No One Could Know

This Independence Day is markedly different than any other I’ve ever celebrated before.

As a child, the holiday was enormously meaningful to me — patriotism was inspired in me at a young age. After all, our nation has an enormous legacy founded on liberty.

Childhood memories are laced with images of an American flag waving proudly outside my grandmother’s house and deep respect was given to those in the military. I was in fifth grade in 1976 when our nation’s 200th birthday was celebrated with grand hoopla and it compounded my patriotism. The songs learned for that year’s school production still ring in my heart.

The words “liberty” and “freedom” so often mentioned in our nation’s founding documents and anthems take prominence in describing our nation’s history, its people and our mission. But when I was 19 and decided to walk closer with God by reading the Bible, I saw more clearly why our forefathers made the decisions they did in contending for freedom from tyranny and religious oppression.

We see in 2 Corinthians 3:17 that “Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.”  That “liberty” is also defined in the Greek as having  “free access into God’s presence.”

What a remarkable concept liberty is!

When Jesus publicly proclaimed his identity as being of heavenly origin, he quoted Isaiah 61:1 which states, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek, he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.”

Other times in the Bible, liberty is mentioned in connection with the Year of Jubilee when slaves go free and debts are paid in full. That’s what Jesus Christ has done for us and it is what our nation’s founders intended for our nation.

Here we are celebrating America’s 239th birthday and our liberties are dramatically different. Mothers have legal liberty to kill the children inside their very wombs — and in some states, they can do so even while only a portion of their babies’ bodies are still inside; dopers can legally get high, sodomites and pornographers are free to do as they please and even our nation’s southern boundary with Mexico has been removed.

The America I fell in love with will never be the same.

Boundaries, indeed, have dramatically shifted. Boundaries are now, more than ever, being drawn around those who defend the principles God established in His Word.

But whatever side of the political and social fences a person is on and no matter what laws are drafted or changed in our country, one liberty will remain: “Whom the Son has set free is free indeed.”

Whatever chains, addictions or restraints have kept people from true liberty, Christ has made us free by opening the door for us to come boldly to the throne of grace to obtain mercy and grace in time of need.

You see, the Bible even states that sin is fun, but it adds that sin is fun only for a season.  Drugs, sexual deviance and murder are sin, but in the same Romans chapter one list where God tells us that, He also states that sex outside of marriage is sin … and so is greed. So are covetousness, spite, envy, murder, DEBATE, deceit, gossip, backbiting, arrogance, boasting and disobedience to parents.

He adds that covenant breakers are in sin and so are those who are unmerciful. In fact, verse 32 tells us that “Who knowing the judgment of God, they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.”

That’s heavy.

We ALL are in need of Christ, and would be better off to understand the fullness of what He did for WHOEVER would call on His name to be saved.

The Bible also tells us, “There is none righteous, no not one,”– but thank God, “WE ARE THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD IN CHRIST.” The only way any of us can hold a candle to being right in our ways is when we choose to yield our ways to His.

Many think God wants to take away all our fun. On the contrary — He sees that the end result of our “fun” is death, disease and destruction. Satan brings temptation and sugar coats his twisted traps, otherwise we’d never fall for his tricks. Thankfully, Jesus Christ came to set us free and to give us HIS PEACE and HIS KIND OF LOVE which never fade out or come to an end. His love is not conditional and it’s always available. All we have to do is ask — we don’t even have to clean ourselves up first. He did that for us already on the Cross. Jesus’s blood washes us from all our sin, no matter how beige, gray or black it may appear, it’s sin.

“Come now, let us reason together,” Says the Lord , “Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool.” – Isaiah 1:18

The intensity of what Christ experienced on the cross is a reflection of the intensity of our freedom! His dramatic work of paying the price of our sin is even greater than the dramatic way in which America obtained its glorious freedom to become the greatest nation on planet earth.

So as I reflect on the depth of meaning behind today’s celebration, I stand in awe of what our freedom in Christ truly means. I’ll sing even more humbly this year and reflect on this verse of our national anthem:

O, thus be it ever when free men shall stand,
Between their lov’d homes and the war’s desolation;
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land
Praise the Pow’r that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

I pray that during this Independence holiday you find true freedom — liberty — in Christ.

“The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.”

Isaiah 40:8