There are two kinds of freedom. Christian freedom is the freedom to be a servant of others (Gal 5:13)—the freedom to do what I don’t like. But the freedom that allows me to do whatever I want is not Christian freedom; it is license and sometimes licentiousness. When in the name of Christian liberty, I am free to do what I wanted to do anyway, a deep suspicion enters my mind; it is not that God wants to deny me any pleasure, but that I know that my motives are corrupted by sin.
It is similar to my suspicion of guidance by the Holy Spirit. Many years ago, I noticed that whenever the Holy Spirit gave career guidance to people, it was always in the same upwardly mobile, well-paid, high status direction as the pagan materialists. A deep suspicion entered my mind about which spirit was giving this guidance. It did not sound like Christ’s Holy Spirit; Christ made himself nothing, took the form of a servant and humbled himself (Phil 2:4-8). That Christ’s Spirit would guide all his people towards upwardly mobile, middle class affluence seemed questionable at best.
So when in the name of Christian freedom, I wish to conform my life or re-form the church to the sinful culture around me, alarm bells ring. It is supposed to be ‘cutting edge’, ‘contextualized’ and ‘missional’, but it sounds like the failed agenda of theological liberalism—always trying to be relevant, but never being Christianly countercultural.
The cry that “All things are lawful for me” is as old as the Apostle Paul (1 Cor 6:12ff). However, Paul knew he was not “outside the law of God but under the law of Christ” (1 Cor 9:21). It is by God’s grace Christians receive the Spirit of God. But the Holy Spirit writes God’s law on our hearts and moves us to obey it. The gospel of grace does not contradict the law (1 Tim 1:8-11; Gal 5:4), for Jesus did not come to abolish the law but to fulfil it (Matt 5:17ff).
Our message to the world is repentance, not acceptance. Our aim in church is holiness, not conformity. It is the holiness of God’s people that commends the gospel. If we are no different to the world around us, we have nothing to say to the world.
Don’t misunderstand; Christian freedom is essential for preserving the truth of the gospel. We are saved by the grace of God, not by keeping the law. We will never keep the law of God perfectly. The law of God does not save us, but condemns us. We can only be saved by the gracious mercy of God found in the death of his Son. So when in our religious zeal we make up new rules and commandments to follow, no matter how well-intentioned we are, we compromise the grace of God’s mercy, and we make it more difficult to join the earthly church than to be accepted into the heavenly assembly!
Evangelists are rightly keen not to compromise the gospel by adding rules to it. The cross-cultural evangelist in particular needs the flexibility of freedom to be “all things to all people”, that some might be saved (1 Cor 9:22). Such missionaries must have a firm grasp of Christian freedom in order to be “as a Jew, in order to win Jews” or to become weak to “win the weak” (1 Cor 9:20, 22). It is hard enough to persuade the man in the street that the gospel is not about morality, but about pardon and regeneration, without reinforcing his false views of the gospel by Christian legalism.
The church has a part to play in this also, for we must not conduct the church in a way that fits all the false stereotypes about Christianity. Instead, we want to welcome all manner of people without ‘quarrels over opinions’ (Rom 14:1ff). Whether our differences are over food, drink or holy days, we must remember that “the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom 14:17). A church in a developing multicultural society will not restrict its behaviour to yesterday’s monocultural mainstream.
However, it is not the church but the individual who must exercise freedom in the service of others. The church seeks to build Christians in holiness; the evangelist, to reach non-Christians for their salvation. Being sensitive to seekers who attend church is not the same as running church for seekers. The word of God, not the culture of the world, must set the agenda for church.
So when I think of constructing a contextualized church culture, I want to ask, “Where is the holiness of a Christian culture being developed here?” And when I do something on the basis of Christian freedom, I want to ask, “Is my freedom one that enables me to do something I wanted to do anyway, or is it a freedom that enables me to serve others by doing things that are unnatural for me or things that I do not really like?”
