Being Forgiven = Being Free
September 18, 2013 1 Comment
“So now anyone who is in Christ Jesus is not judged guilty. That is because in Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit that brings life made you free. It made you free from the law that brings sin and death.” Romans 8:1, 2 ERV
“Free- able to act will; not hampered; not under compulsion or restraint”
I struggled with this idea that when we become a follower of Christ, we are being set free. What does it mean to be free? Is it really true that we are set free? Is it really true that we don’t become slave of our sins once we become a true Christian? What is sin? Who originally named it as a sin? I don’t believe in Christianity or God, am I a sinner?
People sometimes does not want to be around with Christian believers because they see hypocrisy or double standards. We confess that we read and study the Bible and do what it says but 90% of the time, we crosses the line of morality in our speech, actions, thoughts and feelings. It seems that the cycle of good and evil is there 24/7. We sin/make horrible/do or say harmful things and then at the end of the day we ask for forgiveness and try to cleanse ourselves from our bad act. It is a cycle and it always comes at the most convenient time when we thought that we are strong spiritually and have gone through all the measures to become a true believer.
The question now is why aren’t we free?
The Bible declared clearly “free from the law that brings sin and death.” Romans 8:1, 2 ERV
Why am I in the cycle of sinning and feeling guilt and condemnation?
Many Bible scholars and preachers tried to explain this dilemma of guilt. At times, I grasped/understood what they tried to convey but after a few months or years, the feeling of condemnation comes back. It puzzled me and even up to now I’m still cooking the idea that being free is not really being free.
Yesterday, a friend of mine wanted to ride bikes with me (we did >30 miles) He has been talking about riding together one day and I kept distancing myself from this guy because he does not believe in God at all and he has no problem/hesitation explaining to me why there is no God. His background is Jewish but then as he grew up, he rebelled against his parents’ beliefs and went on to his solidly grounded belief that there is no God. 4 years ago, he was suffering from an undiagnosed back pain in which doctors have him only in pain medication to relieve him from the dreadful pain. The pain subsided when he took his medication but gave him a side effect of an unstable mind. He told me yesterday that one time he contemplated of taking 100 pills to finish everything. Obviously, he came to his senses and moved on. A year ago, a very smart doctor in Austin figured out his real problem and gave him a new hip – he had a hip replacement. We rode 30 miles together and I can’t believe what I was witnessing. This guy was in pain a few years ago and could not even move an inch without pain and here we are 3 hours later riding our bikes as if nothing happened. After the ride, he brought me to his house and had a cup of Americano coffee from his very expensive coffee maker. Over a cup of coffee, I’ve learned a lot about him and I am becoming interested of how this guys life would end up in the future. The funny thing is his house is only 5 minutes away from Celebration Church where I attend every week. As I was about to end our conversation, I told him that he had been set free from pain. He looked at me and smiled, yes, I am pain free.
I still have to pedal at least 10 miles to get back home and on my way back, I was just thinking out loud about how this guy can ever see or believe God that during his pain and suffering, God’s presence was not there. And to make it more difficult on his faith, how can he believe that there is God that through his hardships, he made it through without even an ounce of faith.
I am not the type of person that sells Christianity to people. You will notice that I am a believer because you can see me as a different/unnatural person. In here, I talked more about my faith because many of you does not really know me. I know that many of you are coming back every day as I see in my stats. My purpose in life is to show people what God had done for me and maybe by writing it here for people like you who are strangers can make a tiny difference. No, my new cycling friend will just have to get more cycling miles with me before I can open my mouth and convince him about God. One day…
Honestly, like my unbelieving cycling friend, most of you are not really fully convinced about the presence and existence of God. I don’t have answers on how to convince my friend/ or you that God truly exists. Knowing God takes time, it is a process. Look back to your past and connect timelines and see if you can find connections between you and God.
Start a journey to explore God. Once you know Him, you can truly know the true meaning of freedom which is being truly forgiven.
See it at YouVersion.com:
We should not have a sin- centered mentality. Christ wants us to focus our attention on the positive aspects of the Christian existence. Still, we should not minimize the existence of sin and the part each of us has contributed to the sinfulness of the world. Every age has been hauntered by sin’s presence, our being no exception. To be realistic then, each of us must be properly conscious of sin, of our own sinfulness, of the fact that sin constitutes one of the major obstacles to the proper growth of the Christian life.
Regarding your new cycling friend, i have no doubt that God puts him beside you to bring him back to Him. Your living faith in Christ can transform a man’s life. Your deep desire to help develop this faith in those already possessing it, and to aid in giving it to those not yet blessed with faith in Christ is a sublime cause. From your personal experienced, you can convinced and promote faith in others to a great extent by the way you, yourself live it out. ” The written and preached word however, is intended to be incarnated in human beings. The word will have its most powerful effect when it appears in another person who embodies the Gospel in his life “.
Good luck and Coraggio !!!