RESURRECTION FREEDOM
By Harmony Grant
5 Apr 07
Passover arrives each year with the sunlit blossoms of spring, cleansed
by rain. Jews in Israel mark out seven days, abstaining from work
on the first and last. They eat unleavened bread and bitter herbs
in memory of the hurried escape from Egypt. The Hebrews’ exodus
from this land of slavery is a giant metaphor for a more personal
flight: the liberation from sin that we each need more than anything
else.
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground is a classic description
of the human problem: We want to rebel. Russian rationalists said
humans act in their own best interest, but the great writer disagreed.
His story portrays a man driven by the need to assert himself, even
destructively, for the perverse sake of Ego. Dostoevsky understood
people well. We were created in the image of God, the great “I
am.” >From childhood, we want to assert ourselves and say, “I come first.” From this basic drive come the wars of the world,
the injustice, and the spiritual poverty of our lives. Sin is the
decision to act on our primal, I-come-first impulse.
When they asked, “What is our sin?” God said to the
Hebrews, “You too have done evil, even more than your forefathers;
for behold, each one walking according to the stubbornness of his
own evil heart, without listening to Me.” 1
This is how God defined sin. He didn’t cite human emotions,
instincts, or personality faults. He condemned deliberate choices to rebel against His will, preferring our own way. Paul says we are
slaves of sin when we obey its evil desires, not when we merely exist
in a human body. 2
The distinction matters because many influential thinkers like
John Calvin said our physical body, on its own, is corrupt and infected
with sin. Calvin believed we can’t be truly holy as long as
we exist in our physical bodies. But the Bible describes sin as a
free, conscious decision made with our eternal wills. Scripture defines
sin as rebellion against the known will of God. “Therefore,
to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him
it is sin.” 3
Would You Go to Heaven?
How can we be saved from this relentless drive of Ego, which causes
us to hurt even those we love and sin against our Maker whose will
is perfect? Christ!
When we put our whole trust (for the next life and this one) in
Jesus, we are freed from sin. We trust His mercy to save us, not
our good works; and we are filled with His Spirit that empowers us
to stop willfully rebelling against Him. As God’s children,
we daily die to desires that conflict with our Father’s will;
we freely crucify the “flesh” when it tempts us to disobey.
Through the gate of this private Calvary, we enter the greatest freedom
a human can know: freedom from Ego and its relentless impulse to
assert itself against God and others in pride. “For sin shall
not have dominion over you: for you are not under the law [of works]
but under the grace [which accepts simple trust].” 4
In fact, Christ recreates our desires by filling us with His Spirit.
He enables us to “put on the new self, which in the likeness
of God, has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.” 5
As Zacharias prophesied, Christ granted us “that we might serve
Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all our
days.” 6 Scripture says Christ has “released us from
our sins,” 7 and “put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.” 8
Jesus is described as coming to save us from, not in, our sin, as
the “Lamb who takes away the sin of the world,” 9 and
the “Son [who] cleanses us from all sin.” 10 Paul wrote
that through Christ “God gives us the victory” 11 over
sin.
Christ’s redemption makes it possible for us to be cleansed
from the inside, from the fountainhead of human action: our will.
Because of His death, we are no longer tethered to the imperfection
of keeping an external law, “for Christ is the end of the law
[of works] for righteousness to everyone who trusts.” 12
Rather, we follow a law of obedient trust written on our hearts. “He
takes away the first [the external law of works] to establish the
second [the internal law of faith]. By this will we have been sanctified
through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all . .
.” 13 We enter a new covenant with God, in which the spirits
of righteous men are “made perfect.” 14 It is written, “God
has not called us for uncleanness, but for sanctification.” 15
For “through Him, everyone who trusts is freed from all things,
from which you could not be freed through the law of Moses.” 16
There are No “Sinning Saints”
Calvinist doctrine denies Christ complete power to renew us, teaching
that although we must struggle to be holy and Christ-like, we still
can’t live a consistently sinless life. But this idea is contradicted
by Scripture that celebrates our new victory in Christ. “For
if [animal sacrifices] sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how
much more will the blood of Christ . . . cleanse your conscience
from dead works to serve the living God?” 17 Paul wrote that
Christ died, not to merely cover our sins, but so “we might
become the righteousness of God in Him.” 18
“Having been set free from sin and enslaved to God,” Paul
wrote, “you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification,
and the outcome, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but
the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 19
He commanded, “Keep yourself free from sin.” 20 A chapter
later, Paul repeats, “Keep the commandment without stain or
reproach.” 21 John added, “No one who lives in Him keeps
on sinning.” 22 Peter wrote that we know we have been born
again because we “have in obedience to the truth purified our
souls.” 23
“How shall we who have died to sin still walk in it?” asked
Paul, aghast at the idea of “sinning saints.” “Do
you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus
have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried
with Him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was
raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might
walk in newness of life . . . Our old self was crucified with Him,
that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer
be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.” 24
Just as “Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never
to die again,” 25 so we are to live without sin, which is spiritual
death. “For the death He died, He died for sin, once for all;
but the life He lives, He lives to God. Even so, consider yourselves
to be dead to sin [once and for all], but alive to God in Christ
Jesus.” 26
Paul wrote that in Christ, we are “new creations,” 27
and urged us to “put on the new self, which in the likeness
of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.” 28
According to Paul, the new believer is “transformed;” 29
our alteration is so complete that we become “strangers and
aliens on earth,” 30 unrecognizable, as different as darkness
and light. 31 We grow inclined toward God, rather than self. Christ
said, “[My disciples] are not of the world, even as I am not
of the world. I do not ask that You [Father] take them out of the
world, but keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world,
even as I am not of the world.” 32
Of course, this does not mean we will be without temptation. Instead,
like Christ, tempted in the wilderness, we are enabled to consistently
conquer the temptation to rebel against God’s known will; for “the
Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation.” 33 “For
He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust,” 34
and “He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted.” 35
Indeed, “He Himself was tempted in all ways as we” 36
and “took on the very [human] nature” 37 we endure, “yet
without sin.” 38
“And you know that He appeared in order to take away sins;
and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him sins; no one
who sins has seen Him or knows Him. Little children, let no one deceive
you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He
is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the
devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for
this purpose, that He might destroy the works of the devil.” 39
Christ is the great Redeemer, an astounding Creator who loves renewal
and metamorphosis: of sunlight into energy, of caterpillars into
butterflies, of eggs into eagles and heroic salmon—and of winter
into blooming spring! If He causes such profound renaissance in nature,
transforming tiny seeds to towering trees and blossoming their naked
limbs, why would He do less with us, His children? Christ doesn’t
create a double standard in our lives, where He is righteous but
we are still evil. He does a thorough job, in which we are completely
cleansed and “filled with the fruit of righteousness which
comes through Him, to the glory and praise of God.” 40 Through
Christ we “receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of
righteousness,” 41 and present our bodies “as instruments
of righteousness to God.” 42
When we abide in obedient trust, righteousness is imputed to us,
just as it was reckoned to Abraham, 43 who is “the father of
all who believe . . . that righteousness might be reckoned to them.” 44
Like Noah, we are “heir to the righteousness which is according
to faith.” 45
As Christ described, we are each branches that must be connected
to Him, the living vine. If we’re rooted in Him through trust
and death to conscious rebellion against God’ s known will,
then our veins run with the life sap of His “righteousness,
which comes from God on the basis of trust.” 46 If we’re
not connected, we’re dead. Good works and good intentions without
trust in Him are lifeless as winter leaves scattered across a sidewalk.
Nothing we do apart from Christ can make us righteous or fill us
with the running sap of spiritual life. But when we are connected
by simple obedient trust, we can be confident that we are both righteous
and pleasing to God, filled to the core with His abundant, ceaseless,
sweet energy, which is more beautiful than the bright tulips in any
spring garden.
Endnotes:
1) Jer. 16:10-12 (2) Rom. 6:16 (3) James 4:17 (4) Rom. 6:14 (5) Eph.
4:24 (6) Luke 1:74, 75 (7) Rom. 1:5 (8) Heb. 9:26 (9) John 1:29 (10)
1 John 1:9 (11) 1 Cor. 15:56-58 (12) Rom. 10:4 (13) Heb. 10:9-10,
19-22 (14) Heb. 12:23 (15) 1 Thess. 4:7 (16) Acts 13:39 (17) Heb.
9:13-14 (18) 2 Cor. 5:21 (19) Rom. 6:22 (20) 1 Tim. 5:22 (21) 1 Tim.
6:14 (22) 1 John 3:6 (23) 1 Pet. 1:22-23 (24) Rom. 6:2-7 (25) Rom.
6:9 (26) Rom. 6:10-11 (27) 2 Cor. 5:17, Gal. 6:15 (28) Eph. 4:24
(29) Rom. 12:2 (30) Heb. 11:13 (31) 1 John 2:9-10 (32) John 17:14-16
(33) 2 Pet. 2:9 (34) Ps. 103:14 (35) Heb. 2:18 (36) Heb. 4:15 (37)
Phil. 2:5-7 (38) Heb. 4:15 (39) 1 John 3:5-8 (40) Phil. 1:11 (41)
Rom. 5:17 (42) Rom. 6:13 (43) Rom. 4:9 (44) Rom. 4:11 (45) Heb. 11:17
(46) Phil. 3:9
