Half-Free
WORDS FROM W.W. January 17, 2018
We are drawn to the word free! After all, we live in the land of the free and the brave. Free sells!
Last week’s mail brought a couple of “FREE” offers. I intentionally wrote the word in capital letters there because that’s how it was displayed in the advertisement. “FREE” draws a person’s attention like the smell of your next door neighbor’s barbecuing. I looked closer at the ad for the restaurant. I could go there and get a free breakfast, lunch, or dinner…here it comes…with the purchase of another meal and two drinks.
Wouldn’t that make the free meal half-free? Or, wouldn’t it mean that I’d be getting two meals for a little bit more than half-price ( knowing what they charge for a soda!)?
We love free! Half-off still dips into our wallet. It still costs us something! If we approached a marriage proposal by saying “I’m half in love with you” or “I want to be married to you half the time” the results, hopefully, would be an end to the relationship before the wedding vows were half-said in front of a crowded church sanctuary.
Free is a word that must be untangled from the grasp of an addendum.
Some might say that being a follower of Jesus is like that; that the person who is witnessing for Jesus talks about being freed from sin, but then talks about what it means to be a follower of Christ. It’s that tension between the understanding that Jesus died on the cross to set me free, and then being told that accepting Jesus as my Lord and Savior means that I’ll do this and that.
In the days of the New Testament there was the division between those who were free and those who were enslaved. Paul refers to that cultural condition quite often in his epistle writings. Those who read his letters understood the separation, and even though they were slaves to masters they were drawn to the principle that freedom could be experienced in a spiritual sense.
What if the gospel only set us half-free? What if it unchained us in some ways, but failed to unburden us in others?
And from another perspective, are there those who see themselves as followers of Christ but have allowed his sacrifice to only set them half-free?
Half-free is half-hearted.
Explore posts in the same categories: Bible, Christianity, Community, Faith, Freedom, Grace, Jesus, love, Pastor, Story, The Church, UncategorizedTags: atonement, BOGO, Buy One Get One Free, coupons, free offers, freedom in Christ, half-off, IHOP, set free to be
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