This year marks 250 years since a group of colonists looked at the most powerful empire on earth and said, “no more.” Two hundred fifty years since the ink dried on a document declaring that men would no longer bow to a king across the ocean.
But here’s something most Fourth of July celebrations skip. Some of those same colonists were quoting an older rallying cry as they made their case: “no king but King Jesus.” It shows up in sermons and writings from the era, a phrase colonists used to explain what they were actually fighting for. They weren’t just fighting to answer to no one. They were fighting to answer to only one.
That distinction changes everything about how we should think about freedom.
FREEDOM FOR SOMETHING, NOT FROM EVERYTHING
We tend to think of freedom as the absence of restriction. No rules, no authority, no one telling you what to do. That is not what the founders were after, and it’s not what scripture means by freedom either.
The founders didn’t throw off a king so they could have no king. They threw off a bad king so they could govern themselves under a better authority, ultimately under God. Independence from England was never the end goal. It was the means to a greater end: the freedom to worship, work, and live without a government standing between a man and his God.
That’s worth celebrating as we mark 250 years of independence. The freedom we celebrate on the Fourth was never supposed to be freedom for its own sake. It was freedom so we could willingly choose to answer to someone higher.
SLAVES TO SIN OR SLAVES TO RIGHTEOUSNESS
Scripture is blunt about this. Every man serves something. The question was never whether you’d be a slave. The question is who owns you.
Paul lays it out plainly in Romans 6:16-18. You were a slave to sin. Sin paid you in shame, addiction, anxiety, and a hollowed-out life. But when Christ set you free from that, He didn’t set you free to be your own master. He set you free to become a slave of righteousness.
That word should stop you. Slave. Not customer. Not fan. Not a guy who checks in on Sundays. A slave has one owner and one will to obey. Paul uses that word on purpose. He wants you to feel the weight of what it means to belong to Christ completely.
Here’s the part our culture cannot make sense of: that kind of slavery is freedom. Real freedom. Because the alternative was never true independence. It was a different master, one that used you and left you empty. Sin never sets you free. It promises freedom from a “tyrannical” God but only delivers deeper slavery to itself. So if you are a slave, the question is: “Who is your master?”
SLAVE IN POSTURE, SON IN STANDING
But Christ doesn’t stop there. That’s not where the story ends.
Paul writes in Galatians 4:4-7 that God sent His Son to redeem those under the law, so that we would receive adoption as sons. Not servants. Sons. Heirs of everything that belongs to the Father.
Here’s the tension worth living in: you serve like a slave, but you stand like a son. Your posture toward Christ is total surrender, total obedience, total submission. But your position before the Father is inheritance. You’re not working to earn a place in the family. You already have one. You obey out of sonship, not for it.
That’s a completely different kind of dependence than what most men are used to. It’s not the dependence of a man who has no other options. It’s the dependence of a son who trusts his Father enough to surrender complete control to Him.
THE LIBERTY THAT COMES FROM SUBMISSION
This is where America’s story and the gospel actually connect. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 3:17 that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Not liberty to do whatever you want. Liberty that comes from being under the right authority.
Most of the founders understood, at least in part, that self-governance apart from God isn’t actually freedom. It’s chaos waiting to happen. That’s why so many of them tied their independence to their dependence on God from the very beginning. They wanted a nation free enough to worship, not a nation free from worship altogether.
This time of year you’ll see fireworks, flags, and cookouts everywhere you look. All good things. But don’t let the celebration stop at gratitude for political freedom. Let it go deeper. The freedom to worship at all is worth celebrating. But the greater freedom is the one Christ already purchased for you, the freedom to stop being a slave to sin and become both a slave and a son to the King who actually deserves your allegiance.
America declared independence from a king who didn’t have the right to rule over her. You are called to declare dependence on the King who does.
CHALLENGE
Do something a little different this year. Sit down and write your own “Declaration of Dependence.” Not a list of complaints or grievances like the original. A short, honest statement of who you’re surrendering to and why.
Write down what you’re done being enslaved to. Sin, approval, comfort, control, whatever it is. Then name the King you’re choosing instead. Keep it short. A few lines is enough.
Let this 250th anniversary be the moment you stop confusing independence with freedom, and start living like a son who serves his Father on purpose.
PRAY
Father, thank You for the freedom to worship You without fear. I confess I’ve often chased independence instead of embracing dependence on You. Break whatever I’m still enslaved to that isn’t You. Remind me that surrendering to You isn’t losing my freedom, it’s finding it. Let me live this week like the son You’ve made me to be: obedient like a servant, secure like an heir. Amen.
If today’s post stirred something in you, that’s exactly what The Forge Summer Challenge is built for. Eleven weeks of practical, faith-anchored action to help you move from independence to real dependence on God. Free and paid tiers available, with a private group and biweekly calls for those who want to go deeper.
Check out the archive of our latest blogs to find the Summer Challenge posts and get caught up.
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