Day 23

What Rises — The Freedom of the Crucified

Today's Scripture: Galatians 5:1 (NLT)

We have spent many days now in the territory of dying. The cross is heavy. The work is real. But the gospel will not let us linger forever in the grave. The cross, in the economy of God, always leads to the empty tomb, and the dying of the believer always leads, in time, to risings. As we now turn the corner into the final week of this month, we must lift our eyes and see what is on the other side of all this descent. What rises in the soul that has been learning, day by day, the work of crucifixion?

The first thing that rises is freedom. Not freedom as the world defines it — the freedom to do whatever you want, to follow every appetite, to chase every impulse. That is not freedom; that is slavery dressed up as autonomy. The man who must obey every desire that rises within him is not free; he is ruled by the loudest voice in his chest at any given moment. The world calls this freedom, and the world is wrong. True freedom — the freedom Paul writes about in Galatians 5 — is the freedom to choose what is right, without being dragged by what is loud. It is the freedom of a soul that is no longer at the mercy of its own demands. And this freedom is one of the first and clearest fruits of the crucified life.

Think about what is happening beneath the surface, in the soul that is faithfully walking the road of death to self. The tyrant of self-will is being dethroned. The slave-driver of self-preservation is losing its whip. The deep undertow of self-pity is being pulled out of the soul. The endless court case of the right to be right is being dismissed. And in the place of all this loud, demanding inner machinery, a quiet is beginning to grow. The believer is no longer driven. The believer is led. There is a difference between being driven and being led, and the difference is freedom.

A driven soul cannot rest. It cannot sit still in a room. It cannot stop the inner monologue. It is always being prodded by something — anxiety, ambition, fear, the next thing that must be checked, the next worry that must be entertained, the next demand of the flesh that must be satisfied. A led soul, by contrast, walks. It moves at the pace of the Shepherd. It has space inside itself. It has rooms where the noise no longer reaches. It can choose its response rather than reacting to every impulse. This is freedom — and it is the inheritance of the crucified.

Paul gives us the warning in the second half of the verse: "be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." The word again is important. He is writing to people who used to be slaves and have been set free, and who are in danger of voluntarily walking back into the slave-quarters. This is the great danger of the freedom that the cross produces: it can be lost. Not in the sense that salvation can be lost. But in the sense that the experiential freedom of the saved soul can be re-traded for a return to old patterns. We can let the dethroned tyrants of self climb back onto their thrones. We can let the dismissed court case of resentment be reopened. We can let the surrendered ambition take back its grip. And the soul that does this finds itself, mysteriously, less free than it was, even though the gospel has not changed and the cross has not changed.

So Paul says: stand fast. Stay in the freedom. Do not voluntarily re-enter the bondage. The cross has done its work; do not undo it by reaching back into the cell that has already been unlocked.

What does this freedom feel like in the practical experience of a believer? It feels like the capacity to be misunderstood and not collapse. It feels like the capacity to be overlooked and not grieve. It feels like the capacity to be wronged and not require the wrong to be acknowledged. It feels like the capacity to lose a thing and not feel that the soul has been lost with it. It feels like the capacity to sit in silence with God and not be driven by the noise. It feels like the capacity to love people who cannot love you back. It feels like the capacity to die and not be afraid of the dying.

This is what rises in the soul of the crucified believer. Not all at once. Not in the same measure in every season. But, mile by mile, year by year, the freedom grows. And the believer who walks this road faithfully discovers, somewhere along the way, that they are freer than they were when they had everything they once thought they wanted, because the freedom of a soul that does not have to be ruled by itself is the only freedom worth having.

Stand fast in it. Christ has set you free. Do not put the yoke back on.

Prayer

Father, I thank You that the cross was never meant to leave me bound but to set me free. Where I have voluntarily walked back into bondages You set me free from, lead me out again. Let the freedom of the crucified life grow in me — the freedom of a soul that is no longer at the mercy of its own loud demands. Stand me fast, Lord, in the liberty Christ purchased. Amen.

Today's Challenge

Notice, today, one place where you would normally have been driven — by anxiety, by ambition, by the need to react. In that moment, pause and remind yourself: "I am free. Christ has set me free. I do not have to obey this driver." Choose the led step over the driven one.

"The crucified soul is the only truly free one, because it is the only one no longer ruled by itself."