Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers.  For there is no power but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God … Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.  – Romans 13:1,5

 

A meditation on Psalm 95, Ezekiel 33:1-9, Romans 13:1-14, and Matthew 18:15-20.

 

These readings clash noisily against our notions of “Christian Freedom.”  Gathered that heading they almost remind me of George Orwell’s novel, 1984.  In that totalitarian state where no freedom of any kind was allowed, the Party had three oxymoronic slogans:  War is peace, Freedom is slavery, and Ignorance is strength.  So this title for these readings is just as oxymoronic, or obviously wrong.  Or is it?  Or do our times understand today as “freedom” the exact opposite of true freedom? 

You can learn a lot from what a society disapproves.  What is the greatest sin today?

·         Certainly it’s not blasphemy, because every time you turn on the TV or go to a movie they freely insult God and ridicule true religion. 

·         Certainly it’s not idolatry, since almost everybody worships sex or money or power, although they may not call them Astarte, Baal, or Zeus. 

·         Certainly it’s not adultery and fornication, because you just flip on the TV and there it is.  Nobody hides it, and nobody much disapproves.  Do your own thing, hopefully with your own species.

·         Certainly it’s not murder, because every year in American we murder a million and a half babies, and who knows how many adults and old people, merely because they are inconvenient. 

·         Certainly it’s not theft, because everybody looks up to the rich and powerful, and nobody, including Bill Clinton, expresses any great fastidiousness as to how they got there – unless they get caught. 

·         Certainly it’s not false witness and lying, because we elect the greatest liars in the world to the highest offices in the land, and never demand the truth from them.  Or from anybody else. 

·         Certainly the greatest evil, the maximum sin, is not covetousness, because the whole American lifestyle and everything Madison Avenue does stands firmly on the feet of covetousness.

So what is the great evil today?  For you to tell me what to do.  For you to try to exercise any authority over me at all.  And that means of course, that slavery is the greatest evil of all.

But before we commit ourselves to a lifestyle and worldview, we ought first to ask some sharp questions.  Is true freedom “the absolute liberty to do anything I want”?  Or is it something else?  In fact, is freedom even possible for human beings?  Can we as creatures ever be absolutely free?

FREE OR BOUND?

What do these readings deal with?  Freedom, or boundedness? 

The freedom described in Ezekiel 33 and Matthew 18 is the freedom to rebuke sin in others.  We wouldn’t call that “freedom” but “duty.”  This is something we are not “free” but “bound” to do. 

Immediately that suggests a conclusion about true freedom.  We are free to do not whatever we want, but only what is right. Romans 13 is all about submitting ourselves to civil government out of Christian duty, not out fear of punishment. 

The crux and import of this passage comes in verse 5, “Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.”  For the Christian, submission to rightful authority is not a matter of fear – “I’ll get a whipping if I disobey” – but our reasonable service to God.  We obey from a desire to please him because he has reconciled us to himself in Christ.

THE LIMIT OF FREEDOM

And in all these passages we see what true freedom – Christian freedom, the only freedom – is.  It is not the freedom to do whatever we want, but to do whatever God wills. 

Because we are creatures, we are slaves to God’s will.  We can only act (let alone obey or disobey) because he created us.  There are only two courses possible to us:  (1) to do what God wills, or (2) not to do what God wills.

Why is that?  Because nothing originates in us.  We are creatures, wholly dependent on God for our existence.  Thus there is only one choice open to us – ironically, a choice and freedom we would not have had God not given it to us – and that is to do his will or not to do his will. 

But in any event we have no absolute freedom because we are creatures, derived from and depending on our Creator.  Our freedom depends on God’s will to make us free.  So in the absolute and ultimate sense “freedom of the will” is impossible to us.  It is only possible as contingent on the will of God that determines everything.

SLAVES OR SLAVES?

The Bible makes clear that we have no absolute freedom.  We can only be one kind of slave or another, slaves to righteousness or slaves to sin.  Men are in fact naturally (by nature) slaves since Adam.  God created Adam with the ability to sin or not to sin.  It was a real test, a real choice in Eden.  Adam might have chosen to obey God, rather than to disobey.  But he didn’t, and in that Fall the nature of all mankind – all Adam’s progeny by natural generation as well as Adam and Eve themselves -- was corrupted, so that after the fall it was not possible for Adam not to sin.[1]  Paul shows us this complete corruption of man’s nature in Romans 3:9-18, quoting from the Old Testament:

What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin; 

As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:

There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.

They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:

Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:

Their feet are swift to shed blood:

Destruction and misery are in their ways:

And the way of peace have they not known:

There is no fear of God before their eyes.

Among all the children of Adam, he teaches us, there are no exceptions to this slavery to sin.  Through fear of death we are “all [our] lifetime subject to bondage.”[2]  The “carnal mind is enmity against God:  for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.”[3]  Until God adopts us as his own children, we are bound to this slavery.  “For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Ababa, Father.”[4]

What then is the outcome?  No man is free, but only one kind of slave or the other.  Look at Romans 8:16-18.

Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?  But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you.  Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness

WHAT ARE WE FREE TO DO?

If all this is so, then what are we free do?  Only what we have a moral right to do.  Ahh, how this grates on us, the children of the Revolution!  We have been raised to believe that man’s highest virtue is freedom, absolute independence, to be tough enough to shake our fist in the face of God and man and say, “I’ll do what I want if it kills me!”

But is that our highest virtue?  No, the perfection of morality and the purest beauty of freedom is willingly, cheerfully to accept Christ’s yoke upon our neck.  Not merely to accept it when it comes, but to seek it out.  What is our highest and only virtue?  To conform our own will freely to God’s will. 

This is the whole end of our being, to glorify God and enjoy him forever.  That does not mean independence, but dependence, delight in his will, cultivating our love of doing it, and submitting ourselves for conscience sake to all ordained authority in family, church, and state.

What?  Can this be happiness, you ask, along with our Revolutionary age?  No, no, it can’t be!  And the answer comes back to us, Yes!  Yes!  No other way.

Our happiness and freedom can only consist in this, that we use our freedom to become the willing slaves of God. 

What did Christ himself do?

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:  Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:    But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:   And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.[5]

Look at that.  “He emptied himself and became a bondservant.”  The Lord of all glory, the High King of Heaven, sharing the same being, power, and glory with the Father, became a bondservant.  He became the slave to his Father’s will.

For us, there can be no greater freedom. 

– F. Sanders