Ripe for Harvest

S ESSION 2: P REPARE • 121

Freedom in Christ Dr. Don Davis • See www.tumi.org/churchplanting

Freedom is not one element in the Christian life. It is not one of its forms. It does not express itself accidentally, or according to circum stances, or through encounters. In some circumstances temperance is the work of faith, in others faithfulness, in others strict justice, in others extreme clemency. Freedom, however, is not like this. It is not a part or a fragmentary expression of the Christian life. It is the Christian life. Freedom lies outside the list of virtues. It is not one of the fruits of the Spirit. It is the pedestal on which all the rest can be set. It is the climate in which all things develop and grow. It is the signification of all acts. It is their orientation. It is the condition of the rest of the Christian life. Freedom is not, then, one of the elements in Christian ethics or morals. Without it there would be no ethics. The Christian life is set within it. Again freedom is not an attitude that we can put on or put off as we please. We are so accustomed not to bring freedom into our Christian thinking that it does not occur to us that it is the situation on which everything depends. We are ready to accuse ourselves of not being just or loving. But we hardly ever dream of questioning our lack of freedom or asking whether we are expressing it in the totality of our lives. If we are theologians, we may well argue that this situation is made for us. We are free because we have been freed. Freedom has been acquired. It has been given. We have become free. There can be no altering this. It has become more or less a constitutive element in my life and nature. Why, then, should I worry? It is part of the new nature with which I have been invested. I cannot lose it since it is secured to me by grace. . . . . . . Now this message finds so little place in the teaching of the church that we never find even the slightest reference to it in our catechisms, nor is there any investigation of Christian life on the basis of freedom. Manuals of ethics either ignore freedom, or tentatively place it among the virtues, as Paul does not do, or find a place for it in the description of human nature. Freedom is nowhere presented as a global situation which ought to find expression in each of our acts. Perhaps this is something which is taken for granted. But the question of the visible and concrete manifestation of freedom is never taken as a starting point. . . . It is a theme which has vanished from the Christian horizon. The believer is not concerned about knowing whether he is free nor is he worried in the least about ways of manifesting his freedom. In my view this is the very thing that explains the insipidity of the

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