16.05 | Freedom Begets Freedom
Galatians 4:21-5:15
‘For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.’
Galatians 5:13
For two years, I worked as a student pastor in Leeds.
Being a student pastor included a lot of pastoral work with young men, alongside my own share of accountability with my peers.
And for young men, one topic so often came up:
Pornography.
With the rise of the internet and the smart phone, the availability of and demand for pornography has exploded in our time. Around one in twenty-five websites are estimated to be pornographic, and more than one in ten web searches is for pornographic material.1 Stories of divorce commonly include at least one partner having a problem with pornography, and we are at a moment of extraordinary concern as to the sexual formation of emerging generations. The stories of those involved in the pornography industry add another level of the destructive influence of pornography on our culture.
However, here’s the thing.
You can know all this. And you can still have problem with porn.
What became apparent in those years in Leeds was that telling people, ‘Don’t look at porn’ was inadequate. It was technically good advice, of course. But the problem was not primarily found in knowing what should be done. It was found in actually doing it. The gap between the ideal and the repeated failure seemed to create more slavery to shame than freedom from the desires.
Paul’s writings on the law comes to such places. That the presence of a rule, or a law, fails to address the actual problem of the human heart. You can tell a person not to do something, but often the very act of doing so tends not to curb their wounded desires, but rather awakens them — and suddenly all they can think of is doing that thing. It’s like telling an alcoholic that drinking is a bad idea and so not to open the liquor cabinet, or a chocoholic to eat less chocolate while walking around Cadbury’s World.
Paul has a word for this:
Slavery.
Under the law, he says, you were slaves. You were stuck under the gospel of ‘trying harder’ and managing your desires. But the problem was not the command; it was your own inability to do it. It was the the law; it was the heart. The endless cycles, then, of trying harder and failure and guilt and shame and then trying harder again, only further entrenched the slavery.
The Gospel is God’s interruptive event into this moment. Because it introduces a new paradigm:
Freedom.
Freedom from shame. Freedom to have a standing with the Father that is utterly secure, on the exclusive basis of our faith, and not our performance. Freedom begins in being totally loved and utterly forgiven.
Freedom to be changed. Freedom, through constant exposure to the renewing power of God within us, to a day-by-day transformation that deals in the steady renewal of our hearts.
And freedom to look beyond. To reorient our understanding of wholeness (holiness), not through the lens of what I’m trying really really hard not to do, but rather, to pursue the life of beauty that lies beyond the commandment. That looks beyond the line of ‘You shouldn’t do it,’ instead pursuing a life of honour and truth and integrity where we no longer obsess over avoiding the bad because we are so wholly pursuing the good. Where the decision becomes not one of sin avoidance, but rather of maximisation of love and honour and wisdom and goodness. Where the desire to love greatly becomes stronger than the wounded desires for the hollow promises of pornography. Where the porn star becomes a person of value in our hearts, and fidelity in the unseen moments to our spouses becomes an ambition that gives us utter delight.
In the Kingdom, freedom begets freedom. And this journey of the free is the pathway to freely becoming a person of extraordinary love.
Reflect:
Hold before the Lord a place where you struggle. Anger … fear … lust … pride.
Bring Him again your feelings of shame. Reject these before Him, even if you can only do it in words to begin with. Offer them to the Jesus of the Cross.
You are free.
And now, lift your eyes. What is the way of love beyond this. What honour can you look to bestow? What blessing can you give? What dignity can you restore? What healing can you offer?
Let your imagination sit here. And ask the Spirit of God to come and flood you, enabling you for this transformation of the heart.
Set yourself for today’s little step in this direction.
Pray:
Father,
I’ve known a lot of slavery.
My desires are so often so broken.
I don’t act the way I want,
And quickly I find myself hiding in shame.
But today,
Father of love,
I reject this narrative of shame;
I bring you my failures and my wounded desires;
And ask you to remind me that, at the Cross of Jesus,
You made me free.
And now, Father,
Would you enable this freedom of the soul:
To lift my eyes upon the struggles,
And to see your greater call—
To be a person of extraordinary love.
Build in me honour, wisdom, compassion, and courage;
Renew me from the inside out.
That my life be a story of freedom unto freedom
As your love becomes the atmosphere within which
This hurting heart
Becomes truly loving.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
2 Samuel 15-17 | Psalm 65
Data taken from https://www.statista.com/chart/16959/share-of-the-internet-that-is-porn/, which looked to collate information from neuroscientists Ogas & Gaddam, from Boston University in 2014