Credo
19 May 2025
Introduction
In 2022, exvangelical[1] pastor Brandon Flanery published the findings of a survey he conducted with 1050 Christians who had left the faith.[2] When asked “What does your current existential framework offer you that your previous one did not?” the most common answer was “Freedom”.[3]
Indeed, on the one hand, renouncing one’s allegiance to Christ does amount to a wresting back of one’s autonomy – literally translated as “self-rule”. On the other hand, the simplistic equivalence drawn between autonomy and freedom reveals a severely anaemic understanding of Christian freedom.
Political scientist Patrick Deneen points out that this shallow conception of freedom has more in common with secular liberalism which redefines freedom or liberty as “the liberation of humans from established authority”. Its ascent “required sustained efforts to undermine the classical and Christian understanding of liberty”.[4]
As theologian Kristin Johnston Largen puts it, “in Christ, much, much more is given to us than a straightforward freedom to make our own decisions—but at the same time, much, much more is required of us, as well.”[5]
It is impossible in this short essay to do justice to the richness that is Christian freedom. We shall survey just two aspects of Christian freedom which plainly contradict their secular counterpart:
- Freedom is not the Absence of Constraints
- Freedom is Fundamentally Relational
Freedom is not the Absence of Constraints
Those of us raised on a diet of Hollywood movies would recognise that moving out from one’s familial home to attend college is a shorthand for attaining freedom. Released from parental control, these college kids are typically depicted as imbibing copiously and copulating indiscriminately. It is as if internal (self)-control does not exist; that any control over the self heretofore is entirely imposed from without.
Procuring freedom, then, is a mere matter of severing those external fetters that constrain impulses.
In stark contrast, the Christian understanding of freedom has self-control as its bedrock. As Deneen explains:
By ancient and Christian understandings, liberty was the condition of self-governance, whether achieved by the individual or by a political community. Because self-rule was achieved only with difficulty – requiring an extensive habituation in virtue, particularly self-command and self-discipline over base but insistent appetites – the achievement of liberty required constraints upon individual choice.[6]
Like the ancients, Christians understand that our appetites have the power to enslave us. As John Calvin famously observed, the mind of man is “a perpetual manufactory of idols”[7]; the human heart is so irredeemably deceitful (Jeremiah 17:9) that literally anything can be turned into an idol.
Only when we acknowledge our hearts’ depravity would we understand Jesus’ enigmatic invitation to take his yoke (Matthew 11: 29). Shouldn’t the promised rest be the absence of a yoke? Yet the truth is that we are never free of any yoke, but only Jesus’ yoke brings rest – freedom! – from the constantly clamorous cravings of our hearts.
For Christians, therefore, freedom entails voluntary, exclusive and disciplined submission to the lordship of Jesus. This is echoed in the first part of Martin Luther’s axiom[8] on freedom:
The Christian individual is a completely free lord of all, subject to none.
Indeed, the Christian individual is completely free and subject to none because he or she is ultimately subject only to God, for the salvific work of his Son Jesus on the cross. However, Luther goes on to posit the seemingly contradictory follow-up that
The Christian individual is a completely dutiful servant of all, subject to all.
This is the second part of the “much, much more is required” which Largen speaks of. Although we are ultimately subject to no other earthly ruler, true Christian freedom requires us to be servant to all – another proposition antithetical to the secular account of freedom.
Freedom is Fundamentally Relational
“I’m not single. I’m just in a relationship with freedom” may make for a sassy poster, but underlying it is the sentiment that relationships limit freedom. Prima facie it is incontrovertible; relationships entail responsibility to others. Therefore the person who desires freedom should resist getting entangled in human relationships.
But Christians do not have the choice not to be in relation with others. Jesus himself explicitly tells his followers that love for God and neighbour are non-negotiables (Mark 12:30-31; Matthew 22:37 – 40; Luke 10:27). As Luther writes:
For a human being does not live in this mortal body solely for himself or herself and work only on it but lives together with all other human beings on earth. Indeed, more to the point, each person lives only for others and not for himself or herself.[9]
Lest we think that Luther overstates how love for neighbour ought to look like, he merely rephrased our Lord Jesus’ command:
This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you (John 15:12 – 14).
That is why the Apostle Paul tells the believers in Philippi to “count others more significant than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3) and those in Ephesus to “[submit] to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21).
Theologian Richard Foster draws out the link between freedom and submission to others, explaining the paradox that submission frees us from “the terrible burden of always needing to get our own way.”[10]
In submission we are at last free to value other people. Their dreams and plans become important to us. We have entered into a new, glorious freedom – the freedom to give up our own rights for the good of others. For the first time we can love people unconditionally. We have given up the right to demand that they return our love. No longer do we feel that we have to be treated a certain way.[11]
Conclusion
We have only scratched the surface of what Christian freedom is. In a milieu which prizes self-expression above self-control and teaches us to despise the notion of submission, Christian freedom shows us the more excellent way. May we, the redeemed people of God be as shining lights as we seek to understand and live out true freedom in Christ.
[1] An exvangelical is someone, especially in the United States, who has left the evangelical church.
[2] https://baptistnews.com/article/i-asked-people-why-theyre-leaving-christianity-and-heres-what-i-heard/.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2018), 27.
[5] Kristin Johnston Largen, “Freedom from and Freedom for: Luther’s Concept of Freedom for the Twenty-First Century,” 232 – 243 in Dialog: A Journal of Theology, Vol. 52, Issue 3, September 2013,
[6] Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed, xiii.
[7] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter XI, “Usefulness of Ascribing to God a Visible Form. All Idolatry a Defection from the True God.” VIII, Trans John Allen, (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Christian Education, 1936), 122.
[8] Martin Luther, The Freedom of a Christian: 1520, in Timothy J. Wengert, The Annotated Luther Study Edition, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016), 488.
[9] Ibid., 519 – 520.
[10] Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline, (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1980), 140.
[11] Ibid., 141.
Dr Khaw Siew Ping is a research associate at Trinity Theological College. She has been a teacher, home-maker, and church worker involved in a variety of ministries from preaching, administration, to drama and worship ministry. Siew Ping has been a member of St. John’s – St. Margaret’s Church for more than three decades.