A Free Gospel and Free People
Wednesday, January 1, 2025
New Year’s Day
Richard Rohr expresses the liberation the gospel offers when freed from our cultural and religious expectations:
Without God’s definition of freedom, we will continue to use the gospel as if it were a product that can be bought, sold, imposed, or attained. The gospel is not a competing ideology that’s threatened by anything outside itself. It is the light of the world that illuminates the whole household; it is the yeast and not the whole loaf; it is the salt that gives flavor and nutrition to the much larger meal (see Matthew 5:13–15, 13:33).
Once we can accept that Jesus has given us an illuminating lens by which to see and measure all things, we can no longer treat Christianity as a threat—or allow it to be a threat—to human or cultural freedom. In fact, it is true freedom’s greatest ally. The gospel is a process much more than a product, a style more than a structure, a person more than a production. It is a way of being in the world that will always feel like compassion, mercy, and spaciousness—at least to honest and healthy people.
The gospel stands against death; it equally critiques every culture, and is identical with no culture or institution, even the church. As John’s Gospel states so poetically, the Spirit blows where it will (see John 3:8). How different and healing Western history could have been if we had received such gospel freedom and modeled it for others!
Jesus has not come to impose Christendom like an imperial system. The gospel flourishes in the realm of true freedom. I don’t think Jesus ever expected the whole world would become formally Christian, but I do believe that his truth about right relationship, his proclamation of the power of powerlessness, is the message that will save the world from self-destruction and for an eternal truth. This is how Jesus is the “Savior of the World.” He does it by choosing a minority position, entering Jerusalem on a donkey.
Jesus has a different understanding of personal freedom. Freedom is not the capacity to be what we are not, but the capacity to be fully who we already are, to develop our inherent selves as much as divine time and circumstances allow. The perfect and full freedom of a fig tree is to become a perfect and full fig tree. Thus, Jesus curses one that does not (see Matthew 21:19). Many of us are like sick or dead fig trees, but with happy faces painted on our anemic fruit shouting, “But I’m free!” Our addictive society will do what it wants to do, but the freedom offered by all great spiritual traditions is quite different: spiritual and true freedom is wanting to do what we have to do to become who we are.
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Sarah Young Jesus Calling
Jesus Calling: January 1st, 2025
Jesus Calling: January 1st
Come to Me with a teachable spirit, eager to be changed. A close walk with Me is a life of continual newness. Do not cling to old ways as you step into a new year. Instead, seek My Face with an open mind, knowing that your journey with Me involves being transformed by the renewing of your mind. As you focus your thoughts on Me, be aware that I am fully attentive to you. I see you with a steady eye, because My attention span is infinite. I know and understand you completely; My thoughts embrace you in everlasting Love. I also know the plans I have for you: plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Give yourself fully to this adventure of increasing attentiveness to My Presence.
RELATED SCRIPTURE:
Romans 12:2 NLT
Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.
Jeremiah 29:11 NLT
For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.
