does freedom mean we are free?

I had a friend ask me what the word freedom means to me...
she said i would be good at it because i was a thinker. well, a few people have his opinion of me i think, and im not sure that i really am a 'thinker' when half the time my brain seems to draw a blank, if i get asked a question on the spot, rarely do i ever give an intelligent response.

i would say i am a slow thinker. it is always afterwards that my intelligent response decides to form in my tiny brain. and then quite often my intelligent response never gets the chance to be aired, so gets caught in the web of disjointed information that floats around in my mind and seldom makes any sense.

However i do tend to be able to think when i am by myself, and have the luxury of undisturbed contemplation. the best place to think is the shower!!! one of the reasons why i am notorius for taking long showers and driving the power bill up :)

ok freedom....
freedom is to be free, a quality or state of being free, and condition of being free without constraints. to have freedom is to have the capacity to exercise choice - www.dictionary.reference.com

we in the western world amongst the top 8% of the richest people have a lot of freedom,
freedom from slavery, freedom to vote a democracy, we have academic freedom, freedom to learn, freedom to choose our occupation, freedom to be an individual, freedom of belief
freedom from prosecution... well mostly, thats a debatable topic
our society would say we are the epitome of what it is to be free.

the capacity to exercise choice... we certainly have a lot more freedom than that of our third world nieghbours who more often than not dont have the freedom to live their dreams
we have a lot more freedom than that of our ancestors; this modern age, has given us the freeom to communicate, to increase knowledge, to travel, to coexist in other cultures...

i like the idea that freedom is a state of being...
the above kind of freedom, capacity to exercise choice, freedom in society, is what the israelites thought freedom was, but Jesus said this is not what true freedom is.
He said ' if you obey my teachings, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.' The Israelites said 'what are you talking about, we are not slaves' they thought they were already free, so what is Jesus talking about?

i like the idea that freedom is a state of being because to me it implies that it is to do with your whole being; that is your mind, your body and your spirit.
the freedom the world talks about deals a lot with the body and mind, but never the spirit.
So often the spirit gets neglected, in a world that is blinded, and very little realise this is the most important part of the being.

Jesus was talking about the freedom we can have in the spirit. He was talking about freedom from the law of sin and death. "if you obey my teachings..." "you will know the truth..."
It is by the Law(the commandments) that we know what sin is, if you knew the law, you would know the truth that you are a sinner, and then that truth would set you free.
because in knowing the truth of your sin you would know the need for Jesus. Jesus paid the price of the law of sin and death so that we dont need to. And it is by confessing our sin with our mouth and believing in our heart that we are free.

If you think about it this way, to have freedom from a law is obsurd, whoever heard of being exempt from a law of nature? I can not have freedom from the law of gravity, i cannot choose at any time to jump of a building and not fall flat on my face and break my neck. the law of gravity simply does not allow it. So if Jesus is saying we can be free from the law of sin and death then we are truly free.

But nobody said freedom was easy....
many people have died fighting for the freedom we know today, they paid the price of their lives to abolish slavery and to stop evil dictators from taking over the world.
and Jesus never said his freedom would be easy either. To be free from the control of sin in our lives, is really hard work, it is an everyday choice, and often we fail. and still we are not condemned, the freedom of jesus is eternal.

He said "it is for freedom that you have been set free."
This is not the easiest statement to understand, but i came across an analogy, if perhaps a little abstract...
- A guilty man is in prison, his sentence is for death. One day he is pardoned from his sentence and released from the cell he has known for so long. he has been handed his freedom, he has a responsibility to now live as a free man.


I dont think we can ever truly be totally free, to have freedom in our whole being. there are always things we cannot control.
we dont truly have the freedom of speech becasue there will always be people who prosecute. we dont truly have freedom of the mind, because there are always people telling us what to think, even if it is in only subversive ways. we dont have freedom of our body, maybe we can control the shape of it with a little discipline, or in not so healthy ways, and to a degree we can control our health but there's no stopping some diseases...

in fact now that i think about it, the only freedom we can be totally sure of is freedom of the law of sin and death, which can only be found in Jesus.

and that is my conclusion :)