…and His commandments are not burdensome.
~ 1 John 5:3
Every week, amidst the wonderful hustle and bustle of life and ministry, I burn off stress on my two favorite playgrounds: the tennis court and the ocean waves. There’s a freedom that I experience wielding a racquet and hitting various kinds of shots all over the court with an almost reckless abandon. Similarly, there’s a freedom that I experience surfing our island’s most beautiful waves against the backdrop of the world’s most beautiful landscape—a freedom that’s perhaps even greater than the one I feel hitting tennis balls.
I also remember when such freedom didn’t exist.
I first learned to play tennis back in 1995 as a fifth grader when I asked my father to teach me after I had watched the U.S. Open on TV for the first time. I remember how unnatural everything felt, how every movement that aligned with proper technique just seemed to go against what my body instinctively wanted to do, how restrained I felt I had to be in order to keep a ball not just within the lines but in the court itself (I lost about 100 balls to the bushes over the fence).
I first learned to surf last year, no longer a fifth grader but a father of two, after moving back to Hawaii for ministry. I remember how those initial sessions not only felt awkward, but painful, given how long and hard I had to paddle while catching close to nothing.
For both tennis and surfing, committing myself to apply the proper disciplines in technique felt nothing short of burdensome. But it was that consistent application of discipline—rather than repeatedly giving into what my body naturally wants to do—that eventually produced mastery and, through that mastery, freedom. Freedom, not bondage, both with a Babolat racquet and with an epoxy surfboard, was the fruit of the consistent training my body toward what it needed to do and against what it wanted to do.
Freedom in Christ is, in that sense, no different.
I am under no illusion that the Christian life lived the right way is a stroll in the park. Walking in the Spirit requires waging a very real warfare against a persistent and sin-loving flesh that opposes everything we know we should do. Paul reminds us in Galatians 5:17 that the Spirit and the flesh are “in opposition to one another.” At times, Christians are tempted to view keeping God’s commandments as unnatural. It’s not unusual for a genuinely saved Christian to wonder, during particular moments and seasons of struggle, “Why are certain sins even sins in the first place?” These questions arise from an underlying sentiment that what feels natural should also be permissible rather than prohibited. Thus, to put away sin and to put on the proper way of Christ-likeness—whether in speech, conduct, love, faith, or purity—requires discipline, not instinct. And the consistent application of discipline can be deemed as burdensome. This pattern of thinking isn’t uncommon. But that doesn’t make it right.
Hence, the words in 1 John 5:3 are pointed: “His commandments are not burdensome.” Those who are saved are the workmanship of God who have been created in Christ Jesus, not for fleshly indulgence (which at times we equate to freedom), but rather good works (which Scripture equates to living in obedience to the will of God). But tell me: Who has the freedom on the tennis court? The one who swings aimlessly and can’t keep a ball in bounds, or the one who can place the ball wherever he wishes on the court? Tell me: Who has the freedom in the ocean waves? The one who flails his body in every direction while getting tossed to and fro, or the one who maneuvers his body purposefully to surf the biggest curls? Spiritually, who is truly the free man? The one who is continually enslaved to his corrupted flesh or the one who walks in the newness of life in accordance with God’s redemptive design for humanity seen in the person of Christ Himself?
Freedom, then, is found not in unrestrained lustful indulgence, but in disciplined living according to the commandments of God.
Freedom, then, is found not in unrestrained lustful indulgence, but in disciplined living according to the commandments of God. For the more we walk in His commandments, the more we overcome the enslaving power and hindering nature of the world and all that is in it. Only then can we say that we are truly free.
