Paul the Apostle Preaching on Capitol Hill
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. - JN 15:13
My American friends, I see that you a very religious people. As I walk around your chief city named for your most excellent of men and see its many memorials and testimonies to your power, I see you are people who love freedom. You extol the virtues of liberty, personal responsibility, and heroic achievement. I want to speak with you about the freedom you claim as your great birthright.
I can see that you believe you are already free, and your accomplishments appear to reinforce that claim. You have flown higher than the eye can see to conquer space, walk on the moon, probe the stars, and dream of colonizing the planets. You have sailed the oceans and plumbed their depths. You traversed foreboding terrain and mighty mountains and forded rivers to find new space to live and work. You have defeated deadly diseases, cooled the hot air, constructed cities and towers, fed the world, become wealthy beyond anything history has ever seen, and exploited every possible pleasure known to humans, creating beauty and delight.
You see in these the expression of your will, intelligence, power, and freedom. You fought wars for your freedom and the freedom of others and even killed one another to free others from slavery. You rebuilt the lands of those you’d defeated, making friends of former enemies, and in this way, you once again touched something in the character of the God who ordered your existence and sustains you still. These gains have not been without cost - to yourselves and, yes, to others, to those conquered by the ventures you engaged in.
I see that you memorialize heroes who sacrificed their lives for your freedom. Their impulse to love, and your impulse to honor such love, comes from the God who is love and who sacrificed himself for your freedom. What I want to know is this: when you honor so well the love that sacrifices all for freedom, why do you then define your freedom in a way that is contrary to sacrificial love? You honor those who loved liberty more than life, but you’ve turned liberty into something that undermines the very love and life they possessed. You claim to be free, but you’ve turned personal freedom into a god that is failing you, a god that is killing you. You are a slave to a false idea of freedom.
The Quest for Freedom
Your quest for liberty is unsurprising, for you are made in the image of the only perfectly free being. Your leaders praise this ideal - 'Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.’
I must tell you that your fathers and mothers before you sought the same freedoms. They felt what you feel, too. The most ancient of them were told they could enjoy greater freedom by being free from the God who made them. They were told their Creator didn’t truly love them, that they were his mere puppets and pawns. That wasn’t true. It was a baseless assertion. Without any thought for the glory of God, the terrible fall they’d endure, and the cosmic impact of their decision, without taking into logical and scientific account the beauty of their surroundings and face-to-face communion with the God they knew - the empirical evidence that they were deeply loved - they abandoned their Creator. As a result, they found themselves in exile from freedom, chained to death, and engaged in a ceaseless struggle to regain what they’d forfeited.
Since then, humans have struggled against death and the deep internal awareness of its inevitability. We humans are keenly aware of our desire for immortality; we are aware of an interior cry of the heart to be free, knowing that death is inescapable. In our fear, we think other people are the source of our chains. Is it not true, however, that we are the ones who’ve forged our own prison cells of fear, prejudice, hatred, and violence? We all long for liberty, as even one of your artists has only recently said, 'Freedom! Freedom! I can't move/ Freedom, cut me loose! I break chains all by myself/Won't let my freedom rot in hell.’ But can we break the chains all by ourselves? Can we rescue freedom from hell? Can we rescue ourselves?
What is Freedom?
Your definition of freedom intrigues me. In the name of freedom, your culture is making idols of the good gifts your Creator gives you, gods you bow down to in adoration. Yet on their own, these gifts are not the ultimate answer to your longing. You know their names: Technos, Eros, Mammon, Fashionos, & Celebritos - how you love these gods, though they do not seem to love you so well in return. Other gods also demand your attention and offer only bloodshed, Inhumanos, and Homicidos among them. Your prisons overflow, and blood runs in your streets. Are you as free as you aspire to be… as you claim to be? It appears that you are not as free as your countless memorials, statues, and laws proclaim. It is good that you aspire to freedom, but have you asked why freedom rather than tyranny is actually right and good? It is good. But why is it good? Do you know?
Thankfully, the rejected God refused to leave us alone in this self-imposed state of slavery to fear and death. He allowed himself to be bound, to be a slave, and yes, even to die. But then, in an unexpected turn that demolished the old order of slavery, he broke the chains of death and rose from the dead. I know it seems incredible, but the freedom you crave and the conquest of death we need is found not in the society around us but in the God above us. The rejected God is the God who never rejected you; the God we didn’t love never stopped loving us. I urge you to look to this God, revealed in Jesus Christ, to discover why you were made, why you keep doing destructive things to yourself, those you love, and the world we call home. I invite you to find liberty in this God who loves you and took your chains to make you free. He said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will free you.”
If you would be truly free, you must return to the One Being in the Universe who is absolutely free, your Creator. This Creator God is the God who loves and sacrifices all for you.
You know it is right to honor the One who loves you that much. Come to him now, for this God of love and sacrifice lives and longs for your companionship. Rather than demanding your life to satisfy his justice, he gave his life for your freedom from slavery to self, sin, and death.
How do I know this is true? God has furnished proof of this by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christ lived and died, not simply to set an example of love before you but to fulfill God’s holy law on your behalf, perfectly obeying what you cannot perfectly obey for even a moment and then enduring the penalty that Law required on your behalf. On the third day, he rose from the dead, defeating the greatest enemy you’ve never defeated and can never conquer, even with all the military might you possess or ward off through all the wealth and technology you can accumulate.
There’s Not Much Time
Your sages have noted the brevity of life. They are right to do so. I will add to this that the life of your nation is also a mere breath. The place you occupy now in this world will not last forever. And your great might and treasure can never expunge the debt of sin you owe or vanquish the power of death. Though you have seen yourselves as a city on a hill, there is only one lasting city, the City of God, and your citizenship in that domain is a gift you receive, not a status you achieve. Heaven is not a land you can conquer; it is a grace you must humbly be given. You will need to repent and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Everything that can be shaken will be shaken, and only the everlasting will remain.
Not so many years ago, a beloved man from among your people, moved by words I wrote of liberty long ago in my letter to the Romans, stood on steps not far from here and inspired you to turn to one another in love. He ended his speech with these words: “Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty. I am free at last.”
That man's God is the God I urge you to give attention to today. This God is your freedom, and apart from him, the old slavery to the terrible gods of the past will always haunt your heart and undermine the very foundations of your liberty. But in his presence is found the perfect freedom you long for, the perfect freedom you were created for, the liberty that comes from Jesus alone. Know this truth, his truth, and the truth will make you free.