“Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.” John 8:36
Two hundred and fifty years ago, a group of imperfect but remarkably courageous men signed their names to a document declaring that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights—among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They understood that human freedom is not a political invention. It is a divine endowment. No government gave it and no government can permanently take it away.
But today, as we celebrate this extraordinary milestone, I want to talk about a deeper freedom than the one secured by the Constitution. It’s the freedom no election can grant, no court can overturn, and no cultural movement can erode. I want to talk about the freedom that Jesus died to give us and what it actually looks like to live in it.
It’s the only freedom that stands the test of time!
The Bible explains the nature of true freedom:
“Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.” Romans 6:16–18
This is not the freedom the world or our enemy can offer. They tell us that freedom means having no master—answering to no one, living for ourselves, and following every appetite.
God’s Word makes it clear that genuine freedom is not the absence of authority; rather, it is the presence of the right one.
Every human being serves someone or something. The only question is whether your master is worthy of the beautiful life God has given you. There are only two masters—God, and anything that is not Him. Satan’s kingdom takes many glittery forms, and each one is a brutal, insatiable master that promises everything and delivers nothing. But Jesus is the only truly worthy Master because He paid the price for our relationship with His blood. Service to Him is, paradoxically, the most liberating experience for a human soul. When we surrender to Him out of loving obedience, we do not lose ourselves; we find our greatest freedom and purpose.
“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” Ephesians 2:10
As I look at the landscape of our nation on this 250th birthday, we, as Christians, must be careful not to fall into a couple of dangerous traps. They will rob us blind of the freedom Christ died to give us and leave us powerless to wage the spiritual warfare raging across the world! The great abundance God has given us often shifts our focus from 100% dependence upon God and produces two traps that will wreak havoc on our nation.
The first trap is focusing our identity on self-satisfaction. The Bible warns us plainly about this:
“For all that is in the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world.” 1 John 2:16
We are being schooled by algorithms designed to be as addictive as possible, keeping us endlessly hungry, scrolling, and comparing. We are told that the path to freedom runs straight through self-expression, self-fulfillment, and self-promotion. The enemy knows that if he can keep our greatest identity focused on self instead of found in God, he can destroy a nation. How do we measure up as a nation? Well, the statistics don’t lie.
For example, loneliness in America has reached what the Surgeon General calls “epidemic.” In the most connected, most entertained, most self-expressive generation in human history, young people are reporting the highest levels of isolation, anxiety, and purposelessness ever recorded. We have more ways to be seen than at any point in human history, and yet feel more invisible than ever before. Studies now show that the average American spends nearly seven hours a day consuming digital content, and rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide have climbed in almost direct proportion to that consumption. This is not a coincidence. Social media has become one of the most efficient engines of producing what Galatians chapter 5 predicts—that is, “envy, outbursts of wrath, contention, and selfish ambition.” It appears to be at levels our culture has never seen before. We watch our screens, fill with rage, and then pick up our phones and add to it.
We are watching dissension and hatred metastasize in real time—in our comment sections, in our town halls, and even at our family dinner tables. Political identity has become so all-consuming that researchers now find Americans are more likely to object to their child marrying someone of a different political party than someone of a different faith. Contention has become our native tongue. Selfish ambition is rebranded as empowerment. Outbursts of wrath are repackaged as authenticity.
And underneath all of it—the performing, the outrage, and the carefully curated self-presentation—there is an entire generation desperately thirsty for truth that will bring relevance and satisfaction. We all know that we can only hit the “self-satisfaction button” so many times before it stops working. There is an end to self, and it is emptiness. Paul described the fruit of a tragic life lived after the flesh:
“Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like.” Galatians 5:19–21
This is not freedom; rather, it is bondage dressed in the language of liberation. And deep down, I think most people know it.
The second trap I see growing rapidly is people forming their identity around their damage. We live in a cultural climate that encourages us to build our sense of self around our wounds, our struggles, and our grievances. The result? We are a culture defined more by what has been done to us than by who God says we are. Our struggles are what are central instead of our God-given capacity to overcome them. We have exchanged resilience for despair. We are incapable of having the energy of righteous concern for others because we are constantly running on fumes of our own consuming rage. Our rights are our guide, and they have been violated; thus, we have the right to react.
My friend, if you have been born again, then in Christ, you are much, much more than the sum of your circumstances.
While the Bible does not minimize suffering, it refuses to let suffering have the final word. Paul wrote, shackled to the wall of a Roman prison cell with scars on his back, and said:
“I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Philippians 4:11–13
This is not the voice of a man defined by his damage; it is the voice of a man who discovered that his identity is anchored in Christ.
This is where we need to be as individuals who make a strong nation! Human value and dignity are not granted by governments, social movements, or the approval of others. They are stamped into our DNA by God Himself at the moment of creation:
“So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” Genesis 1:27
We bear the image of God. That image is not diminished by our background, our ethnicity, our failures, our bank account, or the cruelty of this culture. No oppressor, no cultural narrative, and no personal failure can beat the image of God out of us.
Our value was given by God, and therefore no human being has the authority to take it away!
This means we do not have to enter the toxic, exhausting, soul-diminishing cycle of confronting those who mock and scorn us with reciprocating hatred. We do not have to become evil while fighting evil. We do not have to endure the crushing weight of our anger at injustice until that anger consumes the very freedom we are fighting to protect. Instead, we are called to something far more powerful:
“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” Romans 12:21
We overcome—not by descending into the lowlands of the toxic sociopolitical landscape that surrounds us, but by rising above it—and living in such an unmistakably different attitude that the contrast itself becomes the most compelling evidence of our freedom.
And what does that attitude look like?
God’s Word gives us a rich, vivid, and deeply personal picture of living in His wisdom:
“But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic. For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.” James 3:14–17
Pure. Peaceable. Gentle. Willing to yield. Full of mercy. Without hypocrisy. Read that list slowly, and then look at your social media feed. The contrast is not subtle. The wisdom the world is currently operating on—bitter, envious, self-seeking, and demonic—is producing confusion and every evil thing. But the wisdom from above produces something so strikingly different that it has the power to defeat evil. The strength to actually live in God’s wisdom comes only from Him. Isaiah explains God’s power to the weak in a time when Israel was experiencing deeply discouraging and turbulent times:
“He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might He increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, but those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” Isaiah 40:29–31
God’s strength is not a performance-driven strength the world produces—the kind that burns hot and collapses under pressure. His strength is the deep, steady, replenishing strength that flows freely when we allow God to run our lives. It is the strength that does not depend on favorable circumstances, political outcomes, or the approval of the culture around us. It is the strength that carries us above the lowlands of rage and despair.
In the soil of our surrender, we experience a wisdom-filled, God-strengthened life. No government can legislate this miracle. We cannot produce it on our own through willpower. It is a fruit that belongs entirely to God:
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.” Galatians 5:22–23
“Against such there is no law.” This fruit grows in only one soil—the surrendered life of a born-again believer who has chosen Jesus as Master and is deepening their relationship with Him daily. And when others see this fruit, they are drawn to Jesus, the Prince of Peace. When they unshakable peace in the face of hatred, they want to know where it comes from. When they see unshakeable peace in the face of despair, they feel the poverty of their own anxiety. When they see a person who has every reason to be bitter choosing instead to be kind, it raises questions. The early church turned the Roman Empire upside down, not through political power, but through the irresistible, inexplicable, supernatural fruit of God’s Spirit flowing through people who were genuinely free.
This is how we will change our nation on its 250th birthday.
It won’t happen primarily through legislation or debate, though those things matter. Rather, it will happen through the steady, gloriously subversive power of men and women who have found in Jesus the freedom that every person longs for. God’s presence flowing unfettered through us affects everyone around us. The faith that was the foundation of this country was never meant to be a private, internal, keep-it-to-yourself affair. It was always meant to be visible and contagious.
It was never meant to stay inside the four walls of a church building on Sunday morning.
God’s presence should permeate every single layer of human culture and society. Imagine what happens when God’s wisdom—pure, peaceable, gentle, full of mercy, and without hypocrisy—begins to shape the way a teacher treats a struggling student in a public school classroom. Imagine what happens in a large corporation, where decisions affecting thousands are guided not by bitter envy and selfish ambition, but by the wisdom that comes from above. Imagine it in the halls of government, where contention and self-seeking have become so normalized that genuine servant leadership would be as startling and disruptive as a light suddenly switched on in a dark room. Imagine it on the athletic field, where the watching eyes of young people are constantly searching for models of what strength, resilience, and genuine character actually look like. Imagine it in our families—the most foundational and most embattled institution in American life—where children are learning every single day what it looks like to handle conflict, disappointment, injustice, and failure.
This is how nations change.
Not from the top down through the imposition of power, but from the inside out through the transformation of people—one surrendered life at a time, one family at a time, one neighborhood at a time. The Founding Fathers understood that the great experiment of American liberty could only survive in the soil of a virtuous people. John Adams wrote that the Constitution was designed only for a moral and religious people and was wholly inadequate for the government of any other. He was right then. He is right now.
Two hundred and fifty years in, the path forward is the same as it has always been—men and women who are so genuinely, visibly, and irresistibly free in Jesus Christ that everyone around them feels the pull to Him. That is the freedom God intended for every human. This is the freedom that has the power to renew a nation on its 250th birthday.
“Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” 2 Corinthians 3:17
Prayer:
Father, on this birthday of a nation that was founded on the remarkable idea that You are the source of human dignity and freedom, I confess that I have sometimes looked for that freedom in all the wrong places. I have chased self-satisfaction and found emptiness. I have let my wounds define me more than Your Word. I have been tempted to fight the darkness by becoming part of it. Forgive me. Today, I choose You as my Master out of the deep, grateful, loving obedience. Grow Your fruit in me. Let the freedom You purchased for me be so visible, so genuine, and so irresistible that it draws everyone around me toward You. Let me be part of the great renewal of this nation—not through rage or despair, but through the overflow of a life that is genuinely, deeply, and unmistakably free. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
