Which Freedoms?

What freedoms did you celebrate on the 4th? There are several listed in our Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Look a little deeper at the list following the words:  “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.”

Those were given as substantive reasoning to institute a change in government in 1776. How do they fit with the current changes in government going on in our world today?

I don’t know what to think about Egypt’s recent change. I’ve read what a Christian Egyptian thinks of it, though. He sees it as a difficult time for his country, but a change that will increase his safety. His new government may be interested in his life, liberty and his pursuit of happiness.  The previous government supported Sharia law, which did none of those things for a Christian.

Through the acceptance of Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior, he knew what liberty meant:

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. (Galatians 5:1 KJV)

That liberty is defined as our Lord:

Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. (2 Corinthians 3:17 KJV)

There is work to be done in our liberty:

But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. (James 1:25 KJV)

There are constraints, too, to do good and not evil:

As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. (1 Peter 2:16 KJV)

We do have the ability to relinquish our liberty – but at what cost?

For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error. While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage. For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them. (2 Peter 2:18-21 KJV)

As Christians, we need to understand that the only freedom we’ve relinquished is the one to sin without guilt. No one sins without consequences, saved or lost.