Ripe for Harvest

122 • R IPE FOR H ARVEST

Christian life, its lack of meaning, its failure to make much impact on society. Works of love and service may be multiplied, justice may be demonstrated, and faith may be expressed, but none of this is worth anything without freedom.

~ Jacques Ellul. The Ethics of Freedom . Translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976. pp. 104-105.

Freedom “From”

I. Live Free: Running Out of Egypt’s Tyranny – What We Are Free in Christ FROM: Asceticism, Judgmentalism, Legalism, Traditionalism, and Ethnocentrism

Gal. 5.1 (ESV) – For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

1 Pet. 2.16 (ESV) – Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God.

Through the New Covenant in Christ’s blood, we now approach God and sustain our relationship with Him by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, and are set free from seeking to establish a righteousness or relationship with the Father on our own. A. We’ve been set free from Asceticism : depending on personal discipline, devotional sacrifice, and denial of my body in to order to create and sustain a relationship with God.

1. The principle: No amount of devotional discipline or denial of the body will make us acceptable to God on our own.

Col. 2.20-23 (ESV) – If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations – “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used) – according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.

Context Values/Vision Prepare Launch Assemble Nurture Transition Schedule/Charter