Our Stories
An Offering Of Freedom
By Abigail Welborn | posted 04/30/2009
"You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love." (Galatians 5:13 NIV)
I hope you got a chance to hear Keith's sermon two weeks ago. We're going through the six major theological affirmations of the Evangelical Covenant denomination, and we started with "freedom in Christ." The principle is best summed up with the age-old phrase, "In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity" (for a discussion on its source, see this web page).
Of course we all love being free! It's even our country's slogan - "land of the free." But what does that mean? For Christians, it means primarily that Jesus' death and resurrection set us free from slavery to sin. We now have the ability to enter God's presence with freedom (at will) and confidence (knowing he wants us there). Most importantly to this article, Christian freedom means that we have the ability to disagree with one another and still be friends.
The way that happens is by caring more about loving people than about being right. Certainly the early church dealt with doctrinal debates as much as we do today. For example, Paul reassured the Corinthians that they could eat food sacrificed to idols, which was against Jewish law (1 Cor. 8:1-8). He then finished his argument with this caution: "Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak" (1 Cor. 8:9 NIV). In other words, though your freedom is absolute, serving people is more important than what you do or don't get to do.
In the sermon, that principle was put like this:
Freedom in Christ is not something we claim, but something we offer to others.
Wow! I had never thought about it that way before. And you know what? Other people have probably noticed that about me. I have to confess that I haven't always been charitable in offering freedom to other believers.
As we were reminded, we are still allowed to have opinions. If you've ever talked to me about roles in marriage or the role of women in the church, you know that I have extremely passionate opinions about some doctrinally divisive ideas. But if you pushed me to the wall, I would admit that I don't think that your belief on such issues is essential to your Christian faith. I think that intelligent, well-meaning people can come to differing conclusions on these and other issues, even some about which people feel very strongly.
So have you checked your "freedom-meter" lately? We have probably all been guilty at one time or another of ascribing too much importance to non-essential issues. The next time you get into a fiery debate about a theological topic, I hope you'll argue your hearts out, and then finish by remembering that your opponent can disagree with you and still be a Bible-believing, Spirit-filled, others-loving child of God - just like you.
Abigail can be reached via email here.
