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Confess your sins to one another (James 5:16).Have the same care for one another (1 Cor.Live in harmony with one another (Rom.Outdo one another in showing honor (Rom.The New Testament highlights the significance of sharing life together with the reciprocal pronoun “one another:” How do we overcome this? Jesus offers us freedom but his freedom is all about togetherness, not independence.
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#Declare your freedom how to#
With all our technological gadgetry we know how to keep track of each other and yet we really can’t depend on one another. Our lives, our souls, our decisions, our gifts, not to mention our homes and pocketbooks, are still very much our own and kept safe from others. We, however, can only manage to assemble and associate and link our lives at ever increasing distances. Their life involved a common, daily, material existence of unity and sharing. They were devoted to each other, and woven together in mutual care. Consider the word “fellowship.” In Acts the early Christians “devoted themselves to the fellowship.” They did not just have food and fellowship, they were a fellowship. Even our language betrays such superficiality. Shallow, virtual friendships and fragile, disposable relationships mark not only our society but also the church. When we fail to be connected to one another we not only become alienated from God and others, but from our deepest selves.īut what does it mean to connect? Sadly, superficiality is a disease of our time. Interdependence, not independence, is God’s pattern for life. We are spiritually healthy insofar as the fabric of our lives is interwoven with each other. The New Testament teaches that we are members of one another (1 Cor. Freedom involves the capacity to love, of forging bonds with others that make love possible. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature rather, serve one another in love” (Gal. Thus the apostle Paul writes: “You were called to be free. Freedom has to do with capacity, not just possibility. The opposite of freedom is not restraint, but impotence. And because the weight has vanished, the clock cannot run, the ship steers wildly – and for this reason human life has become a whirlpool.”
#Declare your freedom free#
To be truly free “there must be weight,” wrote Kierkegaard, “just as the clock’s works need a heavy weight in order to run properly, and the ship needs ballast. A finger severed from the hand is not free!įreedom is not the right to do one’s own thing on one’s own terms regardless of others. With this image in mind, we must realize that freedom is not the same as independence. It is incongruous and not quite human removed from the body it is horrendously out of place. The thought of a dismembered body part, like a severed finger or toe, both shocks and repulses us.