Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Sent to Bring Freedom

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

Does becoming a Christian mean the end of your freedom? Is a relationship with Jesus Christ a radical challenge to your freedom? The answer is yes and no. But ultimately, no. Now I know somebody’s going to say that sounds like an ambiguous answer, but actually, it’s a complex answer.  In John 8, Jesus teaches about freedom. Jesus shows us 1) the complexity of freedom, 2) the enemy of freedom, 3) the ultimate source of freedom and the true liberator. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 2, 2016. Series: Jesus, Mission, and Glory: New Purpose. Scripture: John 8:31-36; 56-59. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

What does it mean to be sent as a disciple of Christ? What is the mission of Jesus' followers in the world? Today on Gospel in Life, Tim Keller is teaching on what it means to be sent out into the world as a follower of Christ. After you listen, we'd appreciate it if you would take time to rate and review the podcast. Your rating and review will encourage others to listen so they can experience the joy and beauty of the gospel because the gospel really does change everything. Now here's today's teaching from Dr. Keller.

The scripture reading this morning is from the book of John, chapter 8 verses 31 to 36, and then verses 56 to 59. To the Jews who had believed in Him, Jesus said, if you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples, then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. They answered him, we are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves of anyone.

How can you say that we shall be set free? Jesus replied, very truly I tell you, everyone whose sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed. Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day.

He saw it and was glad. You were not yet 50 years old, they said to him. And you have seen Abraham. Very truly, I tell you, Jesus answered, before Abraham was born, I am. At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself slipping away from the temple grounds. The word of the Lord. Some years ago, Mark Lilla wrote an article in the New York Times magazine.

He's a humanities professor at Columbia, and he said that when he was a teenager, he flirted with what he called born again Christianity. He flirted with it. And then he read the chapter in the Bible about being born again. It's chapter 3 where Jesus is talking in Nicodemus and telling him, you must be born again. So Mark Lillah was thinking about the born again thing and then he read the chapter on what it meant

to be born again and this is what he said. He wrote, Jesus seems to be telling Nicodemus that he must recognize his insufficiency, turn his back on his autonomous happy life, and be reborn as one who understands his dependence on something greater. That seems like a radical challenge to our freedom. And it is, unquote. In other words, he decided not to go forward with the born again thing, because he said that sounds like a radical challenge to our freedom.

And it is. So is it? Is a relationship with Jesus Christ mean a radical challenge to your freedom? Does becoming a Christian mean the end of your freedom? And the answer is yes and no, but ultimately no. Yes and no, but ultimately no. Now I know, somebody's going to say, that sounds like an ambiguous answer, but ultimately no. Now, I know some of you are going to say,

that sounds like an ambiguous answer, but actually it's a complex answer. It's not ambiguous, it's complex, and that's actually the first point. These six verses basically, 31 to 36, here we have Jesus teaching about freedom. And in verses 31 to 32, Jesus shows us the complexity of freedom. And in verses 31 to 32, Jesus shows us the complexity of freedom. In verses 33 and 34, He shows us the ultimate enemy of freedom. And in verse 35 and 36, He shows us the ultimate source

of freedom or the true liberator. So the complexity of freedom, the enemy of freedom, and the liberator. First of all, let's talk about the complexity. So verse 31, 32, to the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, if you hold my teaching, if you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples, and then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Now verse 32 says, you can be free, but 31 says, if and only if you hold to my teaching. Now the word hold, we'll get back to that actually, but again, this whole year, because it's the word that means to embrace, to live with, to obey, to live in, to it's a very strong word. So, to embrace an obeyed Christ teaching means what?

Well, as teaching it means, believe this, not that. Do this, not that. And so what Jesus is actually saying is, you'll only be free if you accept my constraints. Now needless to say, that's exactly the opposite of what your culture, the modern American culture tells you, is the definition of freedom. What does a modern American culture say is the definition of freedom? Well, Isaiah Berlin, 20th century political philosopher at Oxford for many years, has a very famous

article on freedom in which he says that the dominant modern Western understanding of freedom is what he calls absolute negative freedom. An absolute negative freedom is freedom from, not freedom for, that's positive freedom, freedom from. The way we think about freedom is it's freedom from which means freedom as the absence of all constraints on our choices. So the fewer interferences, the fewer limitations and the fewer constraints I have on my choices, the more free I am. And if anything constrains me, anything limits me, anything interferes with me,

choosing whatever I want to choose, I am less free. Now, Isaiah Berlin says that is, and that is, the dominant understanding of freedom, freedom as the absence of constraints freedom from. But he said, and I'm saying to you, and it's reflected in what Jesus says, that simplistic and unworkable, that, that simplistic and unworkable definition is simplistic and unworkable.

That's not the way freedom works. How so? Okay, well, let me give you an extraordinarily simple answer. Here's an older man, and there are certain foodstuffs that he really enjoys, that they give joy to his life, eats them every day. They are a major part of his happiness and comfort. And a doctor comes along, those nasty doctors,

and says, you must completely stop eating these things, so you're going to have a heart attack, and you'll either die, or you will spend the rest of your shortened life in bed. And so now, what does freedom mean for this man? See, in the modern world, says freedom is the ability to do whatever you choose, do whatever you desire, right? That's freedom. But what happens when your desire is contradict?

Because he hits desire is contradict. On the one hand, he really wants to eat those foods. On the other hand, he really doesn't want to die. He'd like to live and have good health. And immediately, again, to see that this is the way actually life works. And that is what will freedom be for that man? Freedom will be his willingness to choose the less, to choose the more liberating desires over the more confining desires. He's got two sets of desires. He's got two freedoms, the freedom to eat, what he wants and how that sensory joy, and the freedom to live a longer life.

And what he's going to have to do is he's going to have to strategically lose one freedom in order to gain another one. You can't have them both. He's going to have to strategically constrain some of his desires in order to fulfill other desires. And right away you begin to see how simplistic why Isaiah Abrilin says, it's just silly, to say freedom is the absence of constraints. No, no. Freedom is choosing the liberating constraints in every situation.

Freedom is a strategic loss of some freedoms to gain other freedoms by choosing the liberating constraints. And by the way, you can see that, can't you? There's some pretty good music going on up here. I am not free to do that, are you? Most of you are not free to do that, you know why? Because years ago, when they were eight and nine and ten years old and all the other kids they were age were out playing, they were just doing practice, practice, practice. What did happen?

In other words, they accepted certain constraints. They accepted constraints, but they were liberating constraints because they liberated them to be able to play, to have a career, to play. Freedom is not the absence of constraints, it's the accepting of liberating constraints. It's not doing anything you want, it's doing the liberating things. And that immediately shows the complexity of freedom, right? But right away, it raises a bunch of other questions like how do you know what those liberating constraints are?

And why don't we choose them? Why do people not feel free? And the answer comes in the second two verses, where Jesus tries to show us the ultimate enemy of freedom. Now, before I even read the verses, let me say that in our culture, not only does our culture define freedom in a reductionistic, flat, unworkable simplistic way,

freedom is just, you know, maximal choice. Freedom is just the absence of constraints. But it also tends to tell you that the enemy of your freedom is outside. It's out there. It's people in society. It's forces out there that are keeping you back. The way the modern world thinks is, you have a desire to be free, you want to express your true self, and there's things out there that are keeping you from being what you want to be and fulfilling your desires. So the enemies of freedom are out there. Jesus says no, no, no.

Yeah, there are enemies out there. Of course there are. Of course there are oppressive forces. I don't mean there's not. But Jesus says the ultimate enemy of your freedom is in here, in you. Because he says, this is verse 33 and 34, I'm sorry, they answered him, we are Abraham's descendants, and we have never been slaves of anybody.

How can you say we shall be set free? Jesus replied very truly, I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now, first of all, who's these people? It says to the Jews who had believed him. Notice it doesn't say believed in him. So these are people who are supportive, they think. But as you're going to see at the end of the conversation,

they actually try to kill him. So they're already up here in verses 33 and 34. They're already starting to get disillusioned with him. Why? Well, his statement when he says, if you hold to my teaching, then you will be free. Well, what is the implication of that? The implication is that they're slaves right now. What he's actually saying in verse 32 is,

unless I intervene with my teaching, the gospel, unless I come into your life with a gospel, you are a slave. So you are a slave unless I help you. And they are really insulted. And they say, we are Abraham's descendants, and have never been slaves of anyone. Now, technically, by the way, Abraham's descendants, as Jews, they were, they technically, of course, have been,

they were slaves in Egypt. They were exiles in Babylon, and right now the Roman government is occupying them. But what they must mean is, hey, we are Abraham's descendants, and we have an inward spiritual freedom. How dare you say we're an inward spiritual, you know, that we're not free? It says, how can you say we should be set free? We're fine, we're perfectly free. And Jesus says, no, inwardly you're not free, you're a slave. You know why? Because inside every human heart is sin.

And sin is the ultimate enemy of freedom. Now Jesus doesn't go on to explain that, but you do have the rest of the Bible, and the rest of the Bible does explain that, and there's so many ways in which the Bible explains it, and I wish I had time, but I don't. I'm only going to bring out two ways that what the Bible says about sin, two ways in which sin is the enemy of freedom. The first way is this. Sin is our disobedience of our creator. I mean, that may be obvious to you.

According to the Bible, sin is disobeying your creator. So, for example, you, well, put it this way. When I say sin, I don't just mean that you do it. I mean that you resist obeying God. You know, when I was a young teenager, sometimes it's hard to believe because I'm kind of a neat knick now,

but when I was a young teenager, my bedroom used to be incredibly dirty all the time. I kept it filthy. And every so often I realized, look, either I clean this up or it's dysentery or something like that. And I just, but if I was on my way to cleaning up my room and my mother said, Tim, when are you

going to clean up your room? It's a mess. I would just do a U-turn. OK, she told me to do it, then I'm not doing it. I know I need to do it, but is she told me? Because deep inside, this is sin. Deep inside, the human heart, there is an impulse that says this, nobody tells me how to live my life.

It's deep inside. You haven't heard that? Go listen. Will you just listen to yourself? It's deep inside you. And of course, all sorts of things, including mothers telling you to clamp your room, brings it out, but actually, of course, the ultimate trigger of that impulses God himself. And so when God tells you, obey the Ten Commandments, that's His Law, obey the

golden rule, sermon on the Mount, when He tells you how to live, if he's your creator, which he is, then that's not just busy work. It's your owner's manual, as it were. So like if you buy a car, the creator of the car gives you a manual, and it says, you can't just drive this car any way you want. Sorry, no absolute negative freedom for car owners. You actually have to change the world at certain intervals or you'll die. You have to put in certain kinds of gas or it will die.

And let me give you an extreme example, even though I'm sure Silicon Valley is going to change this soon. But right now, if you see a car going on the street under its own power and there's a five-year-old behind the wheel. You know bad things are about to happen because there's not a car in the world built to be driven by a five-year-old. Decintegration is going to happen. It's going to go into a building or into a tree or maybe the child will be heard. Maybe somebody else will be heard.

Terrible. Why? Because the design of the car is being violated. And when you break the rules of the manual from the creator of the car is being violated. And when you break the rules of the manual from the creator of the car, you're actually breaking the car. You're destroying your own investment, maybe destroying yourself. Ah, when you eat that food,

when the doctor tells you not to, you're violating the physical design. You're going against your physical reality. If you violate the owners manual, you're going against the cars reality. Ah, but if God says, you must not lie, you must not commit adultery, you must forgive, and you don't do it.

You're violating your own soul, you're violating your own nature. You're moving against yourself, you're destroying yourself, and that will always lead to a loss of freedom. So, I'll just give you a quick example. The Bible says you must forgive, you must forgive. Why? All right? You were created in the image of God who is a forgiver. I mean, if there's anything God does, he forgives. But you're made in His image, the Bible says, which means, unless you forgive, you're out

of accord with your own design. It's estimated that most of us spend half of our waking hours at work. How does the wisdom of the Bible apply to our careers? In other words, how can our work connect with God's work and help us make our vocations more emotional? In His book, Every Good Endeavour, Tim Keller draws from decades of teaching on work and calling to show you how to find true joy in your work as you serve God and others. The book offers surprising insights into how the Christian view of work can provide the foundation of a thriving

professional and balanced personal life. Every Good good endeavor is our thank you for your gift to help Gospel and Life share Christ's love with more people around the world. Just visit gospelandlife.com slash give. That's gospelandlife.com slash give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. So let's just say somebody really wrongs you and you don't forgive.

You'll hold a grudge, you're resentful. You nurse that bitterness. What's going to happen to you? Okay, in the short run, it's actually going to feel pretty good, by the way. Have you ever done that? It feels pretty good to hate somebody who is really wronged you and to think about all the bad things you would like to see happen to them, it kind of feels good. You know, it kind of blows off steam and that sort of thing for a while.

But eventually it's like a five-year-old driving a car. It's going to be disintegration. Your body could be heard by that anger. Your relationships will be heard and distorted by that anger. Your ability to trust people will be heard by that anger. Your moving against yourself. And so the impulse in the human heart, which is to say, nobody tells me what to do.

When it comes to the law of God, we just resist the law of God, but he's our creator, and therefore, when you violate the law of your creator, you're violating yourself, and therefore all kinds of psychological and emotional and physical things go wrong because you're not honoring your own nature. So the first reason that sin is the ultimate cause of the problems in your life, the enslavements in your life, physical, emotional, social, relational is because you resist

obeying your creator. But the second way sin is an enemy of freedom is this. Sin is not just disobedience to the law. That's true. By the way, you can look it up in first John, other places in the New Testament, and says sin is transgression of the law of God. But another thing that Bible tells us about sin is its self-centeredness. It's trying to use people rather than serve them. Another way the Bible defines sin is self-centeredness and you move into relationships

trying to use the person to serve your needs. Me first, my needs first. Your needs are not as important as my needs, what matters as my needs are served. That's another thing the Bible says is the characteristics of the human heart. That self-centeredness, that desire to, the desire to live for your own self-interest.

Now, you see, by the way, why the modern idea freedom is so popular. It's pretty popular. Because the modern idea freedom is that I should be free to choose whatever I want to do and nobody should, in any way, impinge on those freedoms. And of course it goes along with what the Bible says about self-centeredness.

Of course you're going to want that. But here's what you need to see. Self-centeredness destroys love, which is your ultimate freedom. And therefore, anyone who sins is a slave of sin. What do I mean? All right. Well, some years ago in a magazine I read, an interview with Francois Sagan, and Francois Sagan was a French novelist and writer. And I think this was this interview happened a little later in her life. And at one point, she was saying that the most important value for her was freedom.

That she should be free to live her life the way she chose. And she definitely defined freedom the modern way. She says, that was the most important thing in my life. So the interviewer says, well, have you, did you achieve it? He says, have you had the freedom that you wanted, that you saw it? And she thought about it and she says, have you had the freedom that you wanted, that you saw it? And she thought about it and she says, yes, well, I was not free when I was in love, but fortunately, one is not in love all the time.

And apart from those times, yes, I've been free. Okay. Now, first of all, she's being absolutely consistent. She is using freedom the way I say it, April and the way the modern culture uses the word freedom, and she's using freedom to say the absolute absence of any constraints on my choices. And everybody knows that when you get into a love relationship,

even begin to get into a love relationship, a friendship, a romantic relationship, even the beginnings of a love relationship, you start to lose your independence. If you're dating somebody, you can't just go out of town on the weekend and not tell him or her, right? So it's already a little bit constrained, and the more you go into that love relationship, the deeper the love relationship gets, the deeper the relationship, the longer the relationship goes, the more and more you lose your independence because each of you is tending to sacrifice for the other.

You're giving up the needs, your own needs, to meet the needs the other, and that person is giving up his or her needs, to meet your needs. And as that's happening, of course, you're going more and more into a love relationship, but you're losing your independence. She's absolutely right. You can be free in the modern notion, or you can be in love, but you can't do both. Because love destroys freedom, which means if you're gonna hold on to freedom, you have to limit the amount of love. But wait a minute. Wait a minute. When are you truly, truly, truly? When do you truly, truly, truly, truly, when do you truly feel the way that word freedom

is supposed to mean? And what I'm trying to say is, when you talk about being free, don't you mean all your capacities firing on all cylinders, joy, a sense that you're being and doing what you were made to do and be. If a fish is out here on the stage, if I put a fish out here on the stage at Portfish, it's going to flop around and it's going to gasp. But put it back in the water. It's energy returns and it darts away like lightning. Beacuse why? Because in the water, all of its capacities come online

and are engaged. Why? Because it was designed for the water, not for the stage. What is the water for human soul? What is the environment in which all of our capacities come online, including those for happiness? Love. And so look, if you have an understanding of freedom

that makes it necessary to avoid being in love or love relationships in order to be free, then you've got a freedom that's gonna destroy your freedom ironically, in other words, because you won't give up independence, you'll never know real freedom. And Jesus says, the human heart naturally is self-centered. The reason why, by the way, every person in this room who's in any kind of love relationship,

relationships in a family, relationships in a marriage, one of the reasons why it's not completely placid and wonderful, one of the reasons why you fight, one of the reasons why you have the problems you do. Maybe I just speak for myself. It's your self-centeredness. It's sin that keeps you from being completely at home in the water of love. And therefore Jesus Christ says, anyone who sins, that is to say, you won't listen to your maker and you won't obey Him, which means you're going against the very fabric. You might say the grain of the universe,

the grain of your own nature, because you're out of touch with reality, your physical, your social, your spiritual reality. And if you're self-centered so that it erodes, love relationships, giving yourself to another person, now you begin to see that the ultimate reason that we are enslaved in all the various ways in which we are is because of what's inside.

It's sin. So then the question goes up, how do we get liberated? And who will liberate us? And of course the answer is Jesus, but let's take a look at how he puts it. It's verse 35 and 36. And then ultimate answer goes to the very end of the conversation, but let's read 35 and 36, and then ultimate answer comes at the very end of the conversation, but let's read 35 and 36. So Jesus says, now a slave has no permanent place

in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed. Ah, okay, first of all. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. Jesus is assuming that you all have seen Downton Abbey. Maybe it'd be better to say, if you've seen Downton Abbey,

it's little easier to explain what he means. And that is this. Here's the big house, and here's the Lord of the Manor, and there are children in the big house, the Lord's children are in the big house, but also all the domestic servants live in the big house too. And you might live in the big house and in the manor and you might have a good relationship

with the Lord of the Manor and the Lord of the Manor might have like you to, but in the end your relationship with the Lord of the Manor is not permanent. Why? It's based on good works. As long as you are up to standards, as long as you do your job, as long as you obey the rules, you can live there and you're paid. But if you disobey the rules, we might like each other, but you're out. And so your relationship with the Lord is done by, is on good works. But the relationship of the Lord to the children is permanent love. You know, if a domestic is rebellious and disobeys the Lord of the Manor, you're out.

If a son or daughter is rebellious and disobeys the Lord of the Manor, it just creates tears and actually more engagement because a father or mother, of course, they're good and bad parents. But in general, a father or mother when your employee acts up, they're fired, when a child acts up, you just go into major, caring and loving mode and relational mode because your relationship with a child is one of unconditional love.

It's not based on good works. Jesus says, first of all, here, it won't be enough for you to pick up the Bible. That owner's manual. See, one of the first things Jesus telling us here is, yeah, somebody says, oh, OK. So I've got to obey the law of God if I'm going to fit my own nature.

Good. So I'm going to obey the law of God so that my life goes well and he has to bless me. But see, in that sense, God is still your boss, not your father. God is still someone in a sense who you are relating to through your good works and it's slavish. If you're just saying, I'm going to be really religious, I'm going to good at church, I'm going to live a good life, I'm going to obey the Ten Commandments, then my life will go well and God will bless me. Yes, that's a step. I guess in a good direction in a way,

because your life is more aligned with the manual of the creator, but you're going to be filled with anxiety, because you never know whether you're living a good enough life for God. You're going to be filled with anger because very often, you won't feel like God is rewarding you for your good works. You're going to be very often competitive with other people and needing to denounce other people

to feel better about yourself. You're gonna be self-righteous. You're gonna be a slave. Because what Jesus is saying is the only way that the sin in your life, which is destroying your freedom, will really, really begin to be healed, put aside, eroded, is if you no longer look to God as a boss.

So you can't just get religious and obedient. You've got to see, you've got to become sons, and the only one who can make you a son or a daughter and not just a slave or a servant is me. Well, how does he do that? Well, frankly, at the very end, the end of this conversation, this conversation starts up at verse 31, ends down here at verse 56 to 59, see what happens. Jesus says, your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day. He says, you're talking about Abraham, your Abraham's descendants. Well, listen, your father Abraham rejoiced

at the thought of seeing my day, he saw it and was glad. You were not 50 years old, they said, you've seen Abraham? Abraham seeing you? What? And Jesus says, very, very, very, very, truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am. At this, they picked up stones to stone them, but Jesus hit himself slipping away from the temple grounds. Now, first of all, here's what he's saying. He doesn't say before Abraham was born, I was. That's the normal way you would use grammar.

When he says before Abraham was, I am. He is saying, my name is the name that the God gave to Moses in the burning bush. When God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, he said, I am has sent you. And Jesus Christ is claiming to the divine name. He's trying to say, I'm God. You know, that old Christmas hymn, the old Christmas hymn is talking to the shepherds and the animals and the stable. And it says,

the royal guest you entertain is not of common birth. But second in the great I am, the God of heaven and earth. And that's who he is. But you know what that means? If he was the I am, there's freedom. Jesus Christ was the omnipotent God, omnipotent.

You know, people, Fr. Walser God, have you been free? Yeah, I've been free. Come on, you can't fly. You can see a million things you can't do even though you may choose to do them. There's all kinds of reality having you in, but Jesus Christ, Son of God, great I am, he was utterly free.

He was omnipotent. But what happened? You know, when they picked up stones to stone him because of his claims, that's a foreshadowing. They will kill him. They will nail him. To go from omnipotence to the place where you're nailed, you can't even move when you're nailed. You can't even move when you're nailed." Lucy Shaw, years ago, wrote a little Christmas poem called Mary's Song and it imagines Mary thinking about what Gabriel told her about

Jesus, looking at her child in the womb and saying this, "...nailed to my poor planet, caught that I might be free. Blinded my womb to know my darkness ended, brought to this birth for me to be newborn, and for him to see me mended, I must see him torn. Nailed to my poor planet, caught that I might be free. There it is. Jesus Christ gave up all the freedom, the infinite freedom, the freedom that no one else

will ever know, and we came down to be nailed to the cross to die for our sins so that we could have the freedom of children. Not just boss, God a boss, I'm living a good life, and then in that slavish relationship, no. Your sins are forgiven, God loves you and accepts you, puts his unconditional love on you because all your sins have been paid for. And now is your father. And suddenly the relationship is transformed into a love relationship. I remember talking years ago. I was speaking about the fact that when two people go into a love relationship, they have to give up their freedom and independence. To get the greater freedom that comes in love. They give up their independence, to give up the greater freedom and independence. To get the greater freedom that comes in love. They give up their independence,

to give up the greater freedom in love. And I remember afterwards talking to a woman who said, well, that's just not fair. That doesn't work with your relationship with God. I said, what do you mean? She says, when I enter a relationship with God, of course, I have to give up my independence. I have to obey God.

But God's up there. He's omnipotent. He's not giving up any independence again in a to obey God. But God's up there. He's omnipotent. He's not giving up any independence again in relation with me." And I said, you've heard of the manger. You've heard of the manger. Seek not in courts or palaces or royal curtains draw, but search the stable. See your God extended on the straw. God gave up all of his freedom to come into a love, he gave up more freedom than you will ever give up

to go into any other love relationship, including a relationship with him. And once you see what he's done for you, that transforms a slave into a child. And duty into choice. You know that hymn too? It's a John Newton hymn. To see the law by Christful Filled

and here is pardoning voice, transforms a slave into a child and duty into choice. And you enter into the ultimate, ultimate water in which the human soul is free. And that is the water of a love relationship with God. You know, we're gonna get back to this word up here where it says, Jesus says, if you hold to my teaching, you'll be my disciples.

That word hold is actually a word that's translated somewhere, some places abide. You don't just look at the Bible and say, okay, I have, you abide in it. You take his teaching. You take the gospel. You take his word into your life and you live into it. You trust it.

You give yourself to it over the years, over the years. It takes years of practice. It almost anything to be free to play this or do this. And so he says, you have to take my word into your life and live into your design and know more and more and more my love. And then you'll be free indeed. Little fish, the water's fine. That's pray.

Our father, we ask that you'd help us to know what it means to be free. Help us to see true freedom. First of all, understand how true freedom works just in the day-to-day life through delayed gratification, through accepting, liberating constraints. But help us ultimately to see that the ultimate freedom is to be in a love relationship with you and with others because we've been transformed from slaves into children. And you're no longer a boss or a tyrant, but you're a father.

And the self-centeredness of sin and the stubbornness and self-assertiveness of sin has begun to erode and we've begun to live into our design and especially know your love, which is the ultimate freedom. We pray, Father, that you would help us to apply this to our lives and begin to live toward our freedom rather than against it or away from it. We pray this in Jesus' name, Amen. We hope you enjoyed today's teaching on what it means to be a disciple of Christ, and we hope you'll continue to join us throughout this series.

Before you go, if you were encouraged by today's podcast, please rate and review it so more people can discover the hope and joy of Christ's love. Thanks again for listening. This month's sermons are a selection of recordings from 1996 to 2016. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.