True Independence
This Independence Day, around change-for-bedtime-time, the two-year old living in my house will likely look into the face of an adult five times her size (parent or grandparent) and voice the declaration, “Addie do it!” She has quite the taste for independence.
Independence can be a good thing. When it comes to getting dressed, learning assertiveness, or resisting the injustices of a tyrannical government, then yes, independence is good. But even a good thing like independence, when it becomes an ultimate thing, can become a bad thing.
If you’ve ever read the Exodus story in the Old Testament, then you’ve seen how God freed his people from slavery in Egypt and miraculously formed them into a mighty, independent nation, ready to inherit the Promised Land. At the beginning of that shaping experience in the wilderness, Moses gave them the Law, the Ten Commandments. They start like this:
And God spoke all these words, saying, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:1–3, ESV). This was the beginning of their charter as an independent people.
And it’s strange, isn’t it?
Freed from Egypt by sheer grace, taken into relationship with God (“I am the Lord YOUR God”), they now are given commands which, a) define their identity, b) set their priorities, and c) restrict their choices!
We hardly ever think about independence in terms of commands and restrictions. For modern people, independence equals the freedom to be, do, choose, and believe anything, without constraint. Biblically, however, freedom and independence mean something more like having the ability to do what you have been created, designed, and called to be and do. Why? Because we are creatures, not the Creator.
Israel’s independence depended on their remembering who they were in relation to God. When they forgot, as in Judges 3:7 (And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. They forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asheroth), when they threw off the shackles of living under God’s commands, it inevitably led them back into slavery. The kind of self-oriented freedom that disregards God and His will for our lives always puts us back in bondage.
That’s why Jesus gave us this promise:
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:28–29).
Again, strange wording. A yoke was put on animals, so they could bear a load. How can Jesus offer us rest by taking on his yoke? He can do so for two reasons: first, because Jesus knows it is impossible for people to be independent in the libertarian sense of being their own god, living as if their independence were ultimate. He wants you to know that YOUR yoke is the heaviest of all. His yoke—following Him by faith as His disciple—is the only way to be delivered from slavery to other masters.
Second, the One who offers His yoke to us is Himself a servant. In fact, He is THE Servant, who does the Father’s will:
“For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me” (John 6:38).
“For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
This Independence Day in America, think about the implications of Jesus’ service to the Father on our behalf. As Mark 10:45 says, Jesus’ service was our ransom, the price of our freedom. Any nation that wants to be free must serve the God who frees, or it will wind up in bondage. Any individual who wants to be free must decide which god to serve—the false god of absolute personal freedom, or the Lord who serves those in bondage, even with his own death and resurrection, so that we can be free.
Bill Martin