Spotlight 7/2020: The way to true liberty
Many people think they are free if they can do whatever they want. Yet often such supposedly free decisions lead to new dependencies, says District Apostle Leonard Kolb (USA).
We can read in Genesis 1: 27 that God the Creator made man and woman in His image. We can understand from this that He gave humans a variety of His attributes not given to the rest of the creation, including the unique gift of free will.
Endowed with this, Adam and Eve enjoyed an existence of freedom in the garden as long as they remained in the will of God. God allowed them to enjoy and benefit from everything with one restriction: eating of one specific tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
In time, the evil one began his work of deception. He gave Eve the impression that she was “free” to act as she wanted, even outside of God’s commandment: “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3: 4–5).
The serpent cleverly neglected to mention that living outside of God’s will actually limits the gift of free will because one becomes imprisoned in the influence of another and subject to the wages of sin—death. Thus God’s word was true after all: “ … for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Consequently, this “free act” of falling into sin dictated that all souls who have followed Adam and Eve begin life in the incarceration of sin, remote from God.
The evil one has continued this deception through the ages up to the present, giving people the impression that they are completely free. He insinuates: God’s commandments are restrictive, old-fashioned, and irrelevant. All things are possible for you …
One may even hear the remark occasionally, “I can do whatever I want,” because people believe that they live in freedom, yet they are under the dominant control of Satan.
Thanks be to Jesus Christ who opened the way of freedom with His sacrifice! In recognising and embracing His love, a soul begins to realise its purpose and the intent for which it was created. This illumination sheds light on the chains that Satan has bound it with, and it seeks to be free.
Availing oneself of God’s grace and renouncing the devil in all his works and ways, opens a way to liberty that only Christ can provide. Only through Him, now, we are free!
Photo: NAC USA
Photo: NAC USA
