The Ultimate Fredom

The story is as old as mankind—chasing something that sounds like pure freedom… only to end up more stuck than before.

In 2 Peter 2:19, false teachers dangle the word “freedom” like bait—promising the liberty to do what you want. But what lies on the other side of that freedom is a whole new bondage, worse than before. But God offers a freedom that unlocks your design so you can fulfill your purpose and become more human.

What Does 2 Peter 2:19 Mean?

2 Peter 2:19 They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity–for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him.

The false teachers promise their followers the freedom to indulge fleshly desires (a counterfeit of God’s promise of freedom from those desires in ch.1). But each freedom comes with a new master, and their freedom to indulge the flesh resulted in enslavement to fleshly impulses. To whatever a man succumbs, to that he is overcome. If you’ve ever tried to stop a behavior and failed, you’re enslaved to it.

2 Peter 2:19 They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity–for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him.

Introduction

True or false: “This is a free country.”

I don’t know of any country that has more freedom. But is it total freedom? Are you free to own slaves? No. Why? You’re not free to own slaves so that we can be a free country. How about spiritual freedom? Are we free in Christ? Paul’s answer is yes.

Galatians 5:1 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.

But you know what else Paul said?

1 Corinthians 9:21 … I am not free

So, what is freedom? If a country where you’re free to own slaves is not a free country, and a country where you’re not free to own slaves is a free country, and if Paul is free in Christ but also not free, then I think it’s fair to say freedom is complicated.

It’s not like righteousness or holiness, which are always good in every context. Freedom isn’t like that. It can be good or it can be bad. Freedom to enslave people, freedom to kill people, freedom to steal, freedom to disobey God—those are terrible freedoms.

And if there’s such a thing as good freedom and bad freedom, and the Bible says we’re free and it also says we’re not free, we’d better make sure we understand exactly what kind of freedom we have in Christ and what kind of freedom we don’t have. Otherwise, we’re going to be highly deceivable.

The word “freedom” is a beautiful word. Everyone likes it, everyone’s in favor of it, everyone wants it. But it’s a complicated word that can have opposite meanings depending on how you define it, which makes it a perfect word for deceiving people—which is exactly what the false teachers do.

2 Peter 2:19 They [the false teachers] promise them freedom

Dueling Promises

They don’t just offer freedom.

2 Peter 2:19 They promise them freedom

By using that word, Peter is taking us all the way back to his opening statement of the whole book.

2 Peter 1:4 … he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may … escape the corruption in the world caused by desires.

You escaped. If you escaped, that implies that prior to your escape, you were a prisoner of some kind. But you got your freedom, how? Through God’s promises. So when Peter laid the cornerstone of this book at the very beginning, he said we have gained freedom by means of God’s promises. And now, the false teachers are making their own promises about freedom. Those are the only two times in the book where Peter uses this verb, to promise.[1] So by using that word, Peter wants us to see this as the dueling promises. God’s promise of freedom vs. the false teachers’ promise of freedom.

Two Different Kinds of Freedom

What kind of freedom does God promise us? Freedom from moral corruption.

2 Peter 1:4 … you may … escape the corruption in the world caused by desires.

God’s promises bring you freedom from moral corruption. What kind of freedom do the false teachers promise? Does Peter give us any clue in the context? Yes—look at what Peter just said in the previous verse (18).

2 Peter 2:18 … by appealing to the lustful desires of flesh and debauchery, they entice people

God promises freedom from the debauchery that comes from fleshly desires; the false teachers entice people by appealing to those fleshly desires and debauchery. How do they appeal to their sinful desires? By promising them freedom—not freedom from the corrupt desires; but freedom to indulge those desires—freedom from restrictions on those desires. They’re saying, “All these rules and restrictions on your behavior—you can be free from all that.” God offers freedom from sin; they offer freedom to sin.

As I said last time—anyone who offers you freedom to sin or freedom to disobey God or freedom from God’s moral law is a heretic.

1 Corinthians 9:21 … I am not free from God’s law

But freedom from obeying God is exactly what the false teachers promise.

Using Biblical Language to Deceive

But of course they don’t say it that way. They say it in a way that sounds biblical. They don’t say, “We promise you the freedom to sin against God.” They just say, “We promise you freedom.” with a period after the word “freedom.”

This is the oldest trick in the book for deceiving people—take something God said is good but twist the definition of it. When I say it’s the oldest trick in the book, I mean that literally—it was the very first trick. What did the serpent say to Eve? Did he say, “Why don’t you just disobey God, Eve? Just do the opposite of what God said to do”? No. He talked about gaining knowledge and being like God. Knowledge is good, right? And what’s better than being like God? But do you think when Satan talked about the knowledge of good and evil he meant the same thing God meant by knowledge of good and evil? No. He used God’s wording to make Eve think of something different from what God meant by those words. That’s how you deceive someone.

Here are some of the most common words false teachers use to deceive people:

 

• grace
• love
• guarding your heart
• blessing
• prosperity
• repentance
• meditation,
• joy
• knowledge
• humility
• pride
• God
• the Holy Spirit
• and in this case, freedom.

 

Every one of those terms can very easily and convincingly be defined in ways that make them mean something very different—even the opposite of what they mean in the Bible. And when someone has been led astray that way, and when you try to bring those people back to the truth, it’s next to impossible because it sounds to them like you’re anti-grace, or anti-love, or anti-freedom. They say, “You need to go listen to such and such teacher who really opened my eyes to what those words really mean.”

All Freedom Is Slavery

So let’s look at the part the false teachers won’t tell you—probably because they don’t even know. And that is—they are slaves.

2 Peter 2:19 They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity

That’s where all their freedom got them. Imagine someone locked behind bars, and he finally gets the door open, goes through the door and slams it shut behind him, only to discover that he’s just locked himself into a different cage. Did the false teachers have freedom from all the restrictions on their flesh? Yes. But the result of that freedom was enslavement to the very activity they felt free to do.

Depravity

And Peter calls their new master “depravity.” That word refers to moral corruption that leads to judgment. It’s moral corruption that will destroy you in the end, and that was their new master.

Doing as You Please

Most people think freedom is the ability to do as you please. But when people just do whatever they please, very quickly they find themselves stuck in behaviors that aren’t pleasing to them. I don’t know about you, but for me, the more I just do as I please, the less pleased I am by what I do. It’s pleasing to me to eat a bowl of ice cream every night before bed. And it’s pleasing to me to be in great shape and not way 400 lb.

So what does “doing as I please” really mean? Doing what pleases smart Darrell or doing what pleases stupid Darrell? If I want freedom to do what pleases smart Darrell, I’m going to have to lock stupid Darrell in a cell.

No Absolute Freedom

Freedom from one set of restrictions always requires submission to another set of restrictions. Breaking free from one master requires bowing the knee to a different master. There is no absolute freedom. Someone wants total freedom in relationships so he says, “I won’t get married, no committed relationships so I can have total freedom.” Is that total freedom? No. He has to live under the “no committed relationships” rule. He’s not free to get married. Every freedom is a coin, and the back side of that coin always says “slave” to something. Freedom always comes with a new master. And that’s never more true than with our freedom in Christ.

Romans 6:22 … you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God

1 Peter 2:16 Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as slaves of God.

Live as free men by living as slaves.

Romans 6:18 You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. … 20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness.

You can lock yourself in the cell that says “sin” or move over into the cell that says “righteousness,” but you’re in one or the other. Although the cell called righteousness turns out to be an amazing place. More on that in a minute.

The cell called “sin” is a terrible place, and that’s where the false teachers ended up. The false teachers broke free from having to submit to the demands of righteousness, but in the process they found themselves shackled by the slave master called the desires of the flesh and they had to obey its demands.

The Proverb

And, no doubt, they would say, “No! We’re not slaves! We can do whatever we want!” But Peter refutes that by stating the obvious.

2 Peter 2:19 … for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered[2] him.

Everyone likes to believe they are in control of themselves. But all those activities they feel so free to do—guess what happens when they try to quit? Or even control them. A lifestyle of unrepentant sin is like the mafia. In the movies, what happens when someone hooks up with the mafia and then at some point says, “Okay, I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m walking away.” The answer is always the same, “No you’re not.” Once you throw your lot in with them, you’re in—there’s no leaving.

That’s the way sin is. Ecclesiastes 7:26 says this about the seductress: it says she “is a snare, whose heart is a trap and whose hands are chains.” Her hands are chains. You reach out to shake hands with sin, and as soon as it touches you, it slaps handcuffs on you.

In their pride, people never want to admit they are enslaved. “I’m in full control. I could quit anytime I want.” And at some point they try to quit or to put controls on it, and they fail. But they say, “No, I’m not addicted.” If you tried to stop and failed, guess what? You’re enslaved. If that impulse comes and you obey even though you wish you wouldn’t—you’re enslaved to that impulse, no matter what it is.

That sounds like the most obvious thing in the world—“Hey, if you can’t break free, guess what? You’re stuck.” It sounds obvious, but it’s not. People need to be told.

2 Peter 2:19 … for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him.

Peter got that from Jesus, who said the same thing to the false teachers of his time.

John 8:30 … Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching … 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” 33 They answered him, “We … have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?” 34 Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.

If you keep on doing it, then you’re obviously enslaved to it. Jesus said it, Peter said it, and Paul said it too.

Romans 6:16 … you are slaves to the one whom you obey

We never want to admit when we’re stuck in some behavior, and so Scripture has to tell us over and over—“If you’re stuck, then just admit it—you’re stuck.” If you don’t want to use the word “addicted,” fine—use the biblical word—“enslaved.”

Titus 2:3 talks about being addicted to wine. And the word translated “addicted” comes from the word “slave” (doulos). How do you know if you’re addicted? If you’re a slave, you’re addicted.

And what’s a slave? When Peter says, “a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him,” a literal translation is “to whatever a person succumbs, to that they are enslaved.” How do you know for sure if you’re enslaved? Well, did you succumb? Then in that moment, you were enslaved.

Romans 6:16 … you are slaves to the one whom you obey

Whatever impulses you keep on obeying even though you wish you wouldn’t—that’s an addiction. It doesn’t matter whether there are chemicals involved, it doesn’t matter how much damage it does to your life, it doesn’t matter how normal or abnormal it is. It can be cocaine or it can be biting your fingernails. Now, not every addiction destroys your life. But if it’s not beneficial, then don’t let it control you.

1 Corinthians 6:12 “Everything is permissible for me”–but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible for me”–but I will not be mastered by anything.

Literally, “I won’t let it have authority over me.”

Never Total Loss of Control

Now, I should add this—if you’re a believer, there’s never a time when you’re completely enslaved to sin in the sense that you can’t resist it. No matter how addicted you are, for a Christian, no temptation is impossible to resist (Philippians 4:13, 1 Corinthians 10:13). God sees to it that you’re never tempted beyond your ability. But it is possible to get so hooked on something that it really does feel impossible to resist. Jesus said that’s why we need to be especially alert.

Matthew 26:41 Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.

Galatians 5:17 … [the flesh and the Spirit] are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.

Even when the behavior is ruining your life. Like the drunk in Proverbs 23:31-35 who is confused, dizzy, being beaten, and yet says, “When will I wake up so I can find another drink?” You hate it, yet you can’t seem to stop. When you wish you would do one thing but you find you keep doing the opposite—that’s enslavement.

Which Master to Choose

And that’s the kind of freedom we can have by trusting God’s promises—freedom from sin and freedom from anything that isn’t beneficial. And to have that freedom, you must be a slave to God and a slave to righteousness.

What Is Beneficial?

But how do we define “beneficial”? That’s another word that could mean a lot of different things to different people. And the simplistic answers aren’t very helpful in real life situations.

For example, you might say, “It’s better to put yourself under the restrictions of diet and exercise so that you can enjoy the freedoms that come with good health.” That sounds great on paper, but when you put it into practice, you have to face the question of how much diet and exercise? There are people who make diet and exercise rules for themselves for the sake of health, but they end up becoming so enslaved by those rules that it becomes unhealthy. The most obvious example is anorexia.

But it can happen in milder forms as well. You set a fitness goal, which is great, but then you find yourself judging your standing with God or your value as a person by how well you do with those goals. You do really well, and you assume God is pleased with you (even though those rules never came from God). Or you miss your goals and get really down on yourself and feel like a failure, even though it’s something God never required of you. We sometimes elevate our own goals to the status of Scripture. Or we get so consumed with them that we neglect more important things in life. So I was searching Scripture for a basic rule of thumb for how to decide which freedoms to pursue and which restrictions to submit yourself to.

If every jailbreak just takes you from one cell into a different one, which ones should you leave and which ones should you enter? What’s the dividing line between a beneficial freedom and one that is not beneficial?

Freedom from Sin

Well, the most obvious answer is that freedom from sin is beneficial.

Romans 6:7 … freed from sin

Romans 6:18 … You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

Romans 6:22 … you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God

Revelation 1:5 … [he] has freed us from our sins by his blood, 6 and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father

So not just freedom from sin, but freedom from sin for the purpose of enabling us to function as a priestly kingdom, which is God’s ultimate purpose for mankind.

Freedom to Fulfill Your Purpose

And that’s the principle we need to understand about what kind of freedom we should seek. Freedom is good freedom when it frees you up to fulfill God’s purpose for your life. Freedom to function as God designed you. When you choose between freedoms, and you choose which master to serve, choose the freedoms and the masters that enhance your humanity rather than diminishing it.

If you liberate a train from the narrow restriction of the tracks, is it free? No—it can’t function as a train. But if it’s restricted to the tracks, it can do things nothing else in the world can do.

What happens if you release a fish from the prison of water and set him free on the Interstate? For the first time he has the whole world before him—the wide open road. Is he free? No, he loses his freedom to function as a fish. The only way he can have true freedom is to get back into that prison of water and never leave it ever again. So in the search for freedom, when you ask, “which kinds of restrictions should I submit myself to?” the standard is this: choose liberating restrictions—the ones that fit your design.

Piano

Imagine a little girl whom God designed to be a musician. He gave her a certain kind of brain, certain genes, desires and affections, put her in just the right family—crafted her for creating beautiful music. He wanted her to have the ability to take whatever is in her heart and express it in music in ways that bring her immense pleasure and that brings God immense pleasure and that moves other people to their core.

But she doesn’t come out of the womb being able to do that. It takes years of hard work. She gets invited to a sleepover with a bunch of friends, and she really wants to go, but she would have to miss her piano lesson so mom says no. All the other kids are out playing, but she’s at the piano, practicing. Her siblings have a blast playing computer games, but she’s focused on her music. In college, her friends want her to go out with them, but she’s a slave to that piano bench. It’s like she’s handcuffed to that keyboard.

But what’s the result of that enslavement? Now she can do things with that piano that feel almost supernatural. Feelings that were locked up inside her, now she’s free to express them to God in glorious musical expression. She’s free to be the woman God designed her to be. She chose liberating restrictions, and now she has a freedom far greater than the freedoms she gave up.

More Human

Earlier in the chapter we talked about that concept of becoming more and more human—more and more like the perfect human, Jesus. Scripture associates that with freedom.

Romans 8:21 the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

Of all the freedoms you could pursue, that sounds like a pretty good one, doesn’t it? In fact, it sounds like the ultimate freedom. It is. It’s the final, ultimate consummation of God’s plan for the human race. And it’s all about glory.

Romans 8:17 … if we share in [Christ’s] sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. 18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.

The entire universe is on its toes waiting for us to be glorified because it will be such a spectacular, powerful event that it will free the creation from its bondage to the curse. All the corruptibility, decay, death and all that goes with it—everything that’s broken and messed up in this world—the creation will be set free from all that when humans are glorified reach our full humanity. And according to v.23, that will involve the redemption of our bodies. We’ll get our glorified, incorruptible bodies. In other words, everything gets fixed when humanity finally reaches God’s intended purpose for humanity. We all become fully human.

This is how important humanity is.

We are the crown of creation—so much so that the entire creation rides on the coattails of the human race. How did the creation get messed up? Not by anything it did. The whole creation was dragged down when humanity fell.

And when will it recover? Again, not until humanity is glorified. Creation got ruined by humanity’s sin, and it will be restored when humanity is restored—the whole universe is tied to whatever happens to humanity.

Think of everything that’s broken in the creation—everything we see and we know, it shouldn’t be this way. Cancer, viruses that mutate and become more deadly and more resistant to medicine, the horrific things animals do to each other—like eating their own young. The savage brutality that’s out there. You want to just tell the lion—could you at least finish killing that animal before you start eating it? Mudslides that wipe out entire villages, hurricanes, earthquakes, poisonous snakes.

Everything is running down, wearing out, diminishing. The whole thing is broken and dying.

And our glorification will be a cataclysmic event, powerful enough to reverse everything that’s broken in the universe.

Back in our study of vv.4-7 we saw that the angels who corrupted humanity received the most severe punishment any fallen angels have ever received.

It was a cataclysmic evil. And us reaching our full humanity when Christ returns will be a cosmic, cataclysmic good that restores the entire creation. And Paul calls that freedom. When we receive our ultimate, glorious freedom—freedom from sin and from all the ravages of sin—decay, disease, destruction, and death. That’s the greatest, truest freedom.

The Best Kind of Freedom/Bondage to Pursue

So when we ask, “What’s the best kind of freedom to pursue? And what are the best kinds of restrictions to submit to? What are the most beneficial and liberating of all restrictions?” The ones that lead toward glory. Not glory in the eyes of man, but the glory we will share with Christ, which is the ultimate in humanness.

God’s intention for us from the very beginning was to share in his glory. Any kind of freedom that moves you in the direction of that glory is the best kind of freedom. And anything you have to submit to in order to get there is a good master—a good kind of bondage. Any freedom that diminishes or disfigures that human glory, is bad freedom.

And any master whose orders push in that direction is a bad master—a bad kind of bondage.

Addiction Is Dehumanizing

And this can help us define the term “addiction” a little more precisely. Addiction is any enslavement that diminishes your humanity. When you get enslaved to alcohol, so you lose control, does that make you glorious? No. It diminishes your humanity. It reduces your ability to use your mind, makes you more like an animal, it brings humiliation and shame, not glory, it shortens life rather than lengthening it, and you sin more, not less.

Your Calling

What about that woman playing the piano—is that glorious? I’d say so. The creativity, the beauty, the complexity and simplicity, the effect it has on people’s souls—all those reflect God’s glory. Would it be a move in the direction of glory if I sacrificed everything to learn the piano? I don’t think so—that’s not God’s design for me.

Which freedoms and restrictions would be most beneficial for you? No one can answer that question for you. Each of us reflects different facets of God’s glory—some reflect his beauty, others his creativity, others his strength, his justice—and sometimes it’s not crystal clear which set of disciplines would make you more human and move you more toward final glory. But I think if we all just had that as a goal, we would be on a great track that God would honor. Search for the restrictions that are most likely to free you up to reach greater humanness, to become more of what God designed you for, and that move you in the direction of Christ’s glory.

[1] He uses the noun form twice in chapter 3 to refer to the ultimate promise—the promise of the Second Coming (3:9; 3:13).

[2] The word “mastered” is the same word as “overcome” in v.20.

 

[1] The reason Israel turned away from God was because of a memory problem. God warned them over and over—Don’t forget what it was like to be slaves, and don’t forget what I did to deliver you.” And what happened?Psalm 78:11 They forgot what he had done, the wonders he had shown them. They forgot everything God told them to remember. But they did remember one thing. Numbers 11:5 We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost– also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. They forgot the misery of their bondage. But they remembered the food.

[2] From ch.7.