Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?
Romans 6:16 ESV
Free will… there really isn’t anything free about it…
We were created to serve… not as self-governing individuals who determine their own path in life…
We are either slaves to sin… the world… our self… the enemy…
OR…
We are slaves to Righteousness… God… Father… Son… Holy Spirit…
But there’s free will…!
I’ve heard the argument of late about free will making it possible for us to reject God… the self unable to do what God asks…
The will to succumb to fear… greater than the will to obey God…
I can’t… I can’t do it… !
But if one knew… they were making a choice of who to serve… sin and death…? God and life…? wouldn’t one recognize they were not free…? but enslaved…?
In Jesus… Oh… we are set free from both sin and death…
Yet in this “both and” world… in the Year of the Lord’s favor… where Satan is still the prince of the world… and God has defeated Him on the cross… we battle to see our freedom is only found… in serving the One who made the Way of life…
Evil begins, in a universe where all was good, from free will, which was permitted because it makes possible the greatest good of all. The corruption of the first sinner consists not in choosing some evil thing (there are no evil things for him to choose) but in preferring a lesser good (himself) before a greater (God). The Fall is, in fact, Pride. The possibility of this wrong preference is inherent in the v. fact of having, or being, a self at all. But though freedom is real it is not infinite. Every choice reduces a little one’s freedom to choose the next time. There therefore comes a time when the creature is fully built, irrevocably attached either to God or to itself. This irrevocableness is what we call Heaven or Hell.
–CS Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume II Compiled in Words to Live By
We are not free people…
We either serve death… or life…
Choose today… who you will serve…
[Photo by Vladislav Babienko on Unsplash]
But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. … For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. … But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:17-18, 20, 22-23 ESV
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