Freedom is in the Eye of the Beholder

 

The devil has tempted God's offspring to question the goodness of God from the beginning of time. The whole deception Satan used against Eve in the Garden of Eden was that God only forbade them from eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil because God was trying to keep them down, to rob them of some knowledge or wisdom that was good to have. He painted God as being an insecure tyrant who didn't want Adam and Even to become His equal by having such knowledge. He also called God a liar, when he disputed the statement where God said they would die in the day they ate of the fruit. He promised them freedom even as he was seeking to bring them into bondage. That bondage was soon known and felt by the two hapless innocents who called paradise their home. Where they had been free to wander about unclothed without shame, they soon knew their nakedness and became enslaved to shame. This then led to them hiding from God, showing they were now slaves to guilt and fear. As God pronounced the curse that sin brought, they discovered they would be slaves to hard toil, hard childbirth, and many other curses. They had to know at last what fools they were to believe the serpent's message of freedom. They didn't know how good they had it. It's true what they say, sometimes you don't know what you got till it's gone.

    Here's something that may sound familiar in a backwards sort of way. The way to life for Adam and Eve was broad and wide. The path to destruction was very narrow and difficult. Why? Because they were free to eat from any tree in that whole vast garden, except the one. Their life was easy. Most every way they turned meant only more pleasure. Complete freedom. They knew God and had their life sustained forever in Him. NOTHING was required of them. Except believing God. They weren't even under His wrath. They had no need of repentance, or of dying to sin ,or of fighting the temptations and hostility of a corrupt world system that was against God. No fighting with a sin nature. But there was a path to destruction and it was narrow and difficult. One lousy tree off limits. Seems it would be pretty hard to mess up the good thing they had going. A slim, narrow chance of blowing it. But they managed to. A difficult thing to pull off you might say, based on the odds of success seemingly stacked in their favor. But such was the power of deception over them.

    This whole thing played out in such a way as to prove Satan a liar. First, if God were really the tyrant the devil claimed He was, He would have never allowed the temptation and the sin in the first place. If He were really so insecure, the choice would never have been there to eat of the tree. He did not desire puppets, and still doesn't. He knew He would send Jesus to the cross even way back before this all played out. Adam and Eve did not believe God's love for them, even when they were His friends. Once they were banished from the garden, He left clues that the door back in would be re-opened someday. He left the tree of life there. The way out was centrally related to the way back in. Both trees, it is written, were put in the middle of the garden. They were not so far from each other physically. The one was partaken of through unbelief in the goodness of God. The other is partaken of in the opposite way, through faith in Christ, the very representation of the love and goodness of God. God did something so incredible. We became enemies of God that day, through taking into our innermost being the sin nature, which is opposed to God in every way, through our heredity from our first father Adam. We, as a race, gave rule of our lives to Satan that day. But God, willing to show His goodness to the children of Adam once again, sent His only begotten Son to die for us, to bring us back to Him. To all who are over-comers of this present world, this God-hating kingdom, through faith in Jesus Christ, He now gives the right to eat of the tree of life. Jesus said the way back is difficult and narrow. Why? Because the way out was. The way back is difficult because when you love and trust God in a world that doesn't, you get your share of trouble. Narrow, because Jesus said He is the way, the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father except through Him.

Faith is not easy. Why? Because it often contradicts what you see with your eyes and hear with your ears. Freedom, to the natural eye, is not withholding from my-self what pleasures this world has to offer; no one telling me who to be or how to act; freedom to be self serving, to see what knowledge I can gain, to write my own rules. To believe in God, or not to. To believe about God what I think He is like. Even so far as to believe I am good enough to please God, because I know right from wrong, and I do my best to do what is right. Yes, the freedom to feel like I will live forever in heaven because I do some good deeds. I have the freedom to think that I know every bit as much as God. This is all deception at its finest, believed by Adam and Eve and all who came after them.

Will we go with the flow? Or have faith in the goodness of God, the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Will we see obedience to the Gospel as bondage? Or can we see the freedom God has provided in being His friend through Christ and the rebirth of our nature, one that was His enemy, but now loves Him? Jesus said whoever sins is the slave of sin. Some don't see it that way. They see sin as freedom. Those not born again cannot see the Kingdom of God. Freedom is in the eye of the beholder.

Jesus said that whom the Son sets free is free indeed. Do you fear bondage from God? Taste and see that He is good. You'll become bound to forgiveness from your sin, and a clean conscience, bound to friendship with God for eternity, and bound to walking with Jesus Christ, the one who loved you and gave Himself for you. Do you feel like messages of hell and condemnation in a lake of fire have been spoken for God to threaten you into coming to Him? These things are real. But hell is not simply the lesser of two evils, a worse alternative to being a slave to boring, kill-joy religion. It is simply the natural outcome for those who won't believe the goodness of God, and come to Him for salvation from the wrath to come. God is not wishing you to perish. He has given you opportunity for true freedom.