Are you free? I guess that would depend on how you look at the question. If you live in the United States, you would answer that question with a yes, since it is a free country. But even then, would it really be true?

What I’m talking about is personal freedom. Freedom from our personal addictions, freedom from our vices, freedom from our insecurities, freedom from those things that hold us back. I’m afraid a lot of us would say that we are not free from those things. But even if we were, would we really be free?

I guess that depends on how you look at freedom. What does it mean to be truly free? Is there even such a thing? You see, freedom is a paradox. The more liberated you become of something, the more controlled you will become to something else.

Take these ideas for example:

• Let’s say you’d like to win freedom over laziness. To win freedom over laziness the more controlled by discipline you will become.
• What about self-indulgence? If you want freedom from self-indulgence, you’ll have to become more enchained to self-control.
• Instead of being a slave to sin, we have to become slaves of righteousness.–Ro. 6:15-19

Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey? –Ro. 6:16

So which is it for you? Are you free in the freedom that brings life, or are you enslaved to the things that you obey?

Freedom is a paradox.