True Freedom
Pastor Matt Bell
Sermon Summary
Pastor Matt's sermon on Psalm 119:45 explores the biblical concept of true freedom, contrasting the modern cultural view of radical autonomy with the scriptural truth that liberty is found only in submitting to God's authority. He argues that our confusion about freedom originated in the Garden of Eden when humanity believed the serpent's lie that disobeying God would bring liberation, resulting instead in bondage to sin. Christ is presented as the sole source of lasting freedom, breaking the power of sin and Satan so that believers can willingly obey God's commands. Ultimately, true freedom is defined not as lawlessness, but as living a flourishing life under God's loving laws, empowered by the Holy Spirit to serve and love others.
Sermon Transcript
Introduction: The Mount Everest of the Bible
Today, we're continuing our series in the Year of the Bible, and our miniseries, Summer in the Psalms. I want to invite you, as we're going to be in a psalm today, we read from Psalm 119 this week. And so that's the psalm that we're going to be looking at today. If you have your Bibles, you can open there. If you don't know where it is, you can just open to the middle of your Bible, and you will get really close to Psalm 119.
Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible. 176 verses. And this chapter is divided. If you look in your Bibles, you'll see it's most likely divided into different sections of 8 verses, 22 sections specifically. And this structure of 8 verses is intentional. You might see in your Bible, if your Bible has different headings at the top of each of these 8 verses, certain words that are unfamiliar, most likely to you. What these different headings are, are letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Each stanza, each group of eight verses corresponds with a different Hebrew letter. And the beginning of each verse in Hebrew begins with that letter of the alphabet. Not only is this a beautiful psalm, but it's put together in a very artistic way, crafted with a lot of attention to detail. We miss a little bit of this, of course, in our English translation of the Bible, but it would be as if the first 8 verses began with the letter A, and the next 8 verses began with the letter B, C, D, and so on.
Now, this whole psalm, all of Psalm 119, is a psalm about the Word of God. Each verse, every single verse in this psalm, all 176 of them, reference God's Word in one shape or another. It uses many different words to stand in for God's Word, such as God's law, God's commandments, God's testimonies, God's precepts, God's statutes, God's rules—lots of different words, all for God's Word.
Psalm 119, being the longest book of the Bible, being right in the middle of our Bibles, is like the Mount Everest of the Bible. Because it is a chapter of the Bible about the Bible. It's a chapter in God's Word about God's Word. Psalm 119 is God's truth about God's truth. It is there in the center, towering over all of Scripture as this declaration in God's Word about God's Word. And more than simply being put together in an artistic way that is very beautiful and compelling, it's also a prayer. It's a prayer from the psalmist, who is anonymous. We don't know who wrote it. But it's a prayer to God.
In fact, you could pray it yourself. If you wanted to, you could pick any one of these verses and pray them to God yourself. And many people do. In fact, I use part of Psalm 119 nearly every Sunday in my pastoral prayer before I preach. After I read the Word, I typically pray, and more Sundays than not, I reference Psalm 119 that says God's Word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. Many different people reference and use Psalm 119 in their own personal prayer life, and I would commend that to you as well.
A Wide Place of Freedom
When I was deciding on what to preach this week, my children had another idea for me. They were not keen on Psalm 119 because of the length and because they were going to be in service. And so they commended to me, shockingly, Psalm 117. Now, if you look just to the left in your Bible, you'll see why they wanted Psalm 117. Because it's not 176 verses; it's 2 verses. Every week, there's a discussion in our house as we're reading through the Bible together on what verse or passage or chapter I'm going to be using. And every day this week, they were impressing upon me 117, and I was saying, no, it's the Year of the Bible. How can I not preach from Psalm 119, the chapter that's about the Word of God, when we're studying the Word of God and making it our emphasis this whole year?
But what I didn't tell my children—and when I say they were really trying to get me to do 117, I'm not joking. One of them came up to me last night and just whispered in my ear, "Psalm 117. Psalm 117." But what I did not tell them was that I was only going to take one verse from Psalm 119. Not all 176 verses, which we have done, by the way. In 2021, I preached from Psalm 119 and read the whole thing in church. Took about 15 minutes, probably the best 15 minutes of church we've ever had, because it's just the pure Word of God.
Nevertheless, we're not going to read every verse this morning. We're going to look at one verse this morning, one verse that jumped out to me very particularly as I read through Psalm 119 again. I've read Psalm 119 probably a dozen times or more, if not dozens of times, in my life. And I have to confess that though many of the verses I am very familiar with, this particular verse I had never really paid much attention to, and I didn't really remember it. But as God's Word tends to do, though you've read it many, many times, something new always tends to jump out to you, as it is a book that is not just dead; it is living, as the Bible says.
I think you will understand after we read the one verse we're going to read today why I felt this verse really was appropriate for this morning. So I'm going to invite you to stand with me as we read the Word of God together for the shortest reading of the Word of God that we will ever have, one verse, Psalm 119, and verse 45. The psalmist says:
"I shall walk in a wide place, for I have sought your precepts."
Lord, we do thank you for this morning. I thank you for this psalm, and especially here this verse 45. Lord, I thank you that we can gather together in your presence with your people to worship you, to hear from your Word. God, we love you. We love you because you've loved us. Lord, help us in our time here together to focus here for the next few moments, to hear from you and from your Word. Your Word which is that lamp unto our feet, and light unto our path. Lord, show us the way in which we should go. Lord, if there's any area of our life that needs correction, Lord, that you would do so tenderly by your Spirit this morning. Lord, for those that need encouragement today, that you would encourage us. For those who need strength and healing, that you would provide those things for us. Lord, we are a needy people, and we are so dependent upon you. And we thank you that you are so gracious in giving, and generous to us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
You may be seated. Now, if you are sitting there scratching your head as to why that verse stood out to me, I would understand that. But if we look at it in a different English translation, I think it's a little bit more clear why I chose that verse. If you look at Psalm 119, verse 45, in the New Living Translation, it reads this way:
"I will walk in freedom, for I have devoted myself to your commandments."
Yesterday, there were a lot of us celebrating freedom, and rightfully so. It's wonderful to live in this nation, the freest nation that there's ever been. It's wonderful to celebrate the great sacrifices that were made to secure our freedoms. It's wonderful to celebrate the foundation upon which our freedoms are based, the Word of God. And as we look at the celebrations that were taking place this weekend, the many different people in our nation celebrating freedom and liberty, and the many different ways that we all celebrated it, one thing I doubt is that most people had this idea in mind: I am free because I keep God's commandments. That the keeping of God's Word, that the keeping of God's commandments, that obeying God produces freedom.
You see, I think that most in our culture equate the idea of freedom with this other idea of autonomy. That freedom for most people is living a life that is unconstrained and unbound by any outside authority. I think that for most people, the concept of liberty and freedom has been replaced with the concept of radical autonomy. To live life not under any authority. Not under any rule. And especially not God's law, God's rule, God's Word.
But the psalmist says something quite different. The psalmist says, I will walk in a wide place. I will live a life of freedom because I have kept your commandments, because I keep your Word. I think most in our culture would find that to be a foreign idea, that the keeping of God's Word is what produces true freedom.
My goal today with the time that we have—and I realize that today is Ice Cream Sunday, and that we have the children in here with us today, for which I am eternally grateful, they are a huge blessing to our church. And my children were very eager to remind me that if I preach from Psalm 119, the ice cream's gonna melt. But my goal today with the time that we have, and aware of all of those things, is to convince you of this fact, to convince you of the truth of Psalm 119:45, that true freedom is only found in keeping the Word of God.
To aid me in my argument this morning, I brought with me three points today. I want to share them all with you up front so you know where we're going, to keep me on track. The first is the origin of our confusion. Why are we confused about this idea of freedom? Where does this confusion come from? The second is the only source of lasting freedom. Where does freedom really come from? And then finally, we're going to look at the true definition of liberty. What is liberty, truly, as defined by God and His Word?
The Origin of Our Confusion
What does this confusion come from? Where do these competing ideas stem from? Like most things, if you want to get to the root of it, you have to go back to the beginning. You have to go back to where things started. For us, that's in Genesis chapter 1, 2, and 3. And especially in Genesis 3, we see the source of this confusion. If you do have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me back there to Genesis chapter 3 this morning.
Genesis 1 and 2 begins with God creating all things. God creating the world, God creating humanity in His image, God giving humanity freedom and dominion over the whole earth. And God instructing humanity on what it looked like to live as a part of His creation, what it looked like to live as His image bearers. God gave them a few instructions. Not a whole lot of instructions. God told them to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the whole earth with His image bearers. I think we could all admit that's not the most difficult of instructions to keep. And also, when you have in mind that childbirth before the fall of man was painless. Can you imagine that, ladies? Painless childbirth. The pain of childbirth came in as a result of sin. And so God tells Adam and Eve, be fruitful and multiply, fill this whole planet with image bearers, and there's no pain involved. Well, that's not much of a difficult task to keep.
The other instruction that God gave to humanity was that He had provided for them every tree to eat of, except for one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Of this tree, they were instructed not to eat. God essentially gave them two commandments. One of them—I mean, let's just be honest, I know we have the kids in here with us, but that would be like telling somebody they have to eat. They were gonna do that. The second commandment was a restriction on their behavior. You have every tree to eat of except for this one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
I think that we can understand that the freest people who ever lived were Adam and Eve. Essentially, one commandment. And yet, in Genesis chapter 3, Satan comes disguised as a serpent. In chapter 1, it says that he was more crafty than the other beasts of the field that the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman:
"Did God actually say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?"
And the woman said to the serpent:
"We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden. But God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die."
But the serpent said to the woman:
"You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
The story continues that she ate of the fruit, and she gave some to her husband who was there. They sinned against God, and they suffered the consequences. And since that time, all of humanity, being born from Adam and Eve, have been born into this life of sin.
But what God had instructed Adam and Eve for was their own good. It was for their protection. And all of God's Word, and all of God's commandments, hear me, are for our good. They're for our protection. But Satan comes and he says, God is a tyrant. God is a liar. You will not die. Your eyes will be opened. And you can determine, essentially, good and evil for yourself. You don't have to live under God's authority. God's rules. You can make your own rules for yourself. Living the way you're living now, you are bound. But if you disobey God, you will be free.
This is the origin of the confusion that all of humanity experiences, thinking that true freedom is living without any restrictions whatsoever. Without any outside imposition by any authority figure, that that is true freedom. But this is a myth, this myth of autonomy, the idea that Adam and Eve could live apart from God in the world that God made. It's worse than a myth. It's a lie.
We live in God's world. Adam and Eve, just like us, are part of God's creation. We derive our very energy for our life from the sun that God put in the sky. The sun, which gives life to our planet, its radiation is absorbed by the plant life, which is eaten by the animal life, and which we all ate yesterday and celebrated our independence by eating hamburgers and hot dogs. It all comes from God. So this idea that we can be autonomous from God, that we can liberate ourselves from God, is not true. It's a lie. I'm sustained by God. My very life comes from God. The very thoughts that I think in my mind, even as words are spoken and they enter into my ears, my ears were designed by God. My ears, which convert sound waves into understandable ideas and thoughts that my brain processes. That's all from God. Language is from God. Created in the image of God to comprehend, to have a conscience, to be able to reason, to be able to think—all of that is from God. And the idea that I could live as an image bearer of God in the world that God made separated from God, outside of His law, His rule, His authority, and to be a law unto myself, to be like God myself, it is a delusional lie.
But humanity believed this lie. They believed that by disobeying God, they would be free. This confusion over what true freedom is, it is not new, it's ancient. Humanity thought by disobeying God, we would be free, but in reality, all that that did was enslave us to Satan himself. So that we are not born free, that all of humanity is born believing a lie. All of humanity is born as descendants of Adam, believing the same lie that they believed, that they could live free from God, and that autonomy, rebellion against God, would give them true happiness.
Jesus said it this way in John 8:34:
"Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin."
This breaking of God's law, this breaking of God's commandments, it didn't set us free, it put us in bondage. And now we are born in sin. Now we are born with this predisposition to want to live life not under God's rule and reign, but to rebel against God. And so Jeremiah 17:9 says:
"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?"
Human beings left to their own nature that has now been corrupted by sin, human beings at their core, according to the Word of God, are not good. We are sinful. Human beings left to their own devices do not produce flourishing, but produce destruction and death. And this is the testament of all of human history as one tyrant after another has risen up to oppress people, big tyrants, little tyrants. Everyone who refuses to live according to God's Word and God's law, they don't produce human flourishing, but they produce death and destruction. Whether it's a big tyrant like King George, other tyrants that you can look at through the 20th century that oppressed their people, or whether it's a small-t tyrant, a father in a home who refuses to submit to the Word of God and rules in his home like a small tyrant. Anywhere and everywhere where people refuse to submit themselves to God's Word and His commandments, it doesn't produce life, it doesn't produce flourishing, it doesn't produce freedom, it produces sin, death, bondage, and destruction.
This is the origin of our confusion that started at the very beginning, and it has continued even until this day. So that when many gather together to set off their fireworks and eat their hot dogs, what they are celebrating is not adherence to the Word of God; what many are celebrating is, in their minds, autonomy and freedom from any constraint whatsoever, including God's Word and God's law.
The Only Source of Lasting Freedom
That is the state that humanity is in because of our sin. But there is a source of lasting freedom. And there's only one source. You don't need me to even tell you what it is. You already know. It's Christ. Christ is the only source of lasting freedom. In fact, this is why Christ came: to set us free. He said so himself in Luke chapter 4, verses 18 and 19. Jesus said:
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
This is why Jesus came, to set people free. He said in John 8:32:
"You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."
Later in John 8:36, he says:
"So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed."
The only source of lasting freedom is Christ. Christ must set us free. In 2 Corinthians 3:17, the apostle Paul says:
"Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom."
The only way we can truly be free is in Christ, and the only way we can live out our freedom is in the Spirit of God, and where that Spirit is, there is a spirit of freedom. Galatians 5:1, Paul says:
"For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery."
Christ is the only source of lasting freedom. And what is it that Christ sets us free from? Well, He sets us free of the power of Satan. When humanity entered into sin, we entered in under the power, the authority, the dominion not of God, but of Satan. And all of humanity continued in and under that authority until Jesus came. And so Jesus came to set us free, not from the power of Rome, not from earthly tyrants, but to set the individual free from the power of Satan and believing his lies. That's why if we will know the truth—the truth of God's Word, the truth of the gospel, the truth about what Jesus has done for us in Christ—we will truly be free. Free of the power of Satan and free of his lies, what the Bible calls the law of sin and death.
Without the freedom that Christ brings, humanity is bound. We are bound to our sin nature. We are not free without Christ. But because of what Christ has done for us, defeating Satan, sin, and death through the cross and the resurrection, the pouring out of His Spirit into the lives of believers, we now live a life where sin has no dominion over us. Truly, if the Son sets you free, you are free indeed, because we are in Christ. And Christ is victorious over these things.
So to walk in true freedom, in true liberty, you don't just need to be a citizen of the United States of America; no, to walk in true freedom, you have to be a citizen of the Kingdom of God. You have to be delivered out of the power of Satan, under the rule and reign of Christ. To walk in true freedom, you must come to Christ. Come to the cross, lay your burden of sin and shame and guilt from your past down at His feet. Be clothed in His righteousness, be set free by Him. This is the only source of lasting freedom.
The True Definition of Liberty
Which brings me to my third point this morning. That's the origin of our confusion. That's the source of our freedom, but what is the definition of liberty? This takes us here back to our passage in Psalm 119, verse 45, which does stand at odds with our culture. "I will walk in a wide place, in a broad place. I will be free. Because I have kept your commandments, because I seek your precepts." This is the definition of liberty.
Adam and Eve in the garden. The most free people who have ever lived. One commandment. Though they were free, they were still living under God's law. How free were they? They didn't even wear clothes. That's how free they were. They were out there. They lived life free, baby. And yet, they still were living under God's reign. So freedom is not the absence of authority; true freedom is living under God's authority. That's true freedom.
In Exodus 8:1, we find the children of Israel, they are bound, enslaved, to Pharaoh. Moses is sent by God to Pharaoh to set His people free. And look at what the Lord tells Moses to say to Pharaoh:
"Go in to Pharaoh and say to him, 'Thus says the Lord, Let my people go...'"
We are familiar with that statement. If you watch The Ten Commandments, Charlton Heston, the greatest Moses there ever was, except for Moses himself, right? "Let my people go." But look, it says why.
"...that they may serve me."
Other English translations include the word "that they may worship me." Their bondage and slavery in Egypt, which the Bible says is a picture of our enslavement to Satan, sin, and death, prevented them from being able to serve God, to live out their life as an act of worship to God. And so what does God do? He delivers them out of Egypt. He leads them through the Red Sea, a picture of baptism. But He doesn't lead them straight to the Promised Land. No, the first place they must go is to Mount Sinai, where God gives them His law. And He teaches them, this is what it looks like to live a life of freedom, to live under my commandments, to live under my law.
In 2 Corinthians 5:15, it says:
"And he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised."
You see, the freedom that Christ came to purchase for us wasn't to set us free that we could just follow our own heart. No, that's the lie that was told us. That's the lie that brings bondage. The heart of man is desperately wicked; if we only follow our own heart, it just leads us into more sin and bondage. Christ came to set us free. He died for us that we might live for Him. Not living for our own self and our own evil desires anymore, but that now we are set free from the desires of the flesh that we might live according to the Spirit that He gives us.
Freedom is not the absence of law. True freedom is living under God's law, living under God's rule and His authority. Because when you serve God, as it says here in 2 Corinthians 5, you are free to flourish. You are free to live out your God-given purpose. Bound in sin, we cannot live for God. But now set free of sin, it produces human flourishing because all of God's people are living out the reason for which God created us. Living under God's law produces human flourishing. Where people willfully submit themselves to God and His Word, where our sinful nature is restrained either by the Spirit of God that He places within us or the Word of God that we read on the page, it gives opportunity for people to flourish in this world. And where people reject God, His rule, His reign, when they refuse to submit themselves to God's Word, to God's law, and they only live out their sinful desires, it produces destruction and death.
The great lie that all of humanity has believed is that the lack of restraint is true freedom. That the absence of laws is true freedom, but the absence of laws is not freedom. The absence of laws is lawlessness and chaos. Again, this is the great lie that Satan told Eve. True freedom is only found in submission to God's Word. Lawlessness is not freedom. It's actually bondage to Satan.
So God brings His people to Mount Sinai. He gives them the Ten Commandments. He shows them, these are the things that you should not do. Not to put some sort of restriction on them, to keep them from good and fun activities. No, because these things don't produce flourishing; these things produce death, destruction. Not to lord over them as some tyrant, but to show them how to walk in the way of freedom.
For the Christian who has been born again, God is writing His laws on our hearts. I don't need the Ten Commandments to tell me not to steal. I have the Spirit of God that convicts me of those things. I don't need the Ten Commandments as someone who has the Spirit of God to tell me not to lie, not to murder, not to commit sexual immorality. God's Spirit is in my life convicting me of those things. He writes His law on our hearts. But the law He writes on our hearts will never be in conflict with the law He's written in His Word. That's the great guardrail for everyone. I cannot tell you how many times as a pastor I've had someone tell me that God told them to do something that He explicitly says in His Word, don't do that thing. Whatever impression you feel from the Lord in your heart, it will never be in conflict with the Word that He has written for us, ever. If it's in conflict, it's not the Lord you're hearing, my friend. It's your sinful desires, it's the devil, it's the pizza you ate last night. I don't know what it is, but I know who it's not. It's not God.
In Galatians 5:13, it tells us:
"For you were called to freedom, brothers."
Amen. We were called to freedom. Jesus came to set us free. We were called to freedom. Amen? Well, what does that look like?
"Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another."
Don't use your freedom just to advance yourself, to be a selfish person, to satisfy your own fleshly desires. No, that's not why Christ purchased freedom for us. What does it say? Serve one another in love. That's why Christ has set us free, so that we can love one another, so that we can serve one another. The grace of God sets us free to truly love one another out of the reservoir of God's love for us that He has placed in our hearts.
We don't love others based on what they can do for us or how they can serve us. And the law of God, all that is, is a way of practically loving your neighbor. Don't steal, don't kill, don't commit sexual immorality. Don't covet, don't lie, honor your father and mother. All of that's just a way of loving one another, loving your neighbor. The whole law of God can be summarized as this: love your neighbor as yourself. The freedom that Christ purchased for us was to set us free of the bondage of living out our fleshly desires so that we can live in freedom truly loving one another from the heart.
We don't love one another based on what they can do for us or how they can serve us. That's the way the world loves. That's not true love. The flesh says that if you do this for me or if you do that for me, then you can earn my love. Then you can earn my approval. But that's not God's way, and that's not God's love. A life that's empowered by the grace of God and the love of God allows us to love like God loves. Which is a love that is totally upside down from the rest of the world, just as God's kingdom is. Always. It's not upside down; God's kingdom's right side up. The world is upside down. But to us, it seems upside down because we come out of the world. God's ways are right side up, the world's ways are upside down.
The world says you will find freedom if you pursue the desires of the flesh. What God's Word declares as sin. The world says follow your heart and indulge yourself in sinful desires. What God's Word says is, if you do those things, you will be happy. But the gospel declares to us that sin only produces bondage. Instead of being free to indulge our flesh, as the apostle Paul says, we are now free to live by the Spirit, loving and serving others. That is true freedom. To be able to love our neighbor. That's true freedom.
We see this, of course, in Jesus, the true man of freedom. True freedom is being able to love when you have been hated; that's true freedom. You see, if you are not set free by Christ, those who hate you, you are bound to hate them back. That's just the way of the world. That's the way of the flesh. But when Christ sets you free, you can love even those who hate you. True freedom is being able to bless when you are cursed. Jesus, the true man of freedom, shows us what true freedom looks like as He hangs there bleeding and dying on the cross, and He doesn't call down curses on them; He calls down blessings on them. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. True freedom is being able to forgive when you have been wronged. True freedom is being able to humble yourself when others are proud. True freedom is being able to serve those who can never pay you back. This is true freedom.
To look at the law of God, to look at the Word of God, to bring ourselves under it, it brings us into a wide place. It opens up opportunities for us that we would never have otherwise, to forgive, to love, to bless. That is true freedom. To not be bound to my flesh and my carnal desires, but to have the Spirit of God living on the inside of me. Because that is the inheritance of every child of God.
You see, true freedom is found in being adopted into God's family, to live under His roof, to live as a part of His family. And in God's family and God's house, like every other house, He's got some house rules. Love your neighbor. Repay blessing for cursing. Forgive one another. These are some of God's house rules. These are not rules for slaves. No, slaves are slaves to sin and Satan, that evil, oppressive taskmaster. No, these are rules for sons and daughters. Not so that we can become part of God's family, but because we are part of God's family. We have been brought into God's family by His grace and by the blood of His Son. We do not live under God's laws to earn His love. He's already shown us His love in Christ. We keep God's Word, we seek out His precepts, we seek to obey His law not because we are seeking to be transformed, but because we have been transformed by God's love.
On one side of the aisle, you have people who try to earn God's favor by keeping God's law. We could never do it. We could never live perfectly enough for His holy standard. That's why He sent His Son Jesus to die for us. On the other side of the aisle, you have people who want to just throw off God's law altogether and just live a life of licentiousness. That's not freedom either. No, the true path of freedom is to be a son and daughter of God, to live as a part of His house, to be welcomed in His banquet table. Yes, there are some house rules. But it's only for our good and to produce flourishing in our lives.
I hope that I've convinced you today that to walk in a broad place, to walk in the place of blessing and freedom, is not to throw off God's laws, but to keep God's commandments. Not to live out the fleshly desires that only produce more sin and death and bondage, but to be set free of them by the freedom that Christ gives, and to humble ourselves under the Word of God, and that we could say like the psalmist, I walk in freedom because I have kept your commandments. Amen?