Freedom and Discipline
(All passages in italics are taken from the first chapter of Erwin McManus’ Uprising)
Several years ago I was mesmerized by the amazing talent of a classical pianist named Chris Crossan. After playing a wide spectrum of music, spanning from Beethoven to Bach to the Beatles, he invited an admiring student to come up and play. The student seemed a bit off balance by the invitation. It wasn’t that he was timid before audiences; it was that he didn’t know how to play the piano. But Chris insisted, almost as if missing the most important part of the information. Chris kept emphasizing he was free to play anything he wanted. Again the student, in a somewhat embarrassed manner, explained that he didn’t know how to play the piano. And then Chris pressed his point.
Although the student had the opportunity, he really didn’t have the freedom. Opportunity and freedom are not the same thing. Chris’s freedom to play the full spectrum of music, to passionately express the music within his soul, was only available to him as a result of years and years of discipline.
If you would ask the average person for a definition of freedom, my guess is you would get something along the lines of “the absence of restriction.” Today, freedom means “I can do what I want or who I want when I want to do it, and you can’t do a thing to stop me.” Therefore, “the Ten Commandments become symbols of religious oppression, and so as free people we can now, without apprehension, live beyond these archaic restraints.”
But what is the end result of exercising these “freedoms”? Dissatisfaction. Depression. Discontentment. When that which is easily attainable is attained, it has lost all value. We have exercised our “freedom” in seeking that which we selfishly desire, but in the end we only become slaves to our own lusts.
In Psalm 119:32 David declares, “I run in the path of your commands, for You have set me heart free.”
Does this verse seem counterintuitive to you? It did to me. Wouldn’t it make more sense if it said “I run in the path of your commands because You said I have to.” I feel like I often falter here. I sometimes attempt to do what God commands because I genuinely want to make Him happy, but I do it begrudgingly. If I truly had my way, I would take advantage of my “freedom” and live as the world lives.
But no!! If I’m thinking this way I am completely missing the point.
It’s true; we mustn’t forget that God gave us the Law because the violation of it is an utter violation of His Character. A single misstep is a vile affront to His Holiness.
But we also mustn’t think that these commandments are the arbitrary fancies of a killjoy! “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. (Psalms 19:7)”
I think that as a church we do a pretty good job remembering that “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. (Galatians 5:24)” But we stop there. We fall into cycles of sin management. We think of the work of the Cross as solely a substitution: Christ taking our sins away from us. Consequentially, our faith becomes merely the process of taking away the bad, to try and make ourselves better people. But to what end? We have just reduced the Law of God to a list of DO NOT’s.
Often we forget that the work of Christ on the Cross is not only the substitutionary atonement of sins, but that it allowed us to receive His Spirit, birthing within us His very character. It is a subtraction AND an addition.
“A new heart I will give you, and a new Spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. (Ezekiel 36: 26-27)”
It is because God has put His Spirit within us that we are able to “walk in His statutes” and “run in the path of His commands”. We are set free from our sinful desires and our desires begin to conform to God Almighty’s. This is the “freedom that only God can give, where we once again become like Him. It is here and only here that freedom exists without boundaries. You are free to love without limit, to forgive, to be merciful, to be generous, to be compassionate, to sacrifice, to enjoy, and to live.”
Remember, Jesus tells us “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” Is adherence to these laws “legalism”? If this is the case Jesus was the most legalistic person in history!
But no, He proclaims: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. (Matthew 5:17-19)”
Psalm 37:4 tells us, “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” “When you make God your primary passion, He transforms all the passions of your heart. The result of this transformation is that it will be God’s pleasure to fulfill those passions.” But does that mean this transformation is easy? Of course not. Scripture lays out several disciplines that we can work into our lives to better conform to the Image of Christ, such as prayer, fasting, reading the Scriptures, and witnessing. I’ve never been able to fully integrate these into my daily life, because honestly, I haven’t really tried. But it’s OK, right? I don’t want to be legalistic.
I shudder when I look at the utter lack of discipline I have allowed to fester in my bones with the excuse “I don’t want to be legalistic”. If I’m honest with myself I have to say that Sloth has become my greatest vice. Freedom in Christ is not freedom to let our souls atrophy and become apathetic. “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1)”
We cannot truly accomplish the wildest desire of the Heart of God until we have allowed Christ to refine our hearts, by the excruciating process of stripping away our sinful desires and growing in us His very character. This is not an overnight procedure. God has laid out a strenuous workout regiment for us to beat the sin out of our bodies and He does not offer us any kind of “spiritual liposuction”. Our Father has called us to compose a masterpiece with our lives; we will always fail if we leave our instrument to rot in the closet.
It is time to think of freedom as a proactive measure. In a very true sense, it is only through discipline that we can achieve freedom.
This isn’t legalism. This is worship.
Several years ago I was mesmerized by the amazing talent of a classical pianist named Chris Crossan. After playing a wide spectrum of music, spanning from Beethoven to Bach to the Beatles, he invited an admiring student to come up and play. The student seemed a bit off balance by the invitation. It wasn’t that he was timid before audiences; it was that he didn’t know how to play the piano. But Chris insisted, almost as if missing the most important part of the information. Chris kept emphasizing he was free to play anything he wanted. Again the student, in a somewhat embarrassed manner, explained that he didn’t know how to play the piano. And then Chris pressed his point.
Although the student had the opportunity, he really didn’t have the freedom. Opportunity and freedom are not the same thing. Chris’s freedom to play the full spectrum of music, to passionately express the music within his soul, was only available to him as a result of years and years of discipline.
If you would ask the average person for a definition of freedom, my guess is you would get something along the lines of “the absence of restriction.” Today, freedom means “I can do what I want or who I want when I want to do it, and you can’t do a thing to stop me.” Therefore, “the Ten Commandments become symbols of religious oppression, and so as free people we can now, without apprehension, live beyond these archaic restraints.”
But what is the end result of exercising these “freedoms”? Dissatisfaction. Depression. Discontentment. When that which is easily attainable is attained, it has lost all value. We have exercised our “freedom” in seeking that which we selfishly desire, but in the end we only become slaves to our own lusts.
In Psalm 119:32 David declares, “I run in the path of your commands, for You have set me heart free.”
Does this verse seem counterintuitive to you? It did to me. Wouldn’t it make more sense if it said “I run in the path of your commands because You said I have to.” I feel like I often falter here. I sometimes attempt to do what God commands because I genuinely want to make Him happy, but I do it begrudgingly. If I truly had my way, I would take advantage of my “freedom” and live as the world lives.
But no!! If I’m thinking this way I am completely missing the point.
It’s true; we mustn’t forget that God gave us the Law because the violation of it is an utter violation of His Character. A single misstep is a vile affront to His Holiness.
But we also mustn’t think that these commandments are the arbitrary fancies of a killjoy! “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. (Psalms 19:7)”
I think that as a church we do a pretty good job remembering that “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. (Galatians 5:24)” But we stop there. We fall into cycles of sin management. We think of the work of the Cross as solely a substitution: Christ taking our sins away from us. Consequentially, our faith becomes merely the process of taking away the bad, to try and make ourselves better people. But to what end? We have just reduced the Law of God to a list of DO NOT’s.
Often we forget that the work of Christ on the Cross is not only the substitutionary atonement of sins, but that it allowed us to receive His Spirit, birthing within us His very character. It is a subtraction AND an addition.
“A new heart I will give you, and a new Spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. (Ezekiel 36: 26-27)”
It is because God has put His Spirit within us that we are able to “walk in His statutes” and “run in the path of His commands”. We are set free from our sinful desires and our desires begin to conform to God Almighty’s. This is the “freedom that only God can give, where we once again become like Him. It is here and only here that freedom exists without boundaries. You are free to love without limit, to forgive, to be merciful, to be generous, to be compassionate, to sacrifice, to enjoy, and to live.”
Remember, Jesus tells us “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” Is adherence to these laws “legalism”? If this is the case Jesus was the most legalistic person in history!
But no, He proclaims: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. (Matthew 5:17-19)”
Psalm 37:4 tells us, “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” “When you make God your primary passion, He transforms all the passions of your heart. The result of this transformation is that it will be God’s pleasure to fulfill those passions.” But does that mean this transformation is easy? Of course not. Scripture lays out several disciplines that we can work into our lives to better conform to the Image of Christ, such as prayer, fasting, reading the Scriptures, and witnessing. I’ve never been able to fully integrate these into my daily life, because honestly, I haven’t really tried. But it’s OK, right? I don’t want to be legalistic.
I shudder when I look at the utter lack of discipline I have allowed to fester in my bones with the excuse “I don’t want to be legalistic”. If I’m honest with myself I have to say that Sloth has become my greatest vice. Freedom in Christ is not freedom to let our souls atrophy and become apathetic. “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1)”
We cannot truly accomplish the wildest desire of the Heart of God until we have allowed Christ to refine our hearts, by the excruciating process of stripping away our sinful desires and growing in us His very character. This is not an overnight procedure. God has laid out a strenuous workout regiment for us to beat the sin out of our bodies and He does not offer us any kind of “spiritual liposuction”. Our Father has called us to compose a masterpiece with our lives; we will always fail if we leave our instrument to rot in the closet.
It is time to think of freedom as a proactive measure. In a very true sense, it is only through discipline that we can achieve freedom.
This isn’t legalism. This is worship.
posted by hoose at 3:53 PM
3 Comments:
great thinking man. obedience and discipline is freedom - right on. similar to what my dad once told me, "Many people ask me, 'is it safe??' I tell them, 'obedience is safe'". I've never forgot that.
hope you're doing well.
steve - i'm leaving this comment because i made a blogspot just because you have one...and because xanga isn't all that fun anymore.
"This isn't legalism. This is worship."
Man, you've got some absolutely GOLDEN nuggets in here. I really enjoyed it!
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