Happy Fourth of July, friends. It’s a joy to celebrate the birth of our nation and say Happy Birthday, United States of America. There is no better country in which to live. I’m so grateful and blessed by the men and women who’ve fought for this country so that we might live in freedom, especially freedom of worship.
But there’s another kind of freedom—spiritual freedom. You see, we’re all sinners and deserve to die because of our sins. When we leave this earth, we’re not fit to meet a holy God face to face. But here’s the freedom part.
Romans 8: 1-4 says, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering, and so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature by according to the Spirit. Before I knew Jesus as my Savior, I was a slave to sin, but I’m no longer bound by sin and am free because of what He did for us on the cross—took our punishment. So, this week, I’m living as a citizen of the US, enjoying my freedoms but also as a citizen of the Kingdom of God.