Living as Free People

You were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers.” These words from 1 Peter 1:18 convey one of the great blessings for the Christian—namely, that we have been freed from slavery to idolatry and all other sins. Other texts of Scripture make it plain that we have been freed from the burden of mere human traditions (Col. 2:8). These points lead us to ask the question, If Christians are free, how does that freedom relate to the call to “be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution” (1 Peter 2:13)?

Answering this question is not so difficult once we understand the true nature of freedom, which Peter gives us in today’s verse. People in the secular world often think of freedom as the absence of all constraints, of being able to do whatever we want, however we want, whenever we want, and with whomever we want. Those who operate under such a definition quickly find themselves enslaved to their desires and sometimes even without civil freedoms. True liberty, however, consists in the freedom to be what the Lord made us to be, the freedom to image God as He originally made us to do (see Gen. 1:26–28). This consists in nothing less than “living as servants of God” (1 Peter 2:16). Paradoxically, if we want to be really free, we must be the Lord’s servants, bound to Him and His law.

In our day, people often want to assert and take advantage of the freedoms that they believe they are entitled to. Yet in reality, we are all going to be servants of something or somebody. Most fundamentally, we will be slaves either to sin or to righteousness: slaves to the world, the flesh, and the devil or slaves to God. Apart from divine grace, we are slaves to sin, but through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ we become slaves to God, servants of righteousness (Rom. 6:15–23). Those who are most free are those who are most obedient to the Lord. Thus, John Calvin comments, “we obtain liberty, in order that we may more promptly and more readily render obedience to God; for it is no other than a freedom from sin; and dominion is taken away from sin, that men may become obedient to righteousness. In short, it is a free servitude, and a serving freedom.”

True Christian freedom does not oppose but enables our proper subjection to human authorities. It keeps us from using our liberty as a pretext for covering up evil and helps us obey with a clear conscience (1 Peter 2:16).