Freedom Isn't Free

by Katie Harding, July 4, 2022 (originally posted July 2021)

 Three summers ago, several women from our church were baptized in a creek not far from our home. It was a hot day, but one filled with great joy and anticipation as the women shared their testimonies and then proceeded with the assembled crowd down the path, through the woods, and to the embankment of the creek.

I remember their baptisms like I remember no others — the excitement, the life stories, and the gathering of cheering witnesses.

But I remember something else from that day. It wasn’t anything someone said or did; it was a phrase printed on the front of a t-shirt worn by one of the women getting baptized: “Freedom isn’t Free.” As we celebrate our country’s independence today, that phrase is on my mind.

Sometimes our initial response when we see or hear a phrase like that might be, “No, freedom IS free; it is a gift from God.” We know we are justified by faith, so we don’t have to earn our freedom in Christ. While that’s true, it doesn’t mean our freedom is free.

Like the freedom we have in our country because countless men and women have paid for our freedom with their lives, the freedom we have in Christ is no different. The gift of freedom we have received from God was paid for by Jesus.

I remember telling my dad once about a friend who worked at Burger King and gave me a FREE burger. I was a teenager and very excited, but my dad drilled home a serious life lesson that day. He said that although the burger was free to me, someone else paid the price so I didn’t have to. It wasn’t free, even though it was free to me.

Jesus did the same thing. He paid the price for our freedom. It’s free to us because it’s been paid for by Him.

May we never take our freedom for granted. Christ sacrificed His life on a cross to give us an abundant life on this earth. Let us live fully in the “free” gift we’ve been given.