The Illusion of Freedom
What we love, what we pursue, and what it really means to live
The Question That Frames Everything
I woke up this morning and was reflecting on Luke 10:28 and who it reveals us to be as people.
“Do this and you will live.” (Luke 10:28, ESV)
That statement forces a deeper question: what does it actually mean to pursue God with abandon?
The mind really is a battleground. We are consumed by the flesh, and we naturally desire to seek what our flesh wants. Because of that, as David Guzik explains in his Commentary on Romans (from the Enduring Word Bible Commentary series), we are in enmity with God through our minds.
(Enduring Word – Romans 8) This is exactly what Scripture says in Romans 8:
“For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God.” (Romans 8:7, ESV)
Jen and I then had a conversation about money, and it became clear how easy it is to see people chasing after it. People love money with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength. They reorient their lives around the pursuit of it. And the question is: why can’t we love God with our heart, mind, soul, and strength in the same way?
Conceptually, if you just tell people they’re lost in their pursuits, it can feel abstract. But when you compare it to the pursuit of money, it’s easy to see.
As you process, you realize what’s actually happening. When people chase money, they are really chasing consumption. Our flesh desires it, and our society reinforces it. Consumption and “keeping up” are presented as what’s important.
We consume and think it’s freedom, but it’s an illusion of freedom. We spend and spend to feed the flesh, and what we end up creating is debt. Then we find ourselves indebted to the very life we were trying to create. We become enslaved to that pursuit.
We chase what feels like freedom, only to discover we’ve become enslaved to the very life we were trying to build.
When you think again about Luke 10:28 and the promise that if we “do this” then we will truly live (Luke 10:28, ESV), the question becomes clearer: what are you doing in order to live? What are you loving in order to feel alive?
True freedom is found in loving God and others as ourselves. But we tend not to chase that. Instead, we chase the illusion of freedom.
Christ makes it very clear that if we love God and if we put Jesus at the center of our lives, then what we receive in return is real freedom. We chase the wrong things because of sin, because of the flesh.
As Paul says in Romans 7:
“For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” (Romans 7:19, ESV)
He knows what is right. He knows what he should be doing, yet he finds himself unable to do it because the flesh is constantly pulling him away.
So the real question becomes this: will we keep chasing the illusion of freedom, or will we learn to resist the flesh, rest in the Spirit, and trust the Lord completely?