The Politics of Freedom
“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” 2 Corinthians 3:17
Liberty – The Bible is an emotionally engaging book. It’s romantic non-fiction. It’s the greatest love story ever told. And if you don’t feel it gripping your heart, tugging at your soul and shattering your tight little world, then you just don’t know the God of freedom.
That’s why you need to change this translation. The word is eleutheros. Yes, it can mean “liberty”. If Patrick Henry were Greek, he could have said, “Give me eleutheros or give me thanatos“. But the word is much more gut wrenching than our historicized idea of liberty. This word is freedom. That’s what I want. Freedom. The world’s political battle cry. This is a red, white and blue word. Stand up and salute the flag, people. Freedom is what it’s all about. The context of our thinking about freedom is politics. We aren’t selling democracy. We’re selling freedom (democracy is our chosen method to get freedom, but it’s not the only one). And who can argue with that? Doesn’t everyone want to be free?
That wasn’t supposed to be a rhetorical question. Our world follows the Greek view of freedom. Therefore, when we think of freedom, we think of political structures like law and votes and rights. Freedom is a concept of the state, defined by the state and exercised within the state. Freedom is what I can do and what I can control under the law of the state. Now, this is incredibly important: the whole point of freedom within the political arena is about controlling the bad things and enhancing the good things of life. That’s really the source of the debate about the function of government. Both sides agree that freedom means control. They only disagree about who should do the controlling.
The Bible has a different view of eleutheros. This difference makes all the difference. The Bible simply says that any freedom based on the idea of control is crazy because in this world there is no control at all. Here’s the kicker: wherever men allow someone or something to have control over them in order to gain “freedom”, they have really just become the slaves of another master. God doesn’t come to make you free in the political sense. He is not involved in order to give you a better government. God gives you a different kind of freedom: the freedom to stop seeking control over life by surrendering who you are to the Lord of life. This kind of freedom has very little with what you do. It is much deeper. Biblical freedom is absolute trust in the Creator’s purposeful arrangement of consequences for you. If you want to be really free, serve God alone, then do whatever you want and leave all the consequences to Him.
