Exhotation

Freedom is a heady thing, and some of you students are experiencing the rush of adult freedom for the first time. Perhaps for the first time, you are making your own decisions about how to organize your life, what you are doing to do with your day, when your day is going to begin and end, how you are going to spend your free time and with whom.

Freedom is one of the important themes of the New Testament.

Paul announces that we are free from the law, free from the curse of the law, free from sin, free from the dominion of Satan, free from death, freed by the Truth that is Jesus, called to walk in freedom. The gospel announces a new exodus, a new liberation from Egypt, the final restoration from Babylon. It is the good news of freedom.

“Great,” you might say: “I can do whatever I want. I can drink as much as I like, smoke anything anytime I like, stay out all night, hang out with anyone I want. Against such there is no law, and I’m free from the law anyway.”

That’s the wrong conclusion. We are free, but Paul has to remind his readers again and again about what this freedom means. “All things are lawful,” he says, “but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful, but not all things are edifying.” You are free, Peter says, but “do not use your freedom as a covering for evil.” Above all, our freedom is to be used in love, with deference to one another.

In his inimitably paradoxical way, Luther captured the form of the Christian life when he wrote that the Christian is free lord of everything, yet at the same time the slave of all. So, to the students, and to everyone else: Celebrate the freedom you have in Christ. But don’t use your freedom as a cover for evil. Don’t just ask, Is it lawful? Ask, Is it profitable?

Above all, use your freedoms to serve. Your freedom is a free gift; freely use it to give.