Martha Olawale

So, if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. John 8:36

My son recently worked on a school project about freedom. When I asked him what freedom meant to him, and where he felt the freest, he said home. To him, home means safety, rest, and acceptance. It represents his place of the greatest sense of freedom.

The mention of the word ‘home’ brings an immediate calm to most humans. When we are far from it, we long for it, and regardless of how little we have in it, home is still where we feel the most priced. Home is that place we can be all that we are without masking it.

Although the home is where we feel the freest, for it to remain habitable, there must be order in it. We dedicate different rooms for different purposes and different appliances are used for different things. If we misuse one for the other, it becomes abuse. It’s the same with God. He created the world and puts things in place to ensure order.

Freedom does not mean we get to do whatever we want with our life because true freedom comes from total abandonment of our will at the feet of the cross to follow Christ. It’s a state of surrendered heart to God’s will. Freedom is not the absence of order or the presence of a million different choices. It is giving up all your choices to adopt one—honoring God. True freedom gives a sense of satisfaction and peace that comes from knowing your actions are God-approved and Heaven-backed.

Many of us are walking around thinking in the name of freedom, we can do or say anything even if it misrepresents Heaven. But, with sin comes bondage. When Jesus was asked in John 8:33b “How can you say that we shall be set free?” He answered them, debunking the notion that sin equals freedom. He said in verse 34 “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a SLAVE to sin.”

Living in sin separates us from the only one who can truly exchange our hearts’ greatest longings with freedom indeed. Speaking with my son, I asked him that just because he is free at home, will it be okay for him to fill a cup with milk and intentionally pour it onto the sofa or use the kitchen for the bathroom? He said both would be wrong and nasty. In the same light, just because God gave us free will does not mean we get to misalign the order of life and godliness. We may spill dirt every now and then and make mistakes because of our mortal imperfections, however, orderliness in our pursuit of righteousness simply means we don’t live with the dirt.