I Am Free - A Testimony

Freedom.

What does it mean to you? Does it mean you can say what you want? Does it mean you can wear what you want? Live how/where/with who you want?
Is the generic type of freedom, freedom to all?

Behaving how I want freely - no matter how bad....is that not consequential then for someone else?

What do we mean when we say we are free?

I have recently been thinking about the power of testimony, the allegory, the story. How pivotal this can be in changing lives and influencing others.
We see, in the Bible the power of the woman by the Wells's testimony. The ridiculed, cast out woman who had a different time to fetch water from the well to everyone else, had a story to tell and saw many saved.

What's the one thing people can't take away from us? Our story.

My story consists of freedom...a freedom singularly found in Christ.

This is Part 1 of Testimony.

A guarantee we hear from preachers, and indeed Jesus himself, is freedom when we trust and follow him:

' If the son sets you free, you will be free indeed' John 8:36

 But what is freedom? 




The social view of freedom seems ever so slightly misconstrued. 
'Freedom of Speech' isn't really freedom when we see others condemning a view that isn't a popular opinion. 
This is to be expected of us however. In contemplation of infinity, we become bewildered, we don't understand how something cannot have an end. This then crosses over to freedom. Freedom has boundaries. Our morals and laws restrict freedom. Freedom is not freedom, no matter how hard we try and convince each other that it is.  

So then how can we know freedom with Christ?
The obvious answer for Christians is that we are freed from the punishment of sin - correct. But to me it means more.

In order to explain what the freedom of Christ is, I will use some of my testimony. 
See, being free in Christ today, I can look back at my past and see the shift in who I am since following him. 

Freedom, from what I can understand and have experienced, isn't necessarily a physical freedom. 
The laws are still relevant, my physical body is still relevant. 
 Freedom, for me is in outlook. 

It is depicted well in 1 Kings 4:29 by what God gave Solomon. 
 'God gave Solomon wisdom and very great insight, and a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand on the seashore.'

 Now, by no means am I comparing myself to Solomon - the wisest man. But I experience a similar freedom. The freedom to look at the world with an open mind, to look at people and understand Jesus' parables, to see the temptations of the world from the root and motivation they came from. 
Freedom gives you insight, an awareness of the world, which is masked when your mind is consumed by the world.  

You can understand reasons as to why people do things.  For me, I am much more conscious of my actions.

A side note I am conscious to include is that; I by no means understand all of the world, or all of people's thoughts and motives behind their actions. I would be foolish and naive to say I did. What I am saying is that, being free means you can take your mind out of the world's thoughts and look at it in a heaven inspired way - not just go with it, as we all have the tendency to do. 


For me, I was very self-conscious, thought it was my looks that caused me to not have many friends in school. I hated being alone, felt like I always needed someone around to make me worthy. 
My thoughts were consumed with 'how can I be accepted', 'what will make people like me most' and 'people will like me if I'm skinnier'. 
The freedom I feel now, is not negatively consequential for anyone, my freedom in Christ brings joy, love, strength, and wisdom. 

And I can confidently say that whilst there are tough times, joy resounds. Freedom in Christ helps you to realise that whilst there's pain in the night, there's joy in the morning.

Freedom in Christ is genuine joy that no other thing can give you. It completes you, makes you whole, and lifts the veil which causes us walk indifferently through the stages of our lives, so we can see things with new eyes and a new heart. 






 

Selflessness

When we observe the human race and our motivation behind good deeds, we see that whilst we submit some deeds to be selfless, arguably they can all be traced back to some sort of selfish need.

For instance, say I paid for someone to have dinner, from the outside it seems selfless; I am giving to someone something of my own without really expecting something in return.
But surely if we delve in further to the outcome of the selfless act, we can come away with an alternative solution.

Let's take it back to babies. As babies we learn that actions have consequences, in both a good and bad way.
          So touching the oven is hot etc.
From this we can also learn that giving someone a hug gives them a great pleasure, since everyone responds 'Ahhhhh'.
Good deeds = gratification

Doing good things, we learn, gives us a great sense of happiness and fulfillment as the reciever shows us appreciation and thanks - and in our minds we may be thinking that one day they will repay us.

Taking this into consideration then, selflessness is not entirely possible.
Every act, we can then conclude, has some sort of gain expected (subconsciously or not) by the giver - whether physical, mental or verbal.  (Side note - is this necessarily a bad thing? John Piper says in Desiring God: 'Paul does not think the moral value of an act of love is ruined when we are motivated to do it by the anticipation of our own joy in it and from it...
1 Corinthians 13:3 "If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing"....
If it were, then a bad man who hated the prospect of loving could engage in pure love, since he would take no joy in it, while a good man who delighted in the prospect of loving could not love, since he could gain joy from it and thus ruin it' )

But What About Jesus? 
The act of Jesus dying on the cross is claimed to be a selfless act. Jesus did it for no self gain, but entirely for the cause of others. And esentially if it was selfish, it would not accurately depict the sacrifice God made or the love which he has, that motivated it. 

As a believer of Jesus' death and resurrection, initially I did not feel the need to question this fact.
Jesus died for us. That's all I need to know.  
But as a thinker, I started to wonder how this was a selfless act? If every other act has even a slight selfish motivation, how does this not?
My thoughts went like this:

1) Jesus died so that we can have a relationship with him and can go to heaven.
2) We were created to 'Glorify God' Isaiah 43:7
3) In Jesus dying, we can go to heaven, which means glorifying God forever more.
4) Jesus is God
5) In him dying, more people can go to heaven and praise him.
6) Is that not a selfish gain?

In full awareness that I was blaspheming in this train of thought, I pressed in and intended to find a satisfatory answer.
A question like this allows us in the Christian faith to continue to be amazed at how awesome and great God is. Which is why I strived to figure it out.

Upon looking at it, you could think;

Well Jesus died so God would get glory.
Which at the end of the day is true.

For anyone else, this would be highly selfish.
If I died so I could get glory, people would assume I was an egotistical, self absorbed person - similar to Epedocles who jumped into an active volcano to convince his followers that he was a god. (Fun fact)

Why is Jesus different?
The answer to this, of course, completely depends on whether or not you believe that Jesus was God.
If you believe he wasn't, Jesus is simply a mad man, like Empedocles.
If you believe he was, the answer is simple.

Turning back to John Piper's 'Desiring God', we find he addresses this problem:
'He must be for Himself if He is to be for us. The rules of humility that belong to a creature cannot apply in the same way to its creator. If God should turn away from Himself as the source of infinite joy, He would cease to be God. He would deny the infinite worth of His own glory. He would imply that there is something more valuable outside Himself. He would commit idolatry.'

So in essence, though the outcome of Jesus dying involves glory for God, it is through no selfish motivation. God likes us to glorify him for 2 main reasons:

1) If anything else was to get glory, it would be put above God, and like John Piper says, that would be idolatry.
2) Through us glorifying God, we recieve joy, peace and total satisfaction in him. And for a God that is love, he desires his people to  feel complete in him, because he loves us.


John Piper really helped me gain some closure on my issue of seflessness, and whilst it would be foolish of me to take his word as the absolute truth, his thoughts on the glory of God raise some very strong points, which for a believer resound to be accurate.

At the end of the day, however, we can be assured that God is a God who has a love so deep for us that he would sacrifice a perfect man for us, a perfect man who is His Son. With a pure, undying, unwavering and unconditional love motivating his every act, we cannot twist the ways of God to come across as selfish or for any reason other than for the good of his beloved creation.