Freedom

Verse 29 of Ezekiel 36 and what I said last time also reminds me of Piper's illustration of how some people try to keep Your commandments. They don't do it with real FREEDOM. Piper says:
(www.desiringGod.org)



Full freedom is what you have when no lack of opportunity, no lack of ability and no lack of desire prevents you from doing what will make you happiest in a thousand years. In order to be free in the fullest sense you have to have opportunity, ability, and desire to do what will make you happy in a thousand years. Another way to say it would be that there are four kinds of freedom, or better, four stages of freedom on the way to the full freedom all of us long for: the
freedom of opportunity to do what we can, the freedom of ability to do what we desire and the freedom of desire to do what will bring us enending joy.

He goes on to say:

Let's take skydiving, for example. Suppose you are on your way to the airport to go up for your first real jump, but your car hits a pothole on Hiawatha, you have a blowout and run into a telephone pole. You are no longer free to jump whether you have the ability or not because the opportunity passes while you wait for the tow truck. You lack the freedom of opportunity.

Or suppose you do make it to the airport but you have not ability at all - you have never studied skydiving and never learned the first thing about how a parachute works. The opportunity is there, but you don't have the freedom of ability - you are in bondage to your own lack of know-how.

But suppose that you make it to the airport, you've been to school and been trained and have all the abilities needed, and you take off for your first jump. But as soon as you look down all your desire vanishes and in its place comes a tremendous fear. The opportunity is there, the ability and know-how are there, but you don't have the freedom of desire. The interesting thing about the freedom of desire is that you might be able to go ahead and jump without it, but it won't be a free act. For example, you might feel so humiliated in front of your instructor (or girlfriend) that the desire not to be humiliated overcomes the desire not to jump. So you jump. But the emotional experience is not what we call freedom. You are acting under very uncomfortable external constraints. You are like Herod when his step-daughter asked for the head of John the Baptist. He didn't want to ill John but he waned wanted less to be shamed before his guests. So he acted, but not with the freedom of desire. You have the freedom of desire when you do what you love to do.


That's the way a lot of professing Christians try to keep the commandments of Christ. They don't really delight to do them but they feel some uncomfortable constraints like social pressures or fear of hell or desire to impress someone. So they go through outward motions of obedience but the desire of their hearts is fixed somewhere else. They do not enjoy the freedom of desire which Christ gives when he is being formed in the heart. (Gal.4:19)



But there is one last requirement for full freedom. Suppose you get to the airport with no obstacle; you have all the know-how necessary; you look out the door at the tiny clusters of silos and barns and farmhouses and just can't wait to jump. You have freedom of opportunity, freedom of ability, and freedom of desire. So you jump. And as you free fall unbeknown to you, your parachute malfunctions and will not open. Are you free? In three senses, yes. But in that
critical fourth sense, no. What you are doing so happily, so freely, is going to kill you. Whether you know it or not, you are in bondage to destruction. It would be a mockery to exult in the freedom of an exhilarating free fall if you knew it was leading to destruction. In
order to be fully free it is not enough to have opportunity, ability, and desire to act. The acts you desire and perform have to lead to life indeed, eternal life, not destruction.

This is why it is naive for a Christian young person to envy the so- called freedom of those who pitch themselves out the window of sin and exult for a season i the exhilaration of free fall sex or fee fall greed, or free fall drugs or free fall luxury. They will pass away like vapor but those who do the will of the Lord will abide for ever (I John 2:17). True freedom is not just the opportunity and ability to do what you desire to do. It is the opportunity, ability and desire to do what will make you happy in a thousand years.

Therefore, true Christians are the freest people in the world...