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Freedom Comes
- 02/02/09
- 11
At my church last night I preached a message that was part of a series we are doing on various points of theology. The topic I had to address was biblical manhood and womanhood. It’s something of an uncomfortable topic to have to preach and one we, as Christians, are too often intimidated by. I sought in this message to emphasize the freedom and the delight in God that come to us when we understand and even celebrate the differences between men and women—when we understand what God tells us about biblical manhood and womanhood.
I guess I am very traditional (and hopefully biblical) when it comes to gender roles within the church and within marriage. I believe that God has called men to lead their families and to lead their churches. I believe that God has made men and women, husbands and wives, to be complementary—to complement one another. And in so doing he has given us the privilege of reflecting him in his Trinitarian relationship. Here we see the Father always leading, the Son submitting to the Father but exercising authority over the Spirit, and the Spirit always submitting to both Father and Son. We learn from the Trinity that we can be equal in value and worth and dignity, even while having different and subordinate roles. And this is the way God intends the church and the family to function.
The subject of freedom was much on my mind as I considered the topic. It was my conviction as I prepared this message that there is greater freedom for those who understand the roles God has assigned to men and to women than to those who deny that such roles exist. This may seem to go against the societal grain. We are told, if not explicitly at least implicitly, that there is more freedom in a lack of rules or a lack of boundaries than there is with their presence. Freedom comes, we are told, when we live without rules or when we cast off the old rules.
I do not believe this. I believe that we are free only when we live within the boundaries given to us. Here’s a silly illustration I used for this.
Imagine a country in which there were no traffic laws whatsoever. There were plenty of cars, but no rules about how those cars can be driven. No speed limits, no minimum age requirements, no safety standards, no “no parking” signs, no dotted lines down the middle of the road, no stop lights, no drunk driving laws. Every person would have freedom to do whatever he wished to do. I could drive on the left and you could drive on the right. I could park in the middle of the freeway and you could drive 100 miles per hour past a grade school. No one could rightly tell either one of us not to.
What kind of freedom would this be? Sure, we would all be free to drive however, whenever, wherever we wanted. But this freedom would be devastating and terrifying. I would have no real freedom to travel from Toronto to Ottawa; I would undoubtedly not make it far before finding myself in some kind of accident. We would be free to get killed in all kinds of original and awful ways. Freedom comes when we have rules and when we obey those rules.
Adam and Eve had freedom, didn’t they? They had true freedom—the freedom not to sin. And yet they also had rules. Or one rule, anyways. They were free to live before God but only if they lived within the boundary he gave them. You know how the story went. And human beings have been fighting boundaries ever since.
So I guess I see biblical manhood and womanhood through this lens. We experience a kind of freedom in submitting to the rules God has given us—the rules that tell us how men and women should relate and especially so within the church and within marriage. This opens up to us the freedom to live as he would have us live. It opens to us a freedom to understand the beauty of seeing things and doing things in God’s way. It allows us to see that, for all the supposed wisdom of men, God’s ways really are better.
I am a follower of Jesus Christ, a husband to Aileen and a father to three young children. I worship and serve as a pastor at 
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Comments (11)
Freedom totally does come from obeying God! I remember when I became I Christian and I was like, “This rocks, I don’t have hangovers any more!”
I love the illustration! When we are “free” to determine our own manner of behavior (in that case, driving), we are actually in bondage to uncertainty and anxiety. If we are “free” in this sense, so is everyone else. Therefore, the only certainty we have is our own behavior. We are enslaved by our cognitive limitations. The only freedom is a framework of laws to direct behavior universally.
Great post! Thanks!
Great analogy! I really enjoyed reading this.
Very good analogy Tim.
All of these translations say it so well. Our God is certainly a God of order!
1 Corinthians 14:33 NIV 33For God is not a God of disorder but of peace. As in all the congregations of the saints,1 Corinthians 14:33 AMP 33For He [Who is the source of their prophesying] is not a God of confusion and disorder but of peace and order. As [is the practice] in all the churches of the saints (God’s people),1 Corinthians 14:33 KJV 33For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.
The Trinitarian nature of our Creator is reflected in many human systems of order, one of the primary examples being that of marriage and family, having been instituted by God as one man, one woman, and their children. Our culture abhors the relationship order that is biblically dictated regarding a woman “submitting” to her husband. I believe that the biblical connotation of “submission” is lost to the (so called) modern man. But I also believe that the biblical connotation for the word “submission” in no way carries the “slave-ish” meaning that we automatically ascribe to it in these (so-called) modern times.
As Paul tells us in Ephesians 5 (NIV):
21Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
— We, as the body of Christ are to reverently submit to Christ. To serve Him as He came to serve us. Not as slaves, but out of love, as free servants. Now take this meaning of submission into the following text: —
22Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
— Keep in mind that we can’t fully fathom Christ’s love for His church; and yet we men are commanded to love our wives just as Christ loved the church! This is no small command! —
25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— 30for we are members of his body. 31”For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 32This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
— End of Ephesians 5 (NIV)
It is the ruler of the kingdom of the air that uses our worldly sense of fairness to weaken the family by culturally insisting on absolute perceived equality. The result is a family in chaos - divided on itself, or worse, a family without two parents at the distinct detriment of the third element, the children.
I recently heard about a secular study that stated (my paraphrase): That men valued most the respect that they received from their spouses. They desired respect even more than the expression of love, as they considered the respect they received to be an expression of faithful love. For the women in the study, they were more satisfied with the expression and demonstration of a committed love. They valued the reassurance and the way they were made to feel by the loving expressions and actions of their spouses. When I heard this I was struck by the correlation to:
Ephesians 2:25 25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church….Ephesians 2:33 33 …and the wife must respect her husband.
Tim, Does your church post your sermons? I’d like to read/hear your sermon…..!
Thanks for sharing this…great post and I like the example you used!
Thank you Tim. I had never thought about freedom that way. I appreciate the analogy, it is very helpful.
Great point: there is more freedom to men and women who understand the biblical roles of men and women. I appreciate that. And just like you pointed out, a city free of rules is a city full of wrecks. We’ve seen this ugly trend emerging for the last 50+ years.
My wife and I are pretty solidly egalitarian, and ours isn’t a “family in chaos”.
I guess I don’t see how the wife in a complementarian marriage is any more “free” than the wife in a loving, committed, mutually submitted egalitarian marriage.
Tim C.
I’m glad you posted on this. Gender difference is one of the most obvious things about us, but unfortunately, one of the most controversial stands to take.
If someone doubts gender differences, I just tell them to observe toddlers in free play. I then rest my case.
There’s one *small* issue I take with your illustration. If we are consistent with it, it implies that gender differences are conventional, much like traffic laws are conventional and created by society. The differences are inherent, though, by design. A better illustration, I’d think, is to compare denying complementarity with, say, putting milk in your gas tank.
The point is that if you cut across something’s design, it will only be a matter of time until something goes incredibly awry. It is the same with us; if we deny our God-ordained design as men and women, we will suffer as a result.
Some thoughts about your comments, Rich:
First, I’m not sure it’s all that controversial to admit that there are cognitive differences between men and women. Lots of secular, liberal folks have come to that conclusion as well in the pages of psychological and child development journals. The important thing to note is that such conclusions are made at a “trend” level. So while little girls might, on average, be more likely than little boys to play with dolls, that does not imply every little girl prefers dolls.
Moreover, that men and women exhibit cognitive differences does not necessarily imply the complementarian position with regard to male/female relationships.
Thank you for the courage to say what you need to say.Jo Ann Hernandezhttp://bronzeword.wordpress.com