By Pastor Tedd Mathis

December 2023

It is true I am ‘free’ to drop to all fours and declare myself a pinball machine. I am free to decree God is an aspen tree. I am free to say all kinds of things, commit all kinds of acts, good and/or bad.

But what I am not free to do is be a pinball machine. I am not free to actually make an aspen tree the Eternal Divine Being. Further, I am not in a state of liberty to will myself to be nonhuman, to be non-created, to be non-dependent on God’s universe to sustain me. I am free to decree my will is free, but I am not free to liberate myself from having a will, or having desires that inform my will.

According to the Scriptures, it is far more accurate to consider my will as in bondage than being free (John 8:34).

+ I am bound in my being a descendant of sinful Adam (Romans 5:12).

+ My will is bound to my desires. I will choose according to my strongest desire, and as I make free choices, I will do what I want to do (Mark 7:14-23).

But that’s the problem – my ‘wants’ (my desires and thoughts are an unholy, defiled, contradictory jumble (Mark 7:14-23; Romans 1:18-32; 3:9-18; John 3:19). Even if I do not physically act on my sinful desires, my desires and thoughts condemn me as the sinner I am (Matthew 5:28; Gen. 6:5; Deut. 5:2/Heb. 4:12. Left to myself, I can never truly be holy as God is holy – which is the standard for all image bearers of God.

But God …

According to His great mercy God brings many sinners to see their helpless state of bondage. And in grace He does not leave them there (Ephesians 2:1-10). With this Spirit-wrought sense of their own defiled nature and the impossibility of changing it, the sinner finds his refuge outside himself and only in the holy Christ – He who knew no sin (II Cor. 5:21).

Salvation is through faith alone in Christ alone. Forgiveness and right standing are provided as a gift from God. Those who receive this gift of Jesus Christ from God will see It as absolutely necessary and Christ and His Gospel will become the power that informs and instructs their wills. God’s grace will shape and guide what they think, say and do in ways that please God (Ephesians 2:1-10; Titus 2:11-14; Colossians 3:1-17; Romans 7:24-8:17).

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“Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!…”

 – Romans 7:24,25

“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”

– Galatians 2:20