Freedom
By John Gavazzoni

All good things belong to God. All goodness is His possession. "Only God is good," said Jesus, and yet we know that He (Jesus) was perfectly good. Of course He was perfectly good, for His goodness had God as its source. This is why Jesus....while having the same quality of perfection as His Father.... nevertheless said, "the Father is greater than I." In what sense is the Father greater than the Son? It's as the Son's source, that the Father is greater. That to which I am totally dependent upon is greater than I. Though others may not, I hold that truth to be self-evident. We see this unveiled to us in Jesus' words, "the Father has life in Himself, and gives the Son to have life in Himself." The life of the Father is the source of the life of the Son, and in that life is the goodness that all creation will ultimately enjoy. Whatever goodness is at work in any of us, God is its source.

Freedom is a good thing, a fine, noble, sublime thing. Only God possesses freedom. If freedom is at work in anyone, it flows from God to that one's spirit, and from there to the soul and body. Freedom doesn't do evil. Freedom never chooses evil. True freedom doesn't have the option to do the opposite of that which is good. The fruit of that which is not good, comes not from freedom, as so many nonsensically claim, but from bondage. I am free to do the good; I am bound to do the bad. Freedom pertains to the unhindered living out of goodness. Goodness can be opposed, but the opposition cannot keep freedom from its goal. Freedom has a goal, and it will reach that goal with absolute certainty. Such is the freedom of God, and in union with Christ, such is our freedom. God is free to fill us all with all His fullness, and we are free for such a glorious filling, "that God might be all in all."

Conventional theology posits that freedom, freedom of the will specifically, was granted by God to man as a capacity to choose good or evil. What nonsense. I must labor the point: There exists no capacity for choosing evil within true freedom. If one chooses evil, look back into that one's history, and you will find bondage entering. Eve was not free to eat of the forbidden fruit, in her innocence she was prey for the crafty serpent. Craftiness wins over innocence all the time. In my experience of pastoring, I came to understand that innocence attracts the evil of temptation. Innocence makes one vulnerable to seduction. If Eve, at that point in the administration of God, had been free, the serpent wouldn't have stood a chance against her.

Paul said, "the woman was deceived, not the man." From an allegorical view of the Garden of Eden story, Eve represents the innocent receptivity of all of us. It is the feminine in all of us, the receptive factor in our psyche, which makes us vulnerable to deception. It cannot be said of one who is deceived that that one is free, and to take that back one more step, it cannot be said of one vulnerable to deception, that that one is free. With true freedom there is not even the vulnerability to deception. While a free person may feel the hot breath of deception, and have seductive thoughts play upon the mind, those feeling and thoughts meet the immutable, impregnable power of freedom.

Jesus came to set the captive free. "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." According to conventional theology, that statement would mean that Jesus set us free to sin. If we are enjoying freedom in union with Christ, we most certainly are not free TO sin; we are enjoying being free FROM sin. "If the Son, therefore, shall set you free, ye shall be free indeed." In otherwise edifying writings, the concept shows up like a sore thumb: God will never violate your freedom. God is a gentleman. His love includes giving you the freedom to receive or reject Him, and He will never violate that freedom. What crap! That concept comes from ignorance of the nature of the freedom of God.

I remember having hardly unpacked my bags in my room in the dormitory of the Bible institute that I attended right out of high school, when getting together with some of my fellow freshman, up came the subject of "the free will of man and the sovereignty of God," or otherwise stated, "the freedom of God verses the non-sovereignty of man." Any discussion of freedom and sovereignty was assumed to be conducted within that paradigm: freedom pertains to man, and sovereignty to God. Why not a different paradigm, such as "the freedom of God and the non-sovereignty of man"?

There's a very subtle, subconscious elevation of man's will over God's will in such thinking. The fleshly mind wants to claim some credit for "doing it my way." As Frank Sinatra sang, that at the end of life's journey, to be able to say, "I did it my way," is something of human nobility. No, at the end of the road, it will be His way, the way of the One who is the Way. Imagine a scene where someone is about to exit the last gate of a prison, having served his time for robbery and assault, and the guard who unlocks the gate, says, "OK, Joe, you're free to go rob and assault people again. Let me be clear Joe, I repeat, go rob and assault again, you're free to do your thing."