Freedom = Obedience = Freedom

I will run in the way of your commandments when you enlarge my heart. (Psalm 119:32)
I will keep your law continually, forever and ever, and I shall walk in a wide place, for I have sought your precepts. (Psalm 119:44-45)

What is the first thought that comes to your mind when you hear the words law, rules, or commandments? If you’re like me, I suspect you think of limitation, restriction, or constraint, but certainly not freedom.

Yet freedom is what the writer of Psalm 119 envisions when he thinks of keeping God’s Law. The picture he paints is one of walking or running in a wide place. Whenever I read these verses I think of that majestic scene in The Sound of Music when Julie Andrews, on top of a flower-filled mountain surrounded by a breathtaking view, opens wide her arms, heart, and voice singing “The hills are alive with the sound of music….” I think that picture is just a glimmer of the freedom the psalmist says God’s Law gives him.

These verses offer two perspectives on this law and freedom connection. In verse 35 the psalmist claims that freedom leads to law-keeping: the Hebrew reads “I will run in the way of your commandments for you set my heart free.” God has freed the psalmist’s heart and as a result he begins to run in the paths of loving God and loving others. But by contrast, in verse 45 the psalmist suggests that law-keeping leads to freedom: “I shall walk in a wide place for I have sought your precepts.” Following the paths of loving God and loving others leads to a wide open freedom that one who does not seek God's Law will never know.

As is often the case when we meditate on God’s Word, we find ourselves in tension between two seemingly opposing truths. But I believe these two truths work together this way: When God sets our hearts free we will obey His laws. Obeying the Law of God feels like and is freedom because we were made to live in loving relationship to God and others.

Remember, Paul taught “where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom” and that the Spirit is the one who is shaping us into the image of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18), the perfect Law-Keeper. How so? Think of the New Covenant (it was clearly on Paul’s mind here) in which God promises to “put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules” (Ezekiel 36:27). When we have the Spirit, we have freedom from our slavish self-centeredness. That same Spirit also gives us a new desire and power we never had before: the desire and the power to obey God's Law.

So, how do we receive this Spirit and His freedom? We become participants in the New Covenant, receiving His Spirit and freedom from bondage to sin, when we trust the true message of the Gospel, that the blood of Christ crucified is the payment for our breaking the Royal Law of God (John 8:31-36, James 2:8-10, Luke 22:20, Galatians 3:1-5). The Spirit we receive by believing the Gospel not only sets us free from bondage to sin, but also releases us to a life of loving God and others, according to the “law of liberty” (James 1:25, 2:12).

"The world counts obedience to be a mean-spirited thing, and speaks of rebellion as freedom," C. H. Spurgeon once wrote. But perhaps the idea of equating obedience to God’s rules with unfettered freedom is not so strange for those who have the Spirit of Truth living in them, making them more and more able to abound in love for God and others (John 16:13, 17:17, Philippians 1:9-11).

"For freedom Christ has set us free...For you were called to freedom, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another" (Galatians 5:1, 13). If you have the Spirit you are free to obey. So, open your life wide and love!