Him. As the Apostle Paul explained to some of the first Christians:

“’All things are lawful for me,’” but not all things are helpful. ‘All things are lawful for me,’ but I will not be dominated by anything” (1 Corinthians 6:12).

“For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another”  (Galatians 5:13).

>> What is “the judgment,” and why did Jesus have to die for our sins? Listen to Billy Graham’s message .

Final thoughts on freedom

From cover to cover, God’s Word points to freedom in Christ. And God doesn’t leave us wondering how to grab hold of the freedom He offers. It starts with acknowledging our brokenness—and admitting we are slaves to sin. And it ends with choosing Jesus and following Him daily. Only He can break the bonds of slavery and lead us to true freedom, now and forever.

Choose Jesus today, and find out what true freedom feels like .

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What does “freedom” mean?

by Dr. Sean McDowell | February 8, 2021

I recently asked a group of high school students this question. After some discussion and reflection, they agreed on this definition: “Freedom is being able to do what you want without restraint.” In other words, the free person does whatever he or she wants without any person or law standing in their way.

Let’s break this down a bit. Look at the first part of the definition: Is the person who does what he or she wants actually free?

What about the second part of the definition? Is freedom doing what you want without restraint? Think about it: Are you more free if you bang on piano keys randomly or if you follow an instructor whose discipline guides you? The answer is obvious. The instructor helps you restrain your actions so you can use a piano as it was meant to be used. Discipline and restraint are necessary for producing beautiful music. Freedom comes from submitting to the right restraint, not from resisting restraint. This is why boundaries are necessary for true freedom.

True Freedom

According to the Christian worldview, true freedom is not a matter of doing what you want without restraint, but cultivating the right wants and living in obedience to God’s will. In other words, freedom results when our wants align with God’s will.

Does that mean freedom comes through self-determination? No! If you try to be obedient through your own effort you will fail. In fact, if you try to follow God’s commands in your own power, you will probably fail miserably. The Christian worldview uniquely teaches that we are incapable of living the Christian life in our own power. Sin has rocked us to the core.

Romans 3:9-12,19-20 says:

What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” …

Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. (ESV)

The secret to the Christian life—and what separates Christianity from other religions—is found in grace. When we acknowledge our own brokenness and inability to live as God wants us to, He transforms our hearts and lives.

Our strength comes in acknowledging our weakness and failure and depending on God.

A personal God changes everything.

Now let’s put a spin on our original question about what it means to be free: Since a personal God exists, does that change how we understand freedom? Do you think believing in God would make an individual feel more or less free?

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Maybe you think believing in God adds guilt in this life or judgment when you die. And maybe you think God’s existence would make no significant difference in someone feeling free—except for the weight of the consequences that result from poor choices.

But the existence of a personal God changes everything.

The world is not a cosmic accident but is purposefully fashioned by a Creator. And the first thing we learn about God in the Bible is that God is the Creator (Genesis 1:1). Just like a car that has been designed to operate a certain way—and is only “free” when used accordingly—humans have also been created for a greater purpose and experience freedom when they discover and live that purpose.

This raises the question: What do you think God made us for? What is our purpose?

Genesis 1:26-27 says:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (ESV)

Let’s take this a step further. Scripture often mentions God being known by the people He created.

“And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people.” – Leviticus 26:12, ESV

“But let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.”   – Jeremiah 9:24, ESV

“I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.” – Jeremiah 24:7, ESV

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.   – 1 John 3:1, ESV

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.   – 1 John 4:10, ESV

Made for relationship

Scripture reveals that God made us for relationship with Him and with others. Jesus said the greatest commandments are to love God and love others (Mark 12). True freedom exists in healthy, intimate relationships with both God and other people. Therefore, the free and abundant life Jesus offers us can only be experienced through these committed relationships, rooted and grown in God’s intended design.

Throughout the creation story in Genesis, God consistently called His creation “good.” Yet there is one thing God said is not good: “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’” (Genesis 2:18, ESV).

We know God created us to be in relationship with Him, and we know Adam needed Eve to multiply and fill the earth (Genesis 1:28). But God also made humans to be in relationship with other human beings. We are not meant to live in isolation. We are made to live in families and communities with other people.

Since we are made for relationships, then we can only be free through commitment and faithfulness. This may seem counterintuitive. After all, we live in a world of endless options. From consumer products, to music, to streaming TV, you can seemingly have what you want, when you want it, how you want it, and with whomever you want. So, why not give up on difficult relationships? And in terms of marriage, why commit to one person for life? Why limit yourself?

There is a comfort in knowing someone always has your back, whether it is a spouse when you are older or a close friend right now. True faithfulness and commitment assure us that someone won’t leave us at the first sign of trouble and that we will work through problems together.

Let’s revisit our original question: What does it mean to be truly free?

God invites each one of us to the freedom that comes from committing our lives to His purpose for us and loving other people in relationship. This is the only path to experiencing the truly rich life Jesus invited us to live.

This post was adapted from Sean McDowell’s new teen Bible study, Chasing Love .

Chasing Love

In this nine-session Bible study, Sean McDowell takes us through God’s Word to answer some of our toughest questions about love, sex, gender, and relationships. He provides practical counsel on how we can embrace a life of purity by loving God and loving others with both our body and our soul. We’ll learn how to show love to those living outside of God’s design. And we will discover that God’s love heals our wounds and His grace frees us from the shame and guilt of past sin.

FIND OUT MORE

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About Dr. Sean McDowell

Dr. Sean McDowell is a gifted communicator with a passion for equipping the church, and in particular young people, to make the case for the Christian faith. He is an associate professor in the Christian Apologetics program at Biola University. He graduated from Talbot Theological Seminary with a double master’s degree in Theology and Philosophy. He also earned a Ph.D. in Apologetics and Worldview Studies from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Sean speaks at camps, churches, schools, universities, and conferences and co-hosts the Think Biblically podcast. Sean is the author, co-author, or editor of over twenty books, and he writes regularly at seanmcdowell.org.

Sean is married to his high school sweetheart, Stephanie. They have three children and live in San Juan Capistrano, California.

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Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom

Other essays.

Divine sovereignty, which is that God exercises efficacious, universal, and loving control over all things, is compatible with human freedom in that humans are free to do what they want to do, although God is sovereign over our desires.

The sovereignty of God is the same as the lordship of God, for God is the sovereign over all of creation. The major components of God’s lordship are his control, authority, and presence. To discuss the sovereignty of God, though, is to focus particularly on the aspect of control, though this should not bracket God’s authority and gracious presence out of the discussion. The control that God exercises over all things is both efficacious and universal; there is not one thing outside of his control. This even extends to human sin and faith. However, people still remain free and God remains innocent of sin. This is because humans have the freedom to do whatever it is that they want, while their desires are in turn decided by their natures, situations, and, ultimately, God.

The term sovereignty is rarely found in recent translations of Scripture, but it represents an important biblical concept. A sovereign is a ruler, a king, a lord, and Scripture often refers to God as the one who rules over all. His most common proper name, Yahweh (see Ex. 3:14) is regularly translated Lord in the English Bible. And Lord, in turn, is found there over 7,000 times as a name of God and specifically as a name of Jesus Christ. So, to discuss the sovereignty of God is to discuss the lordship of God—that is, to discuss the Godness of God, the qualities that make him to be God.

The major components of the biblical concept of divine sovereignty or lordship are God’s control , authority , and presence (see John Frame, The Doctrine of God , 21–115). His control means that everything happens according to his plan and intention. Authority means that all his commands ought to be obeyed. Presence means that we encounter God’s control and authority in all our experience, so that we cannot escape from his justice or from his love.

When theologians discuss divine sovereignty and human freedom, however, they usually focus on only one of these three aspects of God’s sovereignty, what I have called his control. This aspect will be in focus in the remainder of this article, but we should keep in mind that God’s control over the world is only one aspect of his rule. When we consider only his control, we tend to forget that his rule is also gracious, gentle, intimate, covenantal, wise, good, and so on. God’s sovereignty is an exercise of all his divine attributes, not just his causal power.

God’s Sovereign Control

It is important to have a clear idea of God’s sovereign control of the world he has made. That control is a major part of the context in which God reveals himself to Israel as Yahweh, the Lord. That revelation comes to Israel when that nation is in slavery to Egypt. When he reveals his name to Moses, he promises a powerful deliverance:

But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand. So I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all the wonders that I will do in it; after that he will let you go. (Ex. 3:19–20)

I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord.’” (Exo 6:7–8)

God shows Israel that he truly is the Lord by defeating the greatest totalitarian empire of the ancient world and by giving Israel a homeland in the land promised centuries before to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Nothing can defeat Israel’s sovereign. He will keep his promise, displaying incredible controlling power, or he is not the Lord.

God’s control is efficacious :

Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases. (Ps. 115:3)

Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps. (Ps. 135:6)

The Lord of hosts has sworn: “As I have planned, so shall it be, and as I have purposed, so shall it stand, that I will break the Assyrian in my land, and on my mountains trample him underfoot; and his yoke shall depart from them, and his burden from their shoulder.” This is the purpose that is purposed concerning the whole earth, and this is the hand that is stretched out over all the nations. For the Lord of hosts has purposed, and who will annul it? His hand is stretched out, and who will turn it back? (Isa. 14:24–27)

Also henceforth I am he [Yahweh]; there is none who can deliver from my hand; I work, and who can turn it back?” (Isa .43:13)

…so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. (Isa. 55:11)

‘The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens. (Rev. 3:7)

Not only is God’s control efficacious, it is also universal . It governs every event that takes place anywhere in the universe. Firstly, the events of the natural world come from his hand (Ps. 65:9–11, 135:6–7, 147:15–18, Matt. 5:45, 6:26–30, 10:29–30, Luke 12:4–7). Secondly, the details of human history come from God’s plan and his power. He determines where people of every nation will dwell (Acts 17:26). Thirdly, God determines the events of each individual human life (Ex. 21:12–13, 1 Sam. 2:6–7, Ps. 37:23–24, 139:13–16, Jer. 1:5, Eph. 1:4, James 4:13–16). Fourthly, God governs the free decisions we make (Prov. 16:9) including our attitudes toward others (Ex. 34:24, Judg. 7:22, Dan. 1:9, Ezra 6:22).

More problematically, God foreordains people’s sins (Ex. 4:4, 8, 21, 7:3, 13, 9:12, 10:1, 20, 27, Deut. 2:30, Josh. 11:18–20, 1 Sam. 2:25, 16:14, 1 Kings 22:20–23, 2 Chron. 25:20, Ps. 105:24, Isa. 6:9–10, 10:6, 63:17, Rom. 9:17–18, 11:7–8, 2 Cor. 2:15–16). But lastly, he is also the God of grace, who sovereignly ordains that people will come to faith and salvation :

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Eph. 2:4–10)

Therefore, salvation is God’s work from beginning to end, doing for us what we could never dream of doing for ourselves.

If we need any further evidence of the efficacy and universality of God’s sovereign control, here are passages that summarize the doctrine:

Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it? 38 Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come? (Lam. 3:37)

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. (Rom. 8:28)

In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will. (Eph. 1:11)

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. (Rom. 11:33)

Human Freedom

So the question posed by the title of this article is very pointed. Granted the overwhelming power of God’s sovereign control, its efficacy and universality, how can human freedom have any significance at all?

The term freedom has been taken in various senses. In our current discussion, two of these are particularly relevant: (1) compatibilism, which is the freedom to do what you want to do, and (2) libertarianism , which is the freedom to do the opposite of everything you choose to do. Compatibilism indicates that freedom is compatible with causation. Someone may force me to eat broccoli; but if that is something I want to do anyway, I do it freely in the compatibilist sense.  Alternatively, if you have libertarian freedom, your choices are in no sense caused or constrained, either by your nature, your experience, your history, your own desires, or God. Libertarianism is sometimes called “incompatibilism,” because it is inconsistent with necessity or determination. If someone forces me to eat broccoli, I am not free, in the libertarian sense, to eat it or not eat it. On a libertarian account, any kind of “forcing” removes freedom.

In ordinary life, when we talk about being “free,” we usually have the compatibilist sense in mind. I am free when I do what I want to do. Usually, when someone asks me if I am free, say, to walk across the street, I don’t have to analyze all sorts of questions about causal factors in order to answer the question. If I am able to do what I want to do, then I am free, and that’s all there is to it. In the Bible, human beings normally have this kind of freedom. God told Adam not to eat of the forbidden fruit, but Adam had the power to do what he wanted. In the end, he and Eve did the wrong thing, but they did it freely. God’s sovereignty didn’t prevent Adam from doing what he wanted to do.

Our earlier discussion shows, however, that according to the Bible human beings do not have libertarian freedom:  As we have seen, God ordains what we will choose to do, so he causes our choices. We are not free to choose the contrary of what he chooses for us to do. Scripture also teaches that the condition of our heart constrains our decisions, so there are no unconstrained human decisions, decisions that are free in the libertarian sense.

People sometimes think that we must have libertarian freedom, for how can we be morally responsible if God controls our choices? That is a difficult question. The ultimate answer is that moral responsibility is up to God to define. He is the moral arbiter of the universe. This is the exact question that comes up in Romans 9:

You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory—even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? (Rom. 9:19–24)

This passage rules out any attempt to argue libertarian freedom as a basis of moral responsibility.

Nevertheless, we should remember that even this passage presupposes freedom in the compatibilist sense: God prepared the two kinds of vessels, each for their respective destiny. He made the honorable vessels so that they would appropriately receive honor, and vice versa. When a human being trusts in Christ, he does what he wants to do and therefore acts freely in the compatibilist sense. We know from that choice that God has prepared him beforehand to make that choice freely. That divine preparation is grace. The believer did not earn the right to receive that divine preparation. But he responds, as he must, by freely embracing Christ. Without that free choice of Christ, prepared beforehand by God himself, it is impossible for anyone to be saved.

Further Reading

• Benjamin B. Warfield, Biblical Doctrines
• Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority
• Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology
• D. A. Carson, Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspectives in Tension . See book summary here .
• J. I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God
• John Frame, The Doctrine of God
• John Frame, No Other God: a Response to Open Theism
• John MacArthur, “ What is the Relationship Between Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility? ”
• Scott Christensen, What About Free Will? Reconciling Our Choices with Divine Sovereignty . See book summary here .
• Vern Poythress, Chance and the Sovereignty of God . See book review here .

This essay is part of the Concise Theology series. All views expressed in this essay are those of the author. This essay is freely available under Creative Commons License with Attribution-ShareAlike, allowing users to share it in other mediums/formats and adapt/translate the content as long as an attribution link, indication of changes, and the same Creative Commons License applies to that material.

What Does Freedom Look Like in the Christian Life?

I have good news for you today. If you are in Christ, he has set you free. While that statement may resonate in some people’s hearts, many are not always aware of what this freedom looks like. Sometimes the laws of the land and the happenings in society blind us to the truth of what freedom looks like in the Christian life. For this reason, I want to examine the idea of freedom, not just so you will know what it is, but so that you will walk in it.

What Have You Been Set Free From?

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death” ( Romans 8:1-2 ).

Let me explain what you have been set free from. In short, you have been set free from condemnation and the law of sin and death. To make sure you understand what that means, let me clarify it for you in a simple statement. You are guilty of sin under the law, and you deserve to die as punishment for that sin. Even simpler: you sin, you die.

From the beginning, sin and death were always connected. Remember what God told Adam: the day you eat of that fruit, you will die. Though the law was not given at this time, that in essence sums up the law. When you sin, the penalty rightfully deserved for your sin is death. This death is an eternal separation from God.

Here is where your freedom in Christ comes in. First, you are free because you no longer stand condemned under the law. You have been tried and found not guilty, because you have put your faith in Christ. He has fulfilled all the requirements of the law on your behalf. Also, in law, there is something called double jeopardy. This means you cannot be prosecuted twice for the same crime. Because you are in Christ, and Christ has dealt with your sin, he will not retry you for sins that have already been forgiven. You have no more condemnation.

You are also free from the law of sin and death, which means you no longer have to live up to the standards of the law. The problem we had was not the law, but our ability to keep it. Yet when you received Christ’s salvation, he released you from having to live up to the standards required under the law to obtain righteousness. Your righteousness is because of Christ, and you live by the power of the Holy Spirit. Once you understand that, you are on your way to walking in freedom.

But what should result from your freedom in Christ?

Freedom in the Christian Life Should Make You More Gracious, not Less

In order to truly appreciate freedom, sometimes it helps to remember what bondage is. So often in our Christian walk, we forget we were slaves to sin. For some, the further removed you are from your sinful life before Christ, the less grace you have for those trapped in sin. Even more so for fellow believers who may be struggling. It is easy to forget what you were before Christ and when you do, it lends itself to becoming less gracious and more self-righteous. 

When I was younger, I was very dogmatic. There were certain aspects of walking with Jesus that felt came easy to me. So much so that I could not empathize with or appreciate the struggle of my fellow believers. This made me almost heartless towards other Christians because I could not understand what they were going through. This all changed when I wrestled with my own struggle. Thankfully, I overcame it and that made me more gracious, not less.

This is what your freedom in Christ should do. It should allow you to view people through the lens of the grace that you yourself have received, and walk with them through the challenges they may experience in this life.

Freedom in the Christian Life Releases You from Your Past

One of the biggest hurdles you will ever face in your Christian life is dealing with your past. I get so many emails from people who are living with regret over their past. Listen, I can totally understand that because I have some regrets of my own. However, here is something you need to know about your past. You don’t have to lament over it because God doesn’t.

When God forgave you, he gave you a clean slate. This means whatever existed before no longer exists in his eyes now. When he sees you, he doesn’t see your past; he sees your present and your future. God will never remind you of sins you have repented of. Satan will, but God won’t. Since you have been forgiven and you have a clean slate, then stop living in your past sins and mistakes. All that does is keep you trapped in yesterday and it prevents you from moving forward into the life God has planned for you.

“How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!” ( Hebrews 9:14 ).

Freedom in the Christian Life Empowers You in the Present

Freedom in the Christian life is not a distant or future-oriented concept but a transformative reality that empowers you right now. This is a practical truth that should affect your life every day. 

Since you have encountered the saving grace of Jesus Christ, you are free from the bondage of sin, guilt, and shame. This liberation enables you to embrace the abundant life that God intends for you, right here and now. The freedom you now have in Christ empowers you to live with purpose, hope , and confidence.

To key to really living this life of freedom is the Holy Spirit in you. He is the one who gives you the ability to walk in this freedom and not return to the bondage you used to be in. The Holy Spirit gives you the strength to overcome the challenges and struggles you face. He helps you to resist temptation, to break free from destructive habits, and to pursue righteousness and holiness. Without his help, we cannot enjoy freedom in Christ because we would be left to our own strength, and that did not work out so well the first time. Trust me, it won’t work out so well now either.

Because you are free in Christ, that means there is nothing external that can hinder you from living out the purpose God has called you to. If you find you are struggling to do that, then it means you need to tap into more of the power of the Holy Spirit who lives in you. You have been washed in the blood of Jesus. Your conscience has been cleansed. You have been set free and empowered by the Holy Spirit. This means there is nothing that can stop you from being the person God has created you to be.

Embrace Your Freedom

When you get on an airplane, you must buckle your seatbelt during takeoff. However, after a certain amount of time, the pilot will make the announcement that he has turned off the seatbelt sign and you are free to move about the cabin. This is what your freedom in Christ looks like. The seatbelts of guilt, shame, condemnation and death have been turned off and you are free to be who God created you to be. 

There is only one thing left to do. You must embrace this freedom. For some people, it is uncomfortable because you must let go of some things. But you will discover when you do, God has an incredible journey waiting for you in this life and he has turned off the seatbelt sign. I encourage you to get up and move freely in your life in Christ. Set your heart to follow the plan God has for you. Know that in Christ, you have been set free and your freedom allows you to walk into the purpose God has for your life.

So what are you waiting for? You are free now. Go live like it.

Photo credit: Pexels/Julian Jagtenberg

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I was taught that God wants us to live freely, but I never understood what that kind of freedom meant or felt like. It seemed like a good idea in theory, but elusive—I had no idea how to grab a hold of it. Granted, there were seasons of my life when I felt free but really wasn’t.

If freedom meant being carefree and uninhibited, that kind of freedom was mine during the years I was addicted to drugs (more on that in my book ). I was free to make the decisions I wanted and do whatever made me feel good in the moment, but that freedom never brought me peace. I was free but not fully alive. I was enslaved to my own freedom—which was really counterfeit freedom.

• Biblical Freedom

So what does biblical freedom mean? The freedom God offers throughout Scripture is freedom from the enslaving power of sin in our lives. The Enemy uses sin to obstruct our relationship with God, keeping us from experiencing abundant life in God. Biblical freedom allows us to reclaim what the Enemy has robbed from us so we can live the story of who God created us to be.

By contrast, worldly freedom is the ability to do what we want, when we want. When Adam and Eve were in Eden, they were free to choose whether to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. But choosing to eat from it brought consequences—death.

Paul gives us a clear idea of this whole freedom thing and defines what biblical freedom truly means and doesn’t mean. He wrote in 1 Corinthians 6:12 , “ ‘I have the right to do anything,’ you say—but not everything is beneficial. ‘I have the right to do anything’—but I will not be mastered by anything.”

What does this mean for you? This means Jesus set you free so you can stand firm in his power to live a life that is free and fully alive, not so you can be bound to the things of this earth. He wants you awakened to a life that can hold both hurt and hope. A life that cries out in grief but can whisper gratitude in the same breath.

This kind of freedom allows you to have faith in Christ but still experience human fears. You can bring them both before the cross, where his grace, love, and mercy can cover you and empower you.

• Addressing Counterfeit Freedom

There’s a not-so-fun part of finding freedom, though. If you want to be truly free, you must first recognize the places where you have settled for counterfeit freedom. You must awaken to the reality that parts of your story have been hijacked by an Enemy who wants you to believe that freedom lies in your power to choose, rather than through the transformation of your heart.

Once you recognize where this Enemy has attacked your story, you can begin the work of reclaiming those places so you can experience the life abundant and return to who you were created to be.

• The Hope of Redemption

We all come with stories—some good, some bad, and some really hard. Our deepest desire is to be known and loved, but our stories often include times when we were not known for who we really are and definitely were not fully loved. And yet we can’t escape the belief that maybe, just maybe, there’s hope for our stories, that maybe our lives can be redeemed and we can emerge as the free little ones we once were.

Our spirits hold a curiosity around hope. Even if that hope has sunk within us, it’s still there, calling to us, speaking of what was and what could be. This longing comes from the desire to create and dream and play. It’s as if our spirits know life wasn’t supposed to be this way—we weren’t made for pain and despair. We were designed for something greater. Our spirits long for Eden.

Our spirits long for the goodness and intimacy they were created to experience. They long for the wonder of the unknown and the mystery of what could be. Our spirits seem to know something our brains don’t—that we were made for abundant life—but our brains won’t let us engage because of fear of disappointment or failure or rejection. It’s our spirits that keep leading us to the reckless hope of trying again.

All it takes to keep going is a willingness to be honest, to invite God into the story, and to allow some trustworthy people to witness your story in a way that enables your heart to be seen and held. Something dynamic and supernatural begins to happen. Life starts to have color. The puzzle pieces of your broken story come together. You are awakened to a God who sees you in the hard and the holy, and you realize you are loved.

God meets the great longing of your soul within the recesses of the stories you bear—which he wants to redeem.

• Free and Fully Alive

Adapted from Free and Fully Alive: Reclaiming the Story of Who You Were Created to Be by Karrie Garcia.

A dynamic, practical guide to embracing your past and discovering a deeper connection to yourself, God, and others so you can reclaim who God created you to be.

Many of us yearn for a sense of purpose, but we wonder how we can overcome the trauma and mistakes of our past. We keep doing and doing for God, hoping to erase our story so we can find our true calling.

Free and Fully Alive is a powerful reminder that our stories hold the key to our true purpose, and it’s who we are in those stories, not what we do, that is the secret to living the abundant life God promises.

As author Karrie Garcia draws on her own experiences and her expertise as a life coach, she shows us why God’s redemptive purpose for our lives doesn’t begin once we’re free from pain, and as we are vulnerable with God, ourselves, and others, we find that we are already who God created us to be.

A vibrant guide to getting unstuck, Free and Fully Alive equips you to:

• Ditch the behavior modification strategies and focus on true heart transformation
• Stop chasing external achievements when what you long for is internal change
• Silence that inner critic and find the voice of truth through the Word of God
• Realize that God’s love for you has nothing to do with all you accomplish today
• Understand that your past does not disqualify you from God’s purpose

Feel fully alive in the story you’re living. You are meant to be here. In fact, that’s the greatest purpose of all.

Free and Fully Alive is published by Zondervan Books, a division of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc., the parent company of Bible Gateway.

Karrie Garcia

Karrie Garcia is a pastor, licensed life coach, and CEO. She inspires change in others by boldly sharing her journey to freedom and by using her training in the area of psychology to help others connect their minds with their bodies for a holistic approach to overall wellness. Karrie is currently working toward her Training Certificate Level III at The Allender Center, a program addressing trauma-focused narrative therapy taught by leading Christian psychologist, Dr. Dan Allender.

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Freedom As Gift And Human Responsibility From The Christian Teaching Perspective

This article presents the Christian teaching on freedom and realizes delineations and conceptual definitions from the perspective of the divine revelation. Freedom is an ontological gift and a human responsibility, being related to God and strictly related to doing good and the virtues. In human liberty is embedded the Creator’s divine image, the believer having the duty to carry this image to an ever deeper likeness of God. In this sense, human responsibility is double, on the one hand, its consequence is responsibility for the actions committed, and, on the other hand, it relates man to obtaining God’s likeness, unto deification and sanctification. The Christian teachings present man as a “person” bearing “God’s image”. This concept is very complex, including in itself reason, will, affectivity, liberty, conscience, love etc. From Christian perspective, liberty means “stabilization in goodness”. When man does evil, man is not free, but the slave of his own lack of power. Liberty determines the spiritual progress or regression, and this fact is determined by the manner in which man’s liberty collaborates with the divine grace. Christian liberty must always be ontologically regarded, as it is connected to God and has only one coordinate – the one of the good. Keywords: Freedom responsibility free will deification sanctification

Introduction

The Christian teaching presents man as a personal being endowed with reason, conscience and freedom, these making him responsible for his life and actions. According to moral definitions, “freedom is the will’s capacity of self-determination regarding its action, free from any internal or external constraint ( Mladin, 2003 ). Certainly, as personal being created in God’s likeness, man is a being open to the communion with God and with his fellows, but also continually responsible towards the whole creation. The condition of person belongs to every human being ontologically, which involves the relation with God, by man’s quality of image, but also the delineation of his personality as actualization of all the gifts given as potential, by the realization of the divine likeness, the sanctification and the transfiguration of the human nature. Image of God, man cannot find his fullness but in the relation with the Absolute model in Whose image he was created. Thus, freedom appears as the continual deliverance from evil and identification with good (with the model). “Freedom of will means for us the manifestation of God’s love to man, it is the expression and manifestation of God’s image. Consequently, freedom is an asset of man so specific to him that it constitutes our personal dignity” ( Sârbu, 1974 ). Man’s capacity to participate to perfection is given precisely by his freedom, which has, embedded in it, the tension after communion.

Per se, “the problem of freedom - says Nikolai Berdyaev - is actually the problem of the fundamental principle of the being and of life, namely the being depends on the freedom that precedes the being. Freedom is a spiritual and religious category” ( Berdiaev, 2009 ). It is on freedom that spiritual progress and regress depend, and it takes place in the grace-filled ambiance by which and in which man is truly free. The relation between grace and freedom is like that between eye and light. Grace does not annul freedom, just as it does not annul nature, which it restores. Freedom lays the bases of the growth in grace and of the perfection of the moral freedom, by its continual connection with the moral law, therefore with the revealed and redeeming Good. Thus, man is a personal being, placed in front of a personal God, or, as Saint Basil says, man “is a being who received the teaching to become god” ( Lossky, 1998 ).

The impact of this study in the theological, sociological and ethical world is actual, because liberty is understood correctly as a right, but applied mostly as libertinism at individual and society level. In the Christian theological environment, the concept of liberty is essential, but starting with Renaissance and continuing with French Enlightenment, it has suffered a significant change. On confessional plan, human liberty has a connection with God’s grace. The report between spirit and matter as a work of grace is also the report between divine and human. The Catholic theologians have defined divine grace as being a created accident and this led to the tendency to limit or to cancel freedom, in favour of divinity. Essentially, by grace, Catholic theology asserts that man takes part objectively to divine being, but in a limited manner, and his actions are foreseen and pre-determined, thus it is accentuated the action of God or grace, to the detriment of human liberty. At the counter pole, Protestantism generally asserts that man is absolutely predestined by God and, according to them, God decides, He predestines some to happiness, while others to eternal damnation. These conceptions cancel the liberty of man. Lutheran theologians speak of a relative predestination (but only of those who are good, for happiness) while the Calvinist assert absolute predetermination (Jean Calvin, Karl Barth, Emil Brunner). According to them, there might be a destiny or a system which is similar to Buddhist and Islamic fatalism, which cancels or limits the problem of liberty. Within this frame, in the present study we propose a clear definition and the defence of the concepts of freedom and human responsibility.

Problem Statement

Delineations and conceptual definitions of freedom.

Man, regardless of the level of history he was on, arranged his life according to certain models that he copied, sifting them through his personal experience, and so he transformed them, giving them an original content. If these existential models were from the Holy Spirit, then his life is full of morality as well; if they were outside the laws of grace and were realized by sin, then man’s life and activity is immoral and contrary to the truth. Moral life, therefore, according to this logic, has to do with our active participation to the divine life, because any good deed exists only by God, - good being the essence of life, and evil being only the denial of good (not just the lack of good, as we often find even in the specialized books), evil having no existence, because it is not God who is the author of evil, but it is the freedom that man was endowed with that makes the existence of evil possible. By sin, by breaking himself free from God, man created for himself models out of his limited world, which are in no way better than himself, which he idolatrized. Idolatry and immorality are two concepts conditioning each other, generated by man’s selfish love. The fact that they easily contaminated the world shows that they are related to sin, to evil, which once perpetrated asks to be repeated, multiplied - evil moves downwards like a stone pushed down to the valley, becoming like a second nature. To stop this human corruption process, a divine intervention was needed, realized at “ the fullness of time ” by Christ, God’s Embodied Word.

The notion of freedom, as gift and superior capacity of man, in the context of creation is defined differently, namely, for the humanistic philosophical thinking it has to do exclusively with the human powers, whereas according to the divine revelation it is a gift of God triggering responsibility. Anthropologically, man’s true freedom is strictly related to Jesus Christ’s soteriological work, by which the full communion of the human with the divine is realized. Based on these considerations, Petre Țuțea affirms that freedom as an existential concept is given “in the triangle: God, nature and man, in which God, perfect, makes His imitation possible, an imitation realized perfectly by the saints and imperfectly by ordinary believers, whose existence is filled with worldly things” ( Ţuţea, 1992 ).

For purely rationalistic philosophers, freedom is a true mystery having to do precisely with the relation with the divinity. Bergson, for example, affirmed that all the reasoning on freedom makes freedom disappear.

Man’s freedom is an inner attribute of the spirit. Once accepted, it must not be mistakenly taken for divine freedom, which is absolute, nor with absolute indeterminism. Our freedom is not absolute freedom, but is according to our measure of creature of God and is co-grown in our psycho-physical structure, it is influenceable, conditioned ( Mladin, 2003 ). Man, according to Spinoza, is like a thrown body, which, if it had the awareness of its movement on its trajectory, would think himself free. So, as Spinoza affirms, man in the context of creation has the limits of his own being, which according to theology can be overcome only by grace, by God; “absolute freedom is possessed only by God” ( Spinoza, 2006 );

In the pantheistic philosophy, man is conceived as a rational being, dignified and free, yet designed as mode of the infinite substance absorbing him. The multitude of contrary opinions on freedom is realized in the transcendental terms of “ coincidentia oppositorum ” of Nicolaus Causanus. “The free man - says Petre Țuțea - moves between intuition and search, approximating, feeling sometimes at ease and wondering, the revelation showing him that he is not meant for death and for the limits of the world down here” . Man’s movement towards the sensible things gives birth to sin, by which reason, mind, freedom, and all that is related to the image, instead of looking towards the contemplation of the Creator, focus on self and so highlight the nothingness out of which the human nature has been created. The birth of sin is related to man’s reason or mind and so, during its first stage, it has an intellectual aspect, because: “ the throne of the divinity is the mind, and the throne of the mind is God and the Spirit. This is why they say that Satan and his powers and the lower orders of the fallen angels have settled themselves since God’s commandment was disobeyed in Adam’s mind and heart as on their own throne... ” ( Ţuţea, 1992 ).

Contemporary philosophy, however, identifies freedom as being man’s or the group’s capacity of self-determination, of not being constrained and of acting to finalize the aims he or they tend(s) to. This conception has Immanuel Kant as its promoter, who in his works identifies freedom as power to choose.

Research Questions

Grounds, senses and implications of freedom, from a scriptural and patristic perspective.

Freedom is related to love, this is why the source of man’s freedom is in God, who out of love created him as center and spiritual axis of the world. In the Holy Scripture, freedom determines the state of closeness to God, just as well as remoteness from God by sin means slavery. The senses and implications of freedom, from a scriptural perspective, are multiple: “you will know the truth and the truth will set you free” (John 8: 31-32). “No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, because all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15: 15). “the person who looks intently into the perfect law, the law that provides liberty, and continues in it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an active doer – he will be blessed in his doing” (James 1: 25). “You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men” (1 Corinthians 7: 23). “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3: 17). “you are no longer a slave, but a son” (Galatians 4: 7). “you, brothers, were called to freedom” (Galatians 5: 13). Indeed, since the beginning God called man to freedom, by living life in freedom (Jesus Sirach 15: 14-17), freedom being the essential principle of man’s spiritual life. As Nikolai Berdyaev says, “Christianity supposes the spirit of freedom and the freedom of the spirit, without this atmosphere it cannot even exist” ( Berdiaev, 2009 ).

In the Old Testament, by the prescriptions of the law, the freedom desired by the chosen people is rather related by its situation in the land of deliverance; in the New Testament, it rather has a side that is inside man, highlighted by the following verses: “But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgement will be revealed, Who will give to each person according to what he has done.” (Romans 2: 5-6); “The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive his wages on the basis of his work.” (1 Corinthians 3: 8); “If I do this willingly, I have a reward. But if unwillingly, I have been entrusted with a charge.” (1 Corinthians 9: 17); “Whatever you do, do it heartily, as for the Lord, not for men, for you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as your reward, for you serve the Lord Christ.” (Colossians 3: 23-24). The logical conclusion of these verses is that it is not freedom that is the result of necessity, but it is necessity that is the result of freedom, with a very well delineated purpose, namely to lift man to a communion as full as possible with God. This is the expression of God’s love, which would have generated man’s happiness in increasingly perfect forms.

In the Patristic Orthodox Theology, freedom or true freedom represents the impetus towards Good identified with God. “In a classical definition, freedom is the faculty to choose” ( Evdochimov, 2009 ), says Paul Evdochimov, yet Saint Maximus the Confessor says: “the need to choose is a weakness inherent to the fall into sin”. “Freedom no longer bears its own reasons, but creates them for itself. It raises where the freest acts are the only complete acts” ( Saint Maxim the Confessor,1983 ). In the Holy Fathers’ teachings, freedom does not mean a choice between good and evil, but true freedom means choosing only what is good and deliverance from any uncertainty regarding this choice. Thus, the Holy Fathers show that true freedom, perfect freedom is the freedom of the period preceding the fall. About this, Saint John of Damascus speaks clearly when he says: “God made man by nature without sin, and by will, free... He therefore had the power to remain and progress in good, being helped by the divine gift, just as well as he had the power to turn away from god and get to evil, a thing allowed by God for the reason that man was endowed with free will. What is done by force is no virtue” ( Saint Ioan Damaschinul, 1938 ). Yet, in order to grow spiritually in the freedom of good, one has to go beyond the state of enslavement given by sin. Paul Evdokimov says, in this sense: “The sense of the original sin is the transformation of God into an exterior authority, in the Law, a fact that leads to transgressing the divinized Law, situating man outside God. The Embodiment had to come for man to find himself again inside God. Baby Jesus had to reveal the Father’s true image, by the parable of the prodigal son, where the judicial authority is not characteristic of the father, but of the elder son. The father does nothing else except to run to greet his child” ( Evdochimov, 2009 ).

Another coordinate of freedom, in patristic theology, is also the position of Epictetus, confirmed by the teaching of Saint Paul the Apostle, namely that any man, be he even a slave, has in him the freedom of a king. Saint John of Damascus acknowledges such a freedom, too, when he states: “in our power are the things that we are free to do and not to do, namely all the things that we do voluntarily. Because one cannot say that we act voluntarily if the action would not be in our power, And, in one word, are in our power the things followed by blame or praise and over which there is exhortation and law. In has to be known that it is in our power to choose what is to be done. Man, being rational, leads nature more than he is led by it. For this reason, when he wills, if he wills, he has the power to repress his wish or to follow it. This is why the irrational ones are neither praised, nor blamed, yet man is praised and blamed. Because man is moving freely and with reason... He wishes freely, wills freely, examines and thinks freely, deliberates freely, judges freely, settles himself freely, chooses freely, moves freely, works freely the natural things” ( Saint Ioan Damaschinul, 1938 ). By virtue of this fact, man accomplishes God’s will, yet not conditioned from the state of slave, but given its relevance and its importance for his life, as it [the will of God] delivers him from the sphere of slavery given by sin and sinful passions. Just as John Stuart Mill used to say: “the outer limit to my freedom reaches up to the limitation of another man’s freedom” ( Mill, 1994 ).

Purpose of the Study

The special and personal relation that man ought to have with God results very clearly from the creation act, from the fact that all the other beings were made by the power of God’s word: “ And God said, “Let there be…” ” (Genesis 1, 3, 6, 9), whereas man has been created by a special act, by the direct participation of the Holy Trinity. The breath of life of the Holy Spirit creates the aware and free being appearing as one who has in him the power to participate to the infinite, being a microtheos, yet by sin he realizes that he is not himself he infinite, always living, along with his incompleteness, the insufficiency, the relativity, yet united to the aspiration and thirst for absolute. Thus, man appears in history as a great mystery, so that, to clarify it, God Himself made Himself a man, and in order for man to be able to clarify all these he needs grace, he needs a transformation of his being, becoming God by grace: “ From the lives of the Saints we know now that man is an existence reaching the extremities, he can reach from the devil up to God, according to his free will and can become both god by grace and devil …” ( Popovici, 1997 ). Freedom, in the vision of the Holy Fathers, is constituted by the coordinates of God’s image in man. It is the foundation of our possibility of reaching the likeness of God. “ Man is what he is - says Saint Seraphim Rose - not because of his nature, which is dust out of the earth, but because of the supernatural grace infused into him by the breath of God” ( Saint Serafim Rose, 2011 ).

The man created in God’s image finds his true state, or his ontological state in Christ and with Christ. The man living in grace ontologically tends to God’s likeness in virtue. “ Man - says Saint Gregory of Sinai - was made with no corruption, as he will actually be resurrected. But not free of change, and not changing either, having in his will the power to change or not. Rottenness is the offspring of the body; and to eat, to throw out the remains, to get fat and to sleep, are natural characteristics of the beasts and of the animals. By these things being similar to animals, for our lack of submission, we fell from our goods bestowed by God, turning ourselves from rational, into animal-like, and from divine, into beast-like” ( Saint Grigorie Sinaitul, 1991 ). Freedom is actually the spiritual life in the Holy Spirit, the kind of life that gives sense to the human existence. Dionysius the Areopagite speaks frequently about man’s deification, in which the divine image in man is taken towards the likeness of God, this likeness being possible by the work of grace and by the contribution of the human will. Here is what he says: “God has given us freely his existence and life. He forms what we have divine in us, according to the kind of his ineffable beauties and recalls us, by the revivifying graces of the Holy Mysteries, to the brilliance of our first destinations” , or: “Salvation is not possible except for the deified spirits, it is but the union with God and the likeness of God that you endeavor to have, in which your will submits to the will of God” ( Dionisie pseudo-Areopagitul, 1994 ). Saint Maximus the Confessor, commenting on Dionysius the Areopagite, says: “Deification is a work of grace, yet where the will has its own contribution, being actually the perfection of freedom” ( Saint Maxim the Confessor, 1983 ). Human freedom must have as its purpose deification. Therefore, the sense of true freedom can be but one: the virtue that leads to man’s deification.

Research Methods

The present study presents the problem of liberty from the perspective of Christian teachings, where it is the gift of God but also human responsibility. In this study, using scientific research methods, we present an exegetical and hermeneutic analysis which is based upon the biblical text, but also the critical analysis of the Christian vision, especially the Orthodox, about the concept of liberty. The analytical frame of this research was generally backed up by a comparative study. The novelty of the study is given by the inter and trans-disciplinary approach of the chosen theme, by using methods which are specific for Christian moral theology, psychology of religion but also sociology. From its very beginning, the study has as specificity the problem of liberty and answers questions like: What is liberty? Is man free? Can we say that the contemporary man, who lives in a secularized society, is free? Can psychology or sociology of religion define “what liberty is”? Surely the answer is connected to divine revelation developed within Christian theology. Thus, the arguments we brought are specific to orthodox Christian theology, brut from a transdisciplinary perspective, which is necessary in order to surpass the limits imposed by the disciplinary research and to reach what is beyond any discipline, generally obtaining an objective result. Given all these data, the specific objectives of this study are: 1. Critical description and evaluation of the Christian approaches about liberty and responsibility; 2. Identification and compared analysis of the concept of liberty and responsibility within the theology of the great Christian churches; 3. The analyze of the concept of liberty and responsibility and its implications on the religious man and the contemporary man.

Will and freedom, moral aspects

Man, being created in the image of God, is by nature free and volitional ( Saint Ioan Damaschinul, 1938 ). Will is not an instinct but a function of the spirit. Man has the capacity to say “no”, to intervene between stimulus and reaction, to suspend the instinctive mechanism and react as he wills. With man, the instinct is guided by the lights of reason and by the energy of the will, and this in the case of certain actions that are instinctive in point of nature. Will is spiritual power, the root of an aware and rational action, which is superior to the instinctive action. Since will is superior to instinct, this means that the will is free. Freedom is an inherent quality of the will. Therefore, freedom is the capacity of the will to determine itself on its own for its action, with no external or internal constraint. Depending on the way the work of the will uses the power of nature, positively or negatively, “ it will receive its end in the good or the unhappy existence” , which he calls “ the one and never-ending day” ( Saint Maxim the Confessor, 1983 ).

Naturally, reason tends towards truth, and will tends towards good. The aim of reason is to know the truth; the aim of the will is to do good. By freedom, man has the capacity to fully realize what is good, but, at the same time, under the impulse of temptations, man can choose evil. Evil cannot be the purpose of freedom. The essence of freedom has to do with the capacity of choosing between several possibilities of doing good. It is turned, by nature, to good.

The Holy Scripture shows that man is a free being “It was He who created humankind in the beginning, and He left them in the power of their own free choice. If you choose, you can keep the commandments, and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice. He has placed before you fire and water; stretch out your hand for whichever you choose. Before each person are life and death and whichever one chooses will be given.” (Jesus Sirach 15: 14-17). Our Savior at the same time shows that God does not force man’s freedom, does not impose, but only proposes: “Take note! I am standing at the door and knocking. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will enter his house and eat with him, and he with Me.” (Revelation 3: 20). The Christian moral freedom is the free and permanent identification of our will with good, therefore with God’s will. This full compliance of the human will with the divine will is realized by Christ, by His sacrifice in which mankind has been progressively purified of sin and ontologically restored by the infusion of grace whose consequence is deification.

The problem of freedom, in the thinking of Saint Gregory of Nyssa is analyzed not psychologically, but ontologically, freedom being unseparated from God. Saint Gregory of Nyssa sees in the freedom of will the main content of the divine image in man. In this position, of image of God, man must have all the characteristic features of his model. He enumerates several characteristic traits that could be synthesized in two groups: sinlessness and freedom. Sinlessness is the cleanliness of the mind, of the heart, of the conscience, of everything that makes us similar to the things devoid of reason and limits our freedom. What limits freedom is evil, and God tolerates it because He tolerates the creature’s freedom. In the Orthodox theology, freedom is not confounded with the free will; they are two distinct things, but they do not exclude each other either, because “ by his freedom of choice, man is also image of God” ( Stăniloae, 1997 ). The free will is included in freedom, or, more precisely, this is the first step towards acquiring perfect freedom. Man has, first of all, complete freedom to choose, to follow God or to refuse Him, to choose between good and evil, to choose between life and death. “We can say yes, because we could just as well say: Thy will be not done” ( Evdochimov, 1996 ).

The Orthodox Theology defines freedom in the sense of gift given to man by God. This gift, or this great possibility to be open to the divine grace, makes both spiritual progress but also spiritual regress possible. The free will can be analyzed as well from other perspectives, related to the frailty of the human being, as Saint Maximus the Confessor classifies him: as an imperfection, because the temporary need to choose represents rather a deficiency of man than an expression of his independence. Father Professor Dumitru Stăniloae says that “ the grounds of the whole greatness of man’s divine image lies in his freedom” ( Stăniloae, 1997 ). Freedom, in the Eastern theology, is not reduced only to the possibility of choosing between following Jesus or refusing Him. In the Holy Fathers’ writings and in the works of the great Orthodox theologians, freedom has much deeper meanings related to the process of deification and perfection of the human person, as we have shown previously; in principle, the first meaning of freedom is given by the possibility of a personal, non-determined and non-constrained choice.

In human freedom is embedded the divine image of our Creator, the believer having the duty to take this image towards an ever deeper likeness of God. Freedom is an ontological gift and also a human responsibility, being related to God and strictly connected to doing good and accomplishing the virtues. In his sense, human responsibility is double, on the one hand, one of its consequences is responsibility for the acts committed, and on the other hand it connects man to the deliverance from sin for sanctification and deification.

Thus, Christian freedom must always be viewed ontologically, being related to God and having just one coordinate, that of good. The possibility of choosing between good and evil, and implicitly the free will, according to the patristic conception, is a consequence of our fall into sin. In the free will lies all man’s individuality and personality. Man’s power lies precisely in freedom, yet this does not coincide with the free will, with the alternative of choosing between good and evil, but with choosing good, or more precisely with the stabilization in good. Thus, freedom means full harmony and symbiosis between the work of grace and man’s work, the aim being the perfection of the human being, man’s accomplishment and deification, which actually mean eternal freedom and love.

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30 July 2017

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https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2017.07.03.25

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Teacher training, teaching, teaching skills, teaching techniques,moral purpose of education, social purpose of education, counselling psychology

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Florea, Ş. (2017). Freedom As Gift And Human Responsibility From The Christian Teaching Perspective. In A. Sandu, T. Ciulei, & A. Frunza (Eds.), Multidimensional Education and Professional Development: Ethical Values, vol 27. European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences (pp. 180-188). Future Academy. https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2017.07.03.25

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