the scripture is found in Galatians 2: 4-16 this matter arose because some false Brothers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves we did not give into them for a moment so that the truth of the Gospel might remain with you as for those who seem to be important whatever they were makes no difference to me God does not judge by external appearance those men added nothing to my message on the contrary they saw that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles just as Peter had been to the Jews for God who was at work in the ministry of Peter as an apostle to the Jews was also at work in my ministry as an apostle to the Gentiles James Peter and John those reputed to be pillars gave me and Barnabas the right hand of Fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me they agreed that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the Jews all they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor the very thing I was eager to do when Peter came to Antioch I opposed him to his face because he was clearly in the wrong before certain men came from James he used to eat with the Gentiles but when they arrived he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group the other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray when I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the Gospel I said to Peter in front of them all you are a Jew yet you live like a gentile and not like a Jew how is it then that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish Customs we who are Jews by birth and not Gentile Sinners know that a man is not justified by observing the law but by faith in Jesus Christ so we too have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law because by observing the law no one will be justified this is the word of the Lord each week we’re looking at a uh we’re take choosing one of the things that trouble folks in our culture and especially in New York City the most about Christianity so we’re trying to uh take each week uh this one of the things that people say this is my biggest problem with Christianity or this is my trouble this is my objection to Christianity and today tonight we look at one that could be put like this Christians believe they have absolute truth that is they see that they have some things that everyone should believe and everyone should do so Christians believe they have absolute truth but people who have absolute truth the objection goes um undermine freedom first of all they tend to oppress people who are different than they are and they tend to impose their views on each on others so they tend to uh harm other people’s freedom and people who believe they have the absolute truth are themselves not really free here they are under the burden of trying to comply with this set of divine directives and our culture believes everyone should be free to determine for themselves what is true everyone should be free to determine their own truth truth and and what is right or wrong for them so absolute truth is the enemy of Freedom it harms and erods freedom that’s the objection what do we say to that how do you respond to that um you know the uh the Supreme Court Itself by the way has actually enshrined the cultural mindset on this in a famous passage in a 1992 uh ruling in which the Supreme Court actually said quote the heart of Liberty is to Define one’s own concept of existence of the meaning of the universe so there it is what do we say there’s three things to say truth is a lot more important than you would think freedom is a lot more complex than you would think and Jesus is a lot more liberating than you think now those three principles that uh you know oh absolute truth doesn’t fit Freedom well truth is more important freedom is more complex Jesus is more liberating liberating than you think those principles are found in this passage it illustrates these three principles let’s look at them first truth is more important than you think uh the passage is a story it’s an account of what happened in the earliest days of the Christian Church uh the earliest Christians were Jewish and because of that they uh observed the Mosaic ceremonial law the ritual Purity codes of what you ate and how where what you could wear but when Paul went to the Gentiles and preached the gospel and many of them were converted when the Gentiles started coming to the church the question arose has Jesus Christ so fulfilled the ceremonial law all the sacrifices and the priests and the temple and the and the uh all the dietary restrictions and so on has Jesus so fulfilled all that that now they’re Obsolete and we don’t have to observe them and Paul’s answer to that question was yes and among the Gentile converts they didn’t have to do any of that now what uh what there was a controversy about that because there were many people who said no that’s not right and see verse four and five at the very beginning of the passage uh people came and spied on Paul what Paul calls the freedom we had in Christ so Paul had to go to a special meeting with all the other Apostles in Jerusalem where he contended for the truth verse 5 of The Gospel and as we will see uh everyone came to agree that what Paul was doing was right but the point is verse four and 5 says we have freedom in Christ because of the truth of the gospel and in a moment later on we’re going to get back to what that truth of the Gospel is but for a minute I would like you to just consider the relationship between truth and freedom that Paul lays out in those two verses Freedom verse four comes from the truth that’s the reason why Paul was fighting for it Freedom comes from the truth and that’s exactly the opposite of the way in which we in our culture think we feel like if you have to comply with the truth if you if you’re forcing the truth if you’re having to obey the truth that’s a lack of Freedom why do we feel that way one of the great uh most influential philosophers French philosophers of the last few years was Fuko and Fuko writes something that you may not you may not have heard this quote but the idea has been extremely influential in our culture Fuko says quote truth is a thing of this world it is produced only by multiple forms of constraint and that includes the regular effects of power and what Fuko is saying is simply this truth claims are power plays that when you claim to have the truth what you’re really doing is trying to get power over other people claiming to have the truth is a method of control claiming uh to have the truth is a form of constraint a way of controlling other people people’s behavior and getting power over them now that’s the view and maybe you think that as a Christian minister I’m going to start off my response by saying what a lot of malarkey but I’m not I am not I think we need to hear that see Fuko was probably the the number one uh disciple of nich in the 20th century and nich established the hermeneutic of Suspicion and what somebody once said is the hermeneutics of Suspicion is really philosophical squinting and this is what they meant by that if you would give make a truth claim to uh n if you would say everyone should promote social justice everyone should should do justice in the world n would go hm you’re calling everyone to Justice are you why are you calling everyone to justice is it because you love Justice or is it because you want to start a revolution that’ll put you on the top and give you power or someone would say to n everyone should obey God’s word and N would go everyone should obey God’s word huh of course you say this in German but I can’t do that everyone would obey God’s word huh why do you call everyone to obey God’s word word is it out of love for God is it out of love for his word or is it as a way of establishing your moral superiority is a way for you to justify yourself and to uh justify your oppressing and abusing or marginalizing at least or ignoring people who don’t believe God’s word the reason I want you to listen to what n says and what Fuko says is because it’s exactly what Jesus says about the Pharisees Jesus also says when he looks at the Pharisees he says your truth claims you’re claiming to have the truth but your truth claims are ways of getting power their ways of justifying yourself their ways of justifying your group their ways of getting control over God their ways of getting control over other people listen truth claims in general says Jesus are power plays and listen when when Fuko and n and Jesus Christ all agree on something you know it’s just got to be true I mean it just has to be true but if you insist that all truth claims all the time always are all power plays they always destroy truth that all truth claims destroy truth that anybody who says they have the truth destroys uh Freedom you’re wrong uh CS Lewis’s little book the abolition of man is a great book and maybe my favorite passage in in the abolition of man reads like this he says you cannot go on explaining away forever or you will find that you have explained your own explanation itself away you cannot go on seeing through things forever the whole point of seeing through something is to see something else through it for example it’s good that you can see through a window but that’s only because the garden behind is opaque but if you could see through everything if everything was transparent a holy transparent world would be an invisible world and to see through everything would be the same as not to see what’s he saying see he’s talking about n here’s what he’s saying if you say all truth claims are power plays so is that what is that that’s a truth claim and so is that so I don’t have to listen to you do I or if you say like Freud says all statements about religion and God are really just psychological projections to deal with your own guilt and insecurity well so is that what is that that’s a statement about God and religion and so is that so I don’t have to listen to you you know you’ve explained away your explanation see uh or if the evolutionary biologists say you know everything your mind tells you about God morality and Truth everything your mind tells you is really just uh hardwired brain chemistry that’s there in order for you to pass on your genetic code well everything their brain tells them about everything including the evolutionary biology is the same so why should I listen to it see to see through everything is not to see and to say no one should make truth claims because that’s just a power play that’s the biggest power trim of all because that’s a great big needle you can go around and you can puncture everybody’s balloon you better puncture your own and guess what you’re back to square one because everybody does make truth claims everybody believes in truth claims to say no one should say they have the truth is itself the most incredible power trip it’s a way of getting on top of in your sophistication you know and your jadedness over everybody else look everybody does make truth claims you have to and therefore it’s not making a truth claim per se that leads to oppression it’s what’s in the claim it’s what’s in the truth claim example I have just been absolutely Amazed by the uh like a lot of you uh by the reports coming out of Lancaster County uh in the aftermath of the of the uh terrible tragedy you know a man comes into a school and and Slaughters the uh these little girls these Amish school children all right and what do we see one of the things that most amazed me was we understand that one of the little girls who was killed offered to die for the rest of them said kill me and let the rest go and by the way they did not watch television they did not see movies where would she have gotten that idea of dying for her friends and when it was all over the amazing thing in fact usually you could see the reporters themselves were amazed that the that the the community and the the bereaved families not only forgave the man who did it but took up a collection for and prayed and forgave the Widow and the children of the man who did it now by anyone’s definition the Amish are fun fundamentalists and they believe they have the truth and have you ever heard anybody say oh fundamentalists they think they have the truth that leads to oppression it didn’t there why not because it depends on what the fundamental is and the fundamental in this case is a man dying on the cross for his enemies a man with whose last breath He blesses the people around him and praise for their forgiveness and if you take that into the very center of your life then you begin to see that it’s not truth claims per se that he wrode Freedom it’s what’s in the truth claim it’s true of course that truth Claims can be used to destroy freedom but there is no freedom without the truth because as Jesus himself said in John chapter 8 the truth will set you free so it’s not just that truth claims aren’t necessarily eroding of Freedom you’ve got to have the truth and be in touch with the truth to have freedom only the truth will set you free what do I mean I’ve always wished I was a ship’s captain in say the 16th century I always wanted to be the captain of one of those incredible ships and if I was a ship’s captain and I was exp and I was trying to take my ship into the English Channel you know between Britain and France but I made a mistake and I sailed up the Bristol Channel Which is far more shallow and I didn’t realize it and I just plowed right across thinking it was English Channel very soon I would have run a ground very soon my ship would be wrecked every everybody would would be killed why I was out of touch with the truth I was out of touch with the truth of How deep the channel was I was out of touch with the truth of where I was maybe somebody lied to me maybe I would just miscalculated but either way I was out of touch with reality I was out of touch with the truth and the truth would have Set Me Free and only the truth would have set me free and you see the idea the modern idea that you have to get away from the truth somehow to be free and get out from under the truth and stop get away from the truth to be free is silly it’s actually stupid only the truth will set you free being closely in touch with the truth and and and living in accordance with the truth will set you free a you say well maybe that’s true in the empirical realm you know the scientific realm but not necessarily in the moral spiritual realm oh really there you can live any way you want oh yeah I think I can say without fear of contradiction if you live for money and only for for money if you live only to make money if you live only to spend money if you live only to have money nothing else matters to you you will shrivel your soul you will destroy all your relationships you might be you might work too hard and ruin your health and your body why because you have run a ground on the rocks of a moral spiritual reality that’s there every bit as much as the Bristol channel was there it’s there it’s the way things are you are out of accord with the truth of what of how human beings ought to live only the truth will set you free truth is much more important than you know Freedom comes from submission to the truth not getting near getting away from it well you say now now that leads us to a question wow I guess I always thought of Freedom as being able to create your own truth now you you’re saying that freedom is submission to the truth why how’s that well you see what we’re we’re getting to is point two fortunately and point two is freedom now is much more complex than you think Paul gets up to Jerusalem and has this debate has this discussion and everybody says yeah you’re okay your your mission to the Gentiles is legit and so they shake hands and we see down here in verse 9 it says so we all agreed that we should go to the Gentiles they to the Jews but then look at verse 10 all they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor the very thing I was eager to do well we can’t like I think I’ve told you in these in this series we don’t go that deeply into these passages uh but there’s a lot there and here’s what it is Paul was going to the Gentiles and that was a place where the power was and the money and what the uh Apostles in Jerusalem were trying to remind him of is the Judean genti uh Christians and in fact you know the people of Judea had far less money and far less power and what they were saying is remember what the Bible says about the poor poor you know uh you can win them to Christ but they have to see what the Bible says they they they have to care about the poor and suddenly begin to realize something really weird in verse four Paul says we’re free in Christ we’re free free but down in verse 10 we see that Paul’s says yes of course we are still restricted to the biblical ethical Norms you can’t live any way you want you can’t spend your money any way you want you can’t you have to tell the truth you can’t commit adultery all that so now wait a minute here in verse four we’re free he says but in verse 10 we’re restricted we’re still restricted to certain living in certain ways and our response as modern people is wait a minute I thought that freedom is the absence of restrictions I thought freedom is the absence of all constraints and boundaries and restrictions the more the the the fewer restrictions there are the more free I am freedom is not having any restrictions on anything I do wrong over simplification I’m here to try to show you that freedom is much more complex than that let me give you a couple examples first of all as you get older as you will find you can’t just eat anything you want and uh at certain point the doctor will say to you now look uh there’s a lot of these things that you love eating you can’t eat them anymore and so what you’re going to have to do is you’re going to have to restrict your freedom you’re going to you’re going to see them on the table you’re going to see them on the Shelf you’re going to get near and you’re going to have to go no and you’re restrict you’re constraint that’s constraint that’s restriction so you have to give up your freedom to eat anything you want if you want to be released into the Richer deeper freedom of good health and long life or if you want to you can just eat anything you want and you know no restrictions be you know be totally free and then you will lose both your health and probably you know you’ll have a shorter year so which what you can’t have them both and obviously the the the freeing the liberating restriction of freedom is to be restricted here so that you can get that richer and deeper freedom of good health and long life let me give you another example see it’s not as simple as just losss of restrictions uh a lot of you have musical skill because this is New York City and at some point in your life you made a You made a decision and that is you were going to restrict your freedom because you’re going to practice practice practice you’re going to practice every day you’re going to practice a long time every day you’re going to practice practice practice which means all kinds of stuff that you other people can do you can’t do you don’t have time so you’re restricting yourself now but only if you restrict yourself then would you eventually be released into the far richer deeper freedom of being able to perform being able to express being able to Thrill a crowd being able to compose all kinds of stuff you could never even begin to do if you didn’t restrict your freedom here you could never be released into that freedom there oh you’re starting to say okay I see it I see it so this naive idea that freedom is an absence of restriction no discipline restriction can release you into greater Freedom so discipline is a good in itself right no no no oh no hey freedom is not the absence of restriction but freedom is not the presence of restriction there you know in a more liberal culture like ours we think of Freedom as the absence of constraint but in traditional cultures there’s a feeling like discipline is a good per se discipline’s always good that freedom comes through discipline really well for example if imagine a young guy 22 years old 5’3 he’s 115 lbs and he dreams of being an NFL lineman and because he’s gone to American schools all his life every year his teacher has said you can be anything you want to be and like an idiot he believed and so now he gets up and he says this is my dream I’m going to be an NFL alignment I’m going to practice and I’m going to discipline myself and I’m going and I’m going to restrict myself and I’m going to work out I’m going to I’m going to build myself up and you know he’s going to waste his life because he freedom is not the absence of restriction or the presence of restrictions but it’s freedom is the presence of the right restrictions the ones that fit in with your nature with who you are the truth of who God has made you to be the truth of what of your the giveness of your nature and it’s a great M if you find the truth of who you are the truth of what you’ve been given see the musician because of her aptitude restriction releases her the the the little guy who wants to get into NFL you know into the NFL because he doesn’t have the nature and the aptitude restriction destroys him freedom is not the presid of restriction or the absence of restriction it’s the presence of the right restrictions the ones in accord with the truth who God made you to be and then when you give up your freedom you surrender to those restrictions it will release you into richer deeper Freedom the truth will set you free this is the reason why for example you you know a fish out on the grass a fish out on the grass isn’t free a fish out on the grass is lost it’s freedom to move even to live you have to restrict the fish to the water and in the water its strength returns and its power returns and it can you know you know swim swim away like lightning and therefore freedom is a lot more complex is it not it’s the right restrictions the restrictions that fit in with the giveness of your nature the restrictions that fit in with the truth of who you are and the truth of how things are and you know the ultimate example of the complex of freedom is love oh my goodness yes you see love is a way to get free is it not I mean Isn’t Love bring you the freedom of security and fulfillment and joy but franois Sagan the famous uh French writer Some years ago when she was having a a magazine interview she was I think kind of up in years at the time and they asked her have you lived the life you wanted to live and she said yes I lived to be free and then the interviewer said then you you have had the freedom you wanted and Sean said yes well I was obviously not free when I was in love with someone but one’s not in love all the time fortunately apart from that yes I’ve been free very realistic and I’ll tell you why the freedoms of love only come if you surrender all kinds of individual freedom I remember was very shortly after I was married like days or maybe the most weeks after I was married I remember I was coming home from work and I uh suddenly had an idea I don’t even remember what it was but I I I took a detour I went someplace to buy something or something and I got home about 25 minutes late and my wife looked at me and said where were you now you have to remember this was before cell phones and as some of you probably suspect it was before phones but the whole point was so I should have written her a letter I guess but Pony Express probably would have been a good but the point was I mean all of my life I had you can make a little I suddenly realized oh my gosh I’m married and therefore my right to make even small unilateral decisions is over forever because the more intimate a love relationship the less independent you can be the only way to get the freedoms of love is to surrender Freedom a all kinds of Freedom drastically and this is now we’ve come to the place where New Yorkers really start to freak out because first of all we saw what you’ve got to know the truth you’ve got to know the truth and you have to surrender to the truth and to surrender your freedoms to the truth to get the reach of Deb freedom in every area and a a lot of you are saying and here you being I understand you’re saying look I have done that in a couple of love relationships where I gave up my Independence I gave up my Independence I started sacrificing but the other person didn’t and I felt dehumanized and exploited and I’m afraid of going back into those kinds of relationships and I’m certainly afraid of what you’re trying to get me to I know who you what you’re doing you’re a minister you’re a preacher it’s a church you’re trying to get me to say you need to surrender to the truth of God I’m afraid I’m afraid of being exploited I’m afraid of being used three Jesus is more liberating than you thought there’s a movie in the movie ioot it’s only a couple years old right the movie ioot not the book because the movie has nothing to do with the book at all but in the movie The main character I think pretty much is sunny who is a robot and sunny the robot has been created by his maker to uh head off a robot rebellion and at the end of the movie he’s already done that so he’s fulfilled his design program but now he has nothing to do CU he wasn’t made to do anything past that and he says to detect a Spooner who’s the other main character he says now that I have fulfilled my purpose I don’t know what to do and detective Spooner says I guess you’ll have to find your way like the rest of us Sunny that’s what it means to be free and the movie script writer has perfectly enshrined the modern understanding what it’s saying is this if there is a design program if there is a set of divine directives from your maker that you have to comply with you’re just a robot you’re dehumanized you’re not free you’re only free if there’s nothing you were made for if there’s no purpose that you have to comply with no design purpose that you’ve got to submit to then you’re free because then you can live any way you want and of course it’s disorienting to say oh I’m not for anything I have no purpose in life but at least you can create your own purpose then you’re free but the gospel writer John gospel writer John John 1 vers one reads this in the beginning was the word now that doesn’t grab you probably that’s the English what it says but in the Greek and the original readers read it and they were amazed it said in the beginning was the logos that’s what it says in Greek and Paul and pardon me John deliberately used a absolutely loaded Greek philosophical technical term when he said in the beginning was the logos what is the logos well the logos you you can see the word the logos means it it’s related to our word logic or reason but it’s not talking about reason in general it’s talking about the reason for life and the Greek philosophers were asking this question what is our reason for life what is our reason for existence what were we made for look at the fish it’s so obvious that the fish is designed for the water and when you put the fish in the water it experiences Freedom what were we made for so that if we give ourselves and surrender to it will experience Freedom what is our logos what is the absolute truth the absolute reality that we were made for that we put ourselves into that that’s the environment that we experience Freedom what is it and they had debated for years centuries actually and some of the Greek philosophers have said it’s this this is the logos this is the absolute truth that we were made for and some said no this is the absolute truth this is the logos we were made for by the time of the of Jesus in the New Testament a lot of Greek philosophers had gone the way of detective Spooner a lot of them had come up and started to say maybe there isn’t any absolute truth that we’re made for and that’s the best we can do we just have the freedom of knowing that we’re not made for anything there is no designed purpose that we’re made for but Along Comes John and in John chapter 1 first of all he says the Skeptics he says no a there is a logos there is an absolute truth in the beginning was the absolute truth but he then says to the traditionalists it’s not an abstract absolute truth it’s not a set of divine directors that comes down from God and that I have to comply with with or else be destroyed he says there is an absolute truth but it’s not an abstract absolute truth he says in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and we’ve beheld his glory and John says there’s an absolute truth but it’s not an abstraction it’s a person the absolute truth has become a person a personal absolute an absolute person not an absolute principle an absolute person and here’s what you were making for him to love him to know him to serve him to enjoy him and this is the bombshell in the history of philosophy when John said we’re not relativists there is an absolute truth but the absolute truth has become a person to know a person to hug a person to to love and you say well what’s the big difference between there being an absolute truth that’s an abstraction versus a person all the difference in the world friends because if the absolute truth is an abstraction it is dehumanizing but if it’s a person it’s liberating because go let me show you what I mean go back to the love thing we said and we already hinted at this that if you enter into a love relationship you have to surrender your Independence but you two people have to do it together you both have to do it each of you has to surrender and if each one of you say says to the other I will give up my Independence for you I will adjust to you I will sacrifice my needs for you and the other one does it too it’s heaven but if one of you does the surrender and the other one does not you hold on to your own life then you’re exploited then you’re dehumanized and it’s almost worse than have it’s certainly worse than having no relationship at all and that’s the reason why for n and Fuko and maybe detective Spooner all relationship with with God have to be dehumanized because they’re one way right there’s God up in heaven and he says here’s the Ten Commandments here’s this here’s that thou shalt not thou must Thou shalt not and if you have a relationship with a god like that it’s only one way you do all the shifting you give up your Independence now you have to live according to his rules you give up you do the adjustment you do all the sacrificing it’s one way so it’s exploitative and it’s dehumanizing and N would say relationship with God is dehumanizing by definition but not with this God not with this God look there’s a lot of gods put out there by these various religions and philosophies but the only one Christianity there’s only one Christianity that says God the absolute truth became a person and went to the cross and on that cross Jesus Christ God said I will lose my Independence for you I will adjust to you I will sacrifice for you and and guess what he was exploited see Jesus comes to you and says I already did the surrender part to the human race and I was killed for it my arms are open to you I’ve already done the surrender now I’m just asking you to surrender to me how could you possibly ask anything more from a god than that how can I trust God here’s a god who’s lost his freedom for you Philippians 2 says Jesus Christ did not hold on to his godhood but rather his his his his equality with God but he emptied himself and became a slave and was obedient even under the death of a cross here is a God who was the ultimate free being and he was bound and he was nailed and he lost his freedom and he opened himself and He adjusted and he surrendered his freedom he God surrendered his freedom so that you could know you can trust him and this is liberation think if God just gives us an abstract truth a set of rules and says Now obey it and you will go to heaven I’m obeying it why out of fear I’m driven by fear I’m a slave to fear I better do this I better do that or else God’s not he’s going to get me he’s going to punish me he’ll send me to hell he won’t answer my prayers it’s all out of fear see I’m a slave but if instead of God giving me an abstract truth that I have have to obey in order to save myself I have a personal truth who comes down and lives the life I should have lived and dies to death I should have died on the cross and saves me by sheer Grace that’s liberating and only if the absolute truth is a person who’s done that am I liberated that’s the reason why here at the very end Paul can look at Peter and go after him about his racism do you see that interesting case study at the very end of the passage we see that Peter though in principle he agreed that the Gentiles are acceptable in Christ he agrees in principle but first of all did you notice there he out of fear of the circumcision party a certain group of people and out of probably just the habit of being told all of his life that Gentiles are unclean unclean unclean he stopped eating with the Gentiles which of course in that culture was Major social rejection so he was falling back into racist habits but you don’t see Paul going to him and saying Peter you’re breaking rule number 18 in the Bible Against Racism he could have because there’s lots in the Bible Against Racism but he doesn’t go that way because he doesn’t treat truth that way what does he say verse 14 I love verse 14 it’s changed my life by the way in verse 14 Paul says Peter you’re not walking in line with the truth of the Gospel you’re not thinking out the implications of the Gospel you’re saved by grace you’re not saved by your pedigree you’re a sinner saved by grace how can you feel Superior to anybody else but here’s what he’s really saying is Peter you’re a Slave you’re afraid of what those people think the circumcision group you’re afraid of what this person thinks you’re anxious Peter think in Jesus Christ you’re an absolute Beauty in the eyes of God the only person whose eyes matter think you’re absolutely loved you’re absolutely valued by the creator of the universe you should be if you really understood the gospel if you really understood the gospel you shouldn’t be afraid of anything you wouldn’t be a slave to anything not afraid to an a slave to anxiety a slave to being afraid of criticism you wouldn’t be a slave to anything you should be absolutely free Peter if you’re a racist it’s because you’re not thinking out the freedom and experiencing the freedom that you’ve got in the gospel think Peter until there’s enough joy in your heart think Peter until you have enough fullness as to what Jesus has done for you think Peter until the racism is squeezed out by the joy and then you’ll be free if you understand the truth of the Gospel it frees you from everything how about you has it freed you has it freed you do you know in first 2 Corinthians 5:21 I think it’s 1 Corinthians 5 some place where Paul says the love of Christ constrains us constrains us the only thing that constrains you in a way that doesn’t feel oppressive the only thing that moves you to do the things you should be doing and yet it feels like it feels like heaven is the love of Christ the love of Christ what he’s done the loss of Freedom so we could have freedom constrains us and John Newton puts it in the in his hymn our pleasure and our duty though opposite before since we have seen his Beauty are joined depart no more to see the law by Christ fulfilled and hear his pardoning voice transforms a slave into a child and Duty into Choice let’s pray father it is true that claiming to have the truth can be a terrific way to destroy freedom and yet there is a truth that we’ve got to have to be free it’s the truth of the Gospel it’s a truth of Jesus Christ the ultimate free being losing his freedom for us surrendering to us adjusting for us and if we take that into the center of our being that makes us so free from Fear we’re not afraid of death we’re not afraid of people’s disapproval we’re not afraid of anything we want to live that kind of life and we ask therefore that you would show us how to bring into the center of our hearts your gospel truth so that we would be set free in Jesus name we pray amen for more of this series and other resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church please visit www.gsp.ro