Free to Serve

"Live as people who are free, 

not using your freedom as a cover up for evil,

but living as servants of God."

1 Peter 2:16

What we decide to do with our freedom shows where our hearts desires truly lie. The Christian is one who has been freed from bondage. We are no longer enslaved to anyone or anything. We are free. Yet, in our freedom, we willfully submit ourselves to our loving Lord and Savior. In a culture that prides itself on freedom and personal choice, this very idea of submitting yourself as a servant to someone else probably seems disgusting. It seems ludicrous to use your freedom to make yourself a slave. But, I think this is the true measure of love and trust. Once we have tasted of the immeasurable love that our Master has for us, it is easy to turn to him and trust him. It is a joy to run to our Redeemer, the one who has freed us, and willingly lay our lives down at his feet. Ultimately, we can look to Jesus as the prime example of this, who, though he is God, came to earth and confined himself to a human body, and willingly died the death we deserved, in order that we could be freed from our bondage. Now we are free to serve. 

Trusting God in the Dark

I needed this today.

From Dane Ortlund:

'Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love . . .'
--Genesis 22:2

The command to offer up the son of the promise, with whom the whole future lies, seems the complete contradiction of the Purpose of God on which Abraham has set his faith.

Abraham in the story is called by God to make a supreme sacrifice, an act of complete and entire worship, trusting God in the dark, committing everything to him: 'not my will but thine be done.' While God did not in the end demand this sacrifice to be made, that which he did demand was the entire willingness to make the offering.

Such is the meaning of the story as the writer tells it; and because this and nothing less is the true and original meaning therefore we, in interpreting it, may and must look onward to the self-giving of our LORD, in whose case no offering of a substitute was possible. Hence we may and must find the finalanswer to Isaac's question 'Where is the lamb for a burnt-offering?' and Abraham's reply 'God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt-offering, my son' (22:7-8) in the words of John 1:29, 'Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.'

--Gabriel Hebert, The Old Testament From Within (Oxford University Press, 1962), 34

Jesus: The True Hero

An excerpt from The Book That Made Your World by Vishal Mangalwadi. Here, Mangalwadi is writing about how the Bible completely redefined heroism, with Jesus being the true hero.

"Classical heroism with the Bible because while the former valued power, Christ's heroism prized truth. Other kingdoms fostered heroic deeds by cultivating racial, geographic, linguistic, religious, class, or caste pride and hatred. Jesus made love the supreme value of the kingdom of God. This love was not sentimentalism. It went beyond loving one's neighbor as oneself. Its supreme manifestation was the cross: sacrificing oneself for others, including ones enemies.

Jesus' heroism replaced brutality with love, pride with meekness, and domination over others with self-sacrificing service. He exemplified this when he humbled himself, took a basin of water and a servant's towel, and started washing his disciples' feet. This, he said, is what the kingdom of God is all about. He was the King of kings and the Lord of lords. All power in heaven and on earth, he claimed, was his. But he had come not to be served, but to serve, not to kill but to give eternal life. These were not homilies delivered by a guru who sat on a golden throne. These teachings changed history because they emanated from a live lived in the public arena."