2 Corinthians 3:17 – Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
Mel Gibson playing William Wallace in the movie Braveheart spoke these words regarding freedom. “I am William Wallace, and I see a whole army of my countrymen here in defiance of tyranny. You have come to fight as free men, and free men you are. What will you do without freedom? Will you fight?” “Fight, against that? No! We will run, and we will live.” “Aye. Fight, and you may die. Run, and you’ll live, at least a while. Dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom?”
Freedom is close to the heart of the United States as well. We are the “land of the free and the home of the brave” according to our national anthem. It’s too bad that we never sing the last stanza of The Star Spangled Banner. It’s a good one.
Oh, thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust”:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Freedom, though espoused by nations and celebrated by many, only really comes from God. When the Spirit works in a person’s heart changing what was once stone into flesh; when a life is forever lifted from the ashes of hell and placed gently into the garden of heaven; when God takes what was forever broken and makes it whole once again. That’s the only real freedom. Freedom from the tyranny of sin and death. Freedom from the blindness and emptiness of life apart from Christ. Freedom to be who God created you to be. And that, my friends, is worth fighting for!
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