What is real freedom? Humanity for all time, in every age has been looking for the answer to this question. Mankind is ‘hard-wired’ for freedom and so it becomes the pursuit of every generation. But what is it? How do you find it?
Many look for it in the abandonment of the perceived codes, rules and regulations of previous generations. Boundary-breaking is hailed as courageous and liberating. In the 18th century science took a massive leap forward and the age of reason was born. The conventions of a tight religious explanation of existence were jettisoned as science discovered something more plausible and well-reasoned. Romanticism, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement of the early 19th century rejected the stale, stuffy, restricting world of reason and industrialisation for the celebration of nature, beauty, and imagination. And so it goes on through the centuries! In the post war years of the 50’s and 60’s we saw sweeping cultural changes. Many social, moral and economic conventions were challenged in the pursuit of greater social and economic freedom and liberty. Not all bad but certainly not all good!
So, is freedom the absence of boundaries? Is the health and wholeness of human life best experienced by the absence of social moral and ethical codes? Or is our obsession with boundary-breaking a ticket back to Egypt and therefore slavery, rather than to a land of promise, freedom and liberty?
On Sunday we will explore God’s plan for our freedom as His people, revealed in the last half of chapter 4 of Ephesians. Come and listen to a short talk on what true freedom looked like for the believers in Ephesus and how that plan includes us today!
