Our Walk: The Freedom of Submission

You're listening to the Gospel and Life podcast. What does authentic spiritual growth actually look like? Writing to early believers, Peter outlines several qualities of a life that looks more and more like Christ's. Today Tim Keller takes a closer look at how we can develop this in our own lives and how the resurrection of Jesus makes true, lasting transformation possible. Today's scripture reading is 1 Peter chapter 2 verses 13 through 17, chapter 4 verses 1 through 5, and chapter 5 verses 5 through 11. Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human authority, whether to the emperor as a supreme authority or to governors who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. For it is God's will that by doing good, you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a coverup for evil. Live as God's slaves. Show proper respect to everyone. Love the family of believers. Fear God. Honor the emperor. Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because whoever suffers in the body is done with sin. As a result, they do not live the rest of their earthly lives for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do, living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing, and detestable idolatry. You're surprised that you do not join them in their reckless, wild living, and they heap abuse on you, but they will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. In the same way, you who are younger submit yourselves to your elders. All of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble. Pull yourselves therefore under God's mighty hand that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. And the God of all grace who called you to his eternal glory in Christ after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm, and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen. The word of the Lord. So in the first and second books of Peter, or epistles of Peter, we've been looking at over the number of weeks since Easter how we live the Christian life. The Christian life is not just turning over new leaf, it's a lot more radical and gradual than that. A lot more transformative and powerful than that. And we've been looking at a number of themes and concepts that in 1st and 2nd Peter are very helpful to unlock the power and meaning of what that means. So for example, we looked at the new birth. We're born again. We looked at being exiles, that we live as exiles in this world. We looked at the concept of holiness, the concept of spiritual growth. But now, today in these passages that we've sort of culled together out of 1st Peter, we learn another extremely important concept for understanding the Christian life, and that is the freedom of a Christian. The freedom of a Christian. Notice in verse 17 of the first, 16 of the first chapter, 1st chapter 2, it says, live as free people. And that's really a theme that runs all the way through the New Testament. Martin Luther, who was really the spearhead of the Protestant Reformation, one of the three or four short tracks or essays he wrote to start the Reformation, which really did change the world. One of those was called the freedom of a Christian. It's a fairly short tract or essay. You can get it online. And in the very, very beginning of the essay, this is what he says. A Christian is a perfectly free Lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all. These two theses seem to contradict each other, but both are Paul's own statements, who says in 1st Corinthians 9-9, for though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all. So this paradox that Christians are free through submission, they're free through service, they're free through obedience. They're free through submission to liberating authority. This Christian understanding of freedom is a complete loggerhead to what the culture tells us and actually, because we live in the culture. I would say most of us as Christians, we have trouble understanding it ourselves. So let's take a look and see what we can sort of pull out of these diverse verses in 1st Peter about this subject. Through Christian spiritual freedom, what it is, what it brings, how it can grow in you. What it is, what it brings, how it can grow. First of all, first of all, let's tackle the question of what in the world it is. Right away, we see that the way the word freedom is used in the Bible is just so different than the way we use it here. So for example, look at verse 16, live as free people. That's the beginning of verse 16, but then at the end of verse 16, it says, live as God's slaves. And that's clearly the same thing. Live as free people, live as God's slaves. Or I could say, Peter is saying, we can live as free people because we're God's slaves. In fact, if you look at that whole first paragraph, you see that what Paul, and we'll get back to this, what Peter is saying is, submit yourselves to every human authority. Where do the emperor, to governors, in all words, he says, serve others. This is very close to what Luther said. Serve others, submit to others, give yourself to others. Why? Because you're free. Why? Because you're slave to God. Because we are slaves to God, we are absolutely free, which means that we can serve others. And right away, we say, what? Now, here's the reason why we're confused is because the culture defines freedom in what we could call completely negative terms. You're free if you're free from. Free from constraints, free from restrictions. The culture, our Western culture defines freedom as mutually exclusive from commitments or promises or obedience. To the degree I'm obeying someone, to the degree that I'm serving someone, or keeping a promise to that degree I'm not free. Why? Because it cuts off my options. If I'm serving someone or if I have made a promise, that means because I promised this, I can't do this, which means I'm not free. Because our understanding, our modern understanding of freedom is freedom from. Freedom from any restrictions. The more options I have, the more things I can choose, the more free I am. Here we're told that you're only free if you are a slave of God. And we say, how could that be? Well the answer is that statement makes no sense unless you recognize two assumptions. There's two premises or assumptions operating here and here's what they are. They actually run out through the rest of the New Testament. The first assumption of the New Testament, the Bible, is that there is no such thing as negative freedom. There is no such thing as anybody who's free from all restraint or constraints. The Bible assumes that everybody's a slave to something. Everybody's a slave to something. That's one of the main things of the Bible. Two passages that will show you this if you dig into them. One is Romans 6, which essentially says you can either be a slave of self, of ego, of sin or of God, but there's no third alternative. Or you can just go to the first of the ten commandments. Just look at the first of the ten commandments. I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods before me. Notice you either worship God, the true God, or you'll make something else into a God. There's no third alternative. By the way, it's not only the Bible that says this. I mean, lots and lots of other people. For example, Euripides, one of the ancient Greek authors says this, no one is holy free. You are a slave to wealth or to the law or to the people you are seeking to please. Hear that? That's simple. No one's really free. You're a slave to wealth or to the law or to the people you're seeking to please. Is that an overstatement? Nobody's free. Everybody's a slave? So what he's saying is everybody has to live for something. And whatever you have to live for something. And if there's anything in your life that is your kind of meaning and purpose in life, or things in your life that give you meaning and purpose, that if they were taken away, you would feel like what's the use of going on. Those things are the controlling spiritual authority of your life. If you're living for something, then that's what you've got to have. And if something threatens it or it looks like you're losing it, you go crazy, you go nuts, you know, you feel like maybe my life is over, what does that mean? That is your spiritual authority. You've got to have it and therefore essentially it's driving you. Everybody's living for something and whatever that is, you're enslaved to. Now if you say, well gee, that seems like an overstatement. Yeah, no. No. You know the Charles Dickens, the famous Charles Dickens novel, Oliver, Twist, has in it a prostitute with a heart of gold, Nancy. And Nancy is in an abusive relationship with a very evil, violent man, Bill Sykes. And Nancy stays with this man even though he beats her. He is so dependent on his love and his, you know, on him for her sense of self-worth and for her security that she stays with him even though he abuses her. And of course, Oliver Twist was turned into a musical, you know, a Broadway musical and then eventually into a movie called Oliver. And in the musical, Nancy sings about her abusive relationship. It's one of the most excruciating pieces of musical theater you could ever listen to. If you want to, you can go home and watch it on YouTube probably somewhere. And after he hits her, she sings and she says things like this. She says, I know that he needs me. As long as he needs me, I know where I must be. I'll cling on steadfastly as long as he needs me. So here's an abused woman singing on Broadway, I guess back in 1964, whatever they did, they weren't thinking about it. But it's excruciating because you say, why in the world would that poor woman give that man such power over her? Why would he be so important to her? She lets him do that. Well, after 25 years of being a pastor in New York City, I would say the average man or woman that I've met in New York has the same relationship to his or her career that Nancy had to build Sykes. You got to have it. This is how you feel. I'm trying to make it in this. I'm trying to do this. And you let your career abuse you and beat you up and do all sorts of things, but you just got to have it. Now look, everybody's living for something. And therefore, everybody's addicted to something. Everybody's got something that's driving them. Everybody's a slave to something. That's the first assumption of the Bible. And I think it's true. Okay, number two, there's a second assumption though. Now, if it's true that everybody's a slave to something, that nobody's truly free from, you know, just free in the modern sense, negative freedom, free from any restrictions. See, if you're committed to something, then you're restricted. Any commitment brings restrictions. So if you're committed to a great career, oh my goodness, all the restrictions, you did, you know, you busted a gut in order to get into the graduate school so that you could get the job. And boy, you've been restricting yourself all over the place. You're not free. And I've actually talked to people who said, I'm a completely emotionally free person. Why? I remember having a conversation years ago with somebody like this. I'm completely emotionally free. As soon, you know, I like to date people. I like to have little flings with people. But as soon as I get serious, I'm out of there because I am free. No restrictions on me. I want to be able to be where I want to be, live where I want to live, you know, go where I want to go. No restrictions on me. I said, well, that's not true. I mean, you have this enormous restriction. And the person said, why? I said, you are so committed to your independence that you cannot get into committed relationships. You've got to get away from them. You're restricting yourself from them for both and for both and look out. See everybody's committed to something that gives you meaning in life. And therefore everybody's got restrictions. And you are submitting to all kinds of restrictions. Well then what's freedom? Freedom is finding the liberating restrictions. Freedom's finding the liberating restrictions. So for example, a person my age sometimes goes to the doctor and the doctor says, you need to go on a very strict diet or you're going to die of a heart attack. So I said, oh, I don't want to hear that. So what's on the diet? So the doctor gets out of diet. You can eat this, this, this. And then you can't eat these 20,000 things over here. So there's four things you can eat. And here's 20,000 things you can't eat. And you say, oh, I don't like that. Tell the doctor if the doctor is smart. And if you're a doctor out there, you can, by the way, use this advice for free. In your patient education. Okay. The doctor could say, well, you know, there's restrictions either way. You can have unlimited eating now. No restrictions. Wee. But then you'll have the restriction of soon being in a hospital with tubes all over you and maybe die. That's bad. Or you could have the restrictions of the diet now and then live a long and healthy life. Which set of restrictions would be the liberating set? Do you see? I mean, in other words, there's restrictions either way. Which restrictions liberate? And you say, well, then how do you decide which restrictions liberate? Well, it's the ones that fit your design. What the doctor is trying to say is the way in which you're eating is violating your nature. You need to bring the way you eat in line with how your body is built. Or you could say this about, you know, for example, let's say you buy a car and the car says diesel fuel only. Well, what does that mean? Means you're restricted. Means you've got to only buy diesel fuel. Oh, the diesel fuel is so many percents a gallon more than gasoline. I'll put in gasoline. No. If you do that, you'll destroy the car. If you put diesel fuel into the car because it's built for diesel fuel, it'll take you and it'll whisk you around, you know, and give you great fuel mileage. What you're doing is you are finding the restrictions that fit the design. Now, how does this relate to spiritual stuff in God? Oh, my goodness. You can see. When I was a brand new Christian in my early 20s, I read a book which is long out of print. Though I noticed the other day you can still find it somewhere. You can, it's long out of print. You can find it used. A little book by Charles E. Hummel called Becoming Free. Huge impact on my thinking and actually my preaching. In fact, this sermon to a great degree is completely indebted to that little book. Because in it he uses this illustration. He uses several, but here's what he does. He says, imagine a fish. The fish is in the water. Ah, the fish says, I hate being confined and restrained to the water. That's not fair. I don't like this restriction. I am free. This is a, you know, I don't know where the fish got his education, but anyway. The fish got some kind of education and got the Western cultural idea of freedom as being negative freedom, freedom from any restrictions, freedom from any constraints. So the fish says, you know, I've never been out there on the land. I'm going to go out in the land. Gets up on the land and next thing you know what's going on. He's flopping around and he's gasping and he's dying. Why? Because the fish isn't designed for the land. That's not what his design is. He's got no legs. He's just not designed for it. He's got gills. He's not designed for it, but put the fish back in the water, flick of his tail. He's darting around like lightning. Why? Because he's, he's in his environment, the environment he was built for. He's when he's restricted to the water, he's free. All of his potential is released. All the things that he couldn't possibly do on the land he can now do in the water. If there is a God who created you and me, if the Bible's right, there is a God who created you and me. Listen, if you believe in God and you believe in a God who created all things, he created you for himself. And what that means is the only true water for your soul, the only element that is not an alien place for your soul is full service to him, be his slave, unquestioning obedience, unconditional obedience. That when I say, Lord, there's a lot of other things in my life, but you have my primary allegiance, when I do that, then I'm jumping back into the water. And if there's anything you're living for, you may say I believe in God, but if you're allegiance, we're talking about here God's slaves, what does that mean? It bothers us to even hear the word, but it's talking about allegiance, not just belief. And if God is your main allegiance, your main hope, your main happiness, then you are becoming free. But if there's anything in your life that is a higher allegiance than God, I see this all the time with people. People say, you know, I prayed to God for this to happen, it didn't happen, so I've had nothing to do with God. What does that mean? That thing you were praying for was your highest allegiance. God was a negotiable means for an end. You didn't get it, God's gone. What does that mean? God's not your highest allegiance, but if there's anything you're living for, more than God, you're like a fish in an alien environment, gasping, flopping, dying spiritually. Now that's what freedom is. Freedom is finding the liberating restrictions of the true spiritual authority of God Himself. Now what does that actually look like? How does that work out? How does that roll out? What does this spiritual freedom bring? There's three things I think we can find here. We can, again, pull out of these passages. We brought a bunch of passages together. They say a lot more than just what we're bringing out here, but in order to get to this theme, I brought them together. There's three things that true spiritual Christian freedom brings into your life, three kinds of freedom. Number one, it gives you freedom from uncontrollable, enslaving emotions and desires. What is my purpose in life? What is a good life? And why does the world feel so broken? In the Gospels, Jesus meets people who are asking these very questions, and when Jesus responds, their lives are changed in unexpected ways. In his book, Encounters with Jesus, Tim Keller explores several of these conversations. Looking at Jesus' interactions with everyone from a skeptical student to a religious insider to a social outcast, Dr. Keller shows how these encounters with Jesus can uniquely address the big questions and doubts we still face today. Encounters with Jesus is our thank you for your gift this month to help Gospel and Life share the hope of the Gospel with more people. Request your copy today when you make a gift at gospelandlife.com slash give. That's gospelandlife.com slash give. Now, here's Tim Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. Uncontrollable. I'm not saying negative emotions. My goodness, everybody has negative emotions. Jesus was a man of sorrow, acquainted with grief, but I'm talking about uncontrollable, enslaving emotions and desires. What do we mean? Well, in this second paragraph from chapter four, look at verses two and three. And when you first read this, you're not going to get probably the right impression. As a result, Peter says, they, he's talking about the people around the Christians in their city. They do not live the rest of the... Oh, pardon me. He's talking about Christians. As a result, those who are done with sin, we've turned away from sin, he's talking about Christians in verse one. As a result, verse two, they do not live the rest of their earthly lives for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. Now, that word, evil human desires is a word I keep bringing up to you a lot. It's a Greek word that shows up constantly in the New Testament when it talks about how Christians change. It's the word epithemia. It means an epidesire or an overdesire, an overdesire. In fact, verse three, when it talks about debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgy, scruising, and detestable idolatry, you probably think verse three means Peter saying, now that you're a Christian, you shouldn't go to those terrible parties anymore. And it might be that as a Christian, you should stay away from some parties that you were going to before. But even here, the word lust, again, doesn't really mean sexual lust, by the way. It means it's the same basic idea. Human freedom frees you from overdesires, frees you from desiring things that are so intense that it drives you. See, it's one thing to want to be healthy, isn't it? That's fine to be healthy. What's a hypochondriac? That's a person with an epidesire for health. And a hypochondriac is a person who's miserable and makes everybody around you miserable because you're always seeing things that really aren't there. It's an overdesire. It's an epidesire for health. And we've already talked about the same thing happens if you do it for anyone else. So there's nothing wrong with romantic love, but an epidesire for romantic love. There's nothing wrong with a career, one in career, but an epidesire for a career. These things create emotions because when something threatens those things, then the emotions are uncontrollable. So two examples. One, some years ago I watched a movie. It's kind of an old movie. It's been out a long time now, but it was a movie called Dad. And Jack Lemon as a grandfather, Ted Danson as the father, and Ethan Hawke, I think, was the son. At one point, Ted Danson had left the family years before. At one point, because I think Jack Lemon, his father, is sick, he gets back into connection with his son, Ethan Hawke, who's grown now. At one point, they're having a discussion, and Ethan Hawke finally has the courage to say to his father, why did you leave us? Why did you leave us? And at first, Ted Danson makes excuses and says, well, your mother was jealous of my career, and then finally, at a certain point, looks into the ground and says, making money made me feel like a man. Now what he was saying is, my identity was so built up in making money that even though it looked like it might get in the way of my relationship with my wife or my relationship with my children, I had to keep making money. I couldn't stop because I would be a masculine. I wouldn't feel like myself. Ah, what is that? That's an over-desire. That's an epithemia. And you've got controlling, mastering, addictive desires for things, good things, but now they control you. Or even this, I don't think this is unfair. Here's Nancy, here's Bill Sykes. If Nancy's highest allegiance was to God, and Bill hit her, she would say, Bill, I would love to have a love relationship with you, but you're going to jail. Since Bill Sykes was Nancy's salvation, was her highest allegiance, was her greatest source of significance and security? When Bill Sykes hits her, she says, I must have deserved it. I must have done something to deserve it. Why? Because she's blind, because she's addicted, because she's in denial, because she's got to have the salvation. So first of all, when God is your highest allegiance, it frees you from these uncontrollable enslaving desires and emotions. Secondly, it frees you from the fear of circumstances. We could have an entire sermon on just the fact that in chapter five, verse six, we're told, humble yourselves under God's mighty hand that He may lift you up in due time. Verse seven, cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you. There have been many, many sermons. Good sermons just preached on those two verses. I can't do that, but here's what I can say. As part of the freedom that you have in Christ, you don't have to be controlled by anxiety anymore. Doesn't mean you don't get anxious. Doesn't mean you don't worry. But it doesn't have to take you out. It doesn't have to absolutely paralyze you with fear. Why not? I don't usually tell examples like this, but it was such a vivid one. Last week, Kathy and I were in England and I preached at a small village church in England last week. There were 70 people there, almost all older people. See, just like Sunday morning in New York, right? 70 older people. No, that's not quite, but anyway, it was put it this way. It was a refreshing change. No, it doesn't mean I don't like you. Never mind. I've dug myself in that hole. I'll never get out. Forget. That's how jokes go. It was really a delightful time and I just preached in a small rural English village, 70 people, mainly older people. At one point I used an example that as I was doing it, I wondered whether it was too hard, but I went ahead and did it. And I was talking about the fact that years ago I listened to a recording of a sermon by David Martin Lloyd-Jones, an old British preacher. He was preaching on Jeremiah chapter two. And Jeremiah chapter two, the name of the sermon was Broken Sisters. It was about the fact that in Jeremiah chapter two, God speaks to the children of Israel and says, why are you trusting the Egyptians? Why are you trusting the Assyrians? Why are you trusting in your military might? Why are you trusting in your economic prosperity? Trust me. Anything else but me that is your number one allegiance and hope is just like a broken sister. Now what's a broken sister? Those of you who grew up in rural areas know a sister and isn't a well. A sister is a holding tank for rainwater and other kinds of water. And on a farm or in many places, the sister is where you got your water for cooking, for drinking, for bathing and everything else. But if you had a crack at the bottom of that sister and if the sister was broken, if there was even a little hairline fracture, you could go out one morning and the water would be gone, it would have just gone down into the ground and then you'd be dry. And God is saying through in that chapter, anything but me is basically a broken sister. Even good things. Even if you live for your family, it's a broken sister because they're going to die. If you live for money, it's a broken sister because it goes away. Everything but me is a broken sister. And then Lloyd Jones, who tended to be a kind of hard guy anyway, he turned and he said, I've never forgot this. He says, even if you are living for your spouse, now there's nothing wrong with loving your wife or loving your husband. But if your husband or your wife is the main thing in the world, one of you is going to look at the other, see the other one in a coffin someday. And then he said, how will your God, your savior, your hope help you at that moment? Even your God is in the coffin. How will your hope be able to help you when your heart is breaking? It can't. Only God can be your hope. Only God can be your allegiance. And afterwards I talked to an older British woman who came up to me and as soon as she began telling me this, I said, I can't believe I did this to this woman. She says, you know, my husband just died 16 months ago. I saw him in a coffin. And I said, they're saying, oh gosh, what did I do? And she says, I suddenly realized today, I've lost all my hope, but I'm a Christian. That doesn't have to happen. Even something like this does not have to destroy my life. I've really got to think about this. See it doesn't mean you shouldn't fear the death of your spouse. It doesn't mean you shouldn't be anxious about something like that, but there's anxiety and there's anxiety. There's fear that destroys you, fear that just, that paralyzes you. If God is your highest allegiance, then you are actually free from the paralyzing fear of circumstances, from controlling and uncontrollable and enslaving emotions. But thirdly, here's the third thing. You are free to serve people. And unless you're a slave of God, you're not free to serve other people. See all of verses, this is chapter two again, verses 13 down to 17. What's interesting here is it's talking about a whole lot of social contracts. It says submit yourselves to the Lord's, for the Lord's sake, to every human authority, that citizenship. Then down in verse 17, show love for the family of believers. That's membership. You come into a church and now I'm, you know, I'm supposed to serve other people. It's show proper respect to everyone. All through here, we're being told, live as free people because you're a slave of God by serving other people. Now you say, well, how does that work? I mean, why do I need to be a slave of God in order to serve other people? Francois Sagan, who was a very well-known woman, a French woman of letters and, you know, kind of writer and intellectual. Some years ago for Le Monde magazine, she was interviewed. This is many years ago now. And the interviewer was asking her about how her life went, how she felt her life went. And she says, I've been well satisfied with my life. Oh, the interviewer says, then you've had the freedom you wanted. Is that right? And then she says this, well, I was obviously less free when I was in love with somebody, but once fortunately not in love all the time. Apart from that, I've been free. Now here you have a true modern woman who has completely internalized the Western understanding of freedom. And that is you're free when you are absolutely free to choose. There's no restrictions on you. You can live where you want. You can do what you want. You can be where you want. And what she said was that she's basically been free except when she was in love. But fortunately she's not in love all the time. What is that a recognition of? First of all, this is a recognition that you lose your freedom the more in a love relationship you are. The more the deeper that love relationship goes, the more you just can't live the way you want, make the choices you have to confer, you have to consult you. And she was absolutely right. If you're talking about freedom strictly in terms of negative freedom, freedom from all restrictions, freedom from any hampering of my choices, then love and that kind of freedom are absolutely mutually exclusive. And the more you are in love with somebody, the more in a love relationship you are, the less free you are. But wait a minute, wait a minute, hang on, stop. When do you most feel joy? When do you most feel alive? When do you most feel like a fish that just got thrown back into the water when you're in these love relationships, right? So wait a minute. If it's really true that freedom and love are two different things so that unfortunately we can't be in love all the time, otherwise we would lose our freedom, that's not right and no, it's not right and here's why it's not right because the Western concept, the Western definition of freedom is basically selfishness. The concept of freedom that is the assumption of all the newspapers and magazines, the assumption of all the academics, the assumption of our entire culture is selfishness. And selfishness is the antithesis of love. And yet, love is the fuel that our engine was built to run on the human soul. Love is the water that our human soul was meant to swim in and therefore it is only when God liberates you from selfishness. Only when you say, not my will but thine be done, that's the beginning of changing the selfishness which is endemic to you, your heart and which eats up and destroys love. So see, the Christian freedom not only brings freedom from enslaving emotions and freedom from absolute fear of circumstances but it brings you the freedom of love, gives you freedom for love. And here look, last one more thing to say. I think it's only fair to say, I'd be very happy to confess your sins for you. Can I do that? Okay. I happen to know that you and I, even those of us who are professing Christians, even those of us who have been Christians a long time, we don't have a lot of this freedom really in our lives, do we? We are still not all that free from enslaving emotions now, are we? We are not that free from paralyzing fear of negative circumstances, are we? And frankly, we're not that free from selfishness either that is like an acid in our love relationships, are we? We're not free from these things. So we need to grow in this freedom, how? And there's two practical things I think you can get out of this text, two practical things which I'll only briefly say but they're profoundly important. Two ways for you to grow in this Christian freedom is don't be afraid of making promises and look at Jesus Christ on the cross. Don't be afraid of making promises and look at Jesus Christ on the cross. So don't be afraid of making promises, comes from all these places here. If you look carefully, Peter is constantly saying make promises. So for example in chapter 5 verse 5, he says in the same way you who are younger submit yourselves to your elders, isn't that interesting? He's saying, what does that mean? Make a promise. When you join the church, you make a promise. Ooh, restricting our freedom. Uh oh. Well, right. Make a promise because by restricting the selfishness of living any way you want, when you make promises, actually one of the things you're doing when you make a membership vow is you promise to serve others and promise to live as a Christian and promise to care for the church. Basically you're promising to love God and love your neighbor. You're promising. Or even when you become a citizen, by the way, you make promises. When you become married, you make promises. Don't be afraid to make the promises that teach your heart how to move away from the selfishness that Western culture suggests that is real freedom, but which isn't, into love. Lewis Mead some years ago wrote an article, wrote a chapter on the power of promising. Now he was thinking about marriage and it was really an article about how people say, well, I don't want to get married because that limits my freedom. And he says, no, no, no, the only way for you to really be free is to learn the power of the promise. And this is what he says. When I make a promise, I bear witness that my future with you is not one I was stuck with through the fateful combination of X's and Y's. I was dealt out of my parents' genetic deck. When I make a promise, I testify that I was not routed along some unalterable itinerary by the psychic conditioning visited on me by my family. When I make a promise, I declare that my future with people who depend on me is not predetermined by the mixed up culture of my tender years. I am not faded. I am not determined. I am not a lump of human dough whipped into shape by the contingent reinforcement and an adverse of conditioning of my past. Oh, I know as well as the next person I can't create my life de novo. I am well aware that much of what I am and what I do is a gift or curse from my past. But when I make a promise to anyone, I rise above the conditioning that limits me. No German Shepherd ever promised to be there with me. No laptop computer ever promised to be a loyal help. Only a person can make a promise, and when he does, he is most free. Don't be afraid of making promises. And secondly, look at the cross. Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves with the same attitude. What attitude? If you look at Jesus, listen, here's what it's going to take to give higher allegiance to God. You have to trust him. You have to trust him. That's where the freedom comes from. The more I trust God, the more I'm committed to him, the more I'm his trusted trusting servant, the more I say, Thy will be done. The more I get all these other kinds of freedom. How could I do that? I have to see what he did. Lucy Shaw, Christian poet, years ago wrote a poem, and it was called Mary's Song. It's about Mary thinking about Jesus in her womb. The poem imagines Mary thinking about Jesus after Gabriel had said, hey, you, the one in your womb is the Son of God. And this is how she speaks. Breath, mouth, ears, eyes, he is curtailed, who overflowed all skies, all years. Older than eternity, now he is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed to my poor planet, caught that I might be free, blind in my womb to know my darkness ended, brought to this birth for me to be newborn, and for him to see me mended, I must see him torn. Do you hear that? He is curtailed, who overflowed all skies, all years. Native to earth as I am, nailed to my poor planet, caught that I might be free. There it is. He was utterly free. First of all, he confined himself by becoming human. Then he confined himself by going to the cross. Jesus Christ lost all the infinite freedom he had so that you and I could be free. Trust him. Trust him. And if you trust him, you'll get into the Christian freedom. There is free from guilt and condemnation, free from enslaving emotions, free from being afraid of what the world thinks anymore, freedom from the fear of death, freedom. Let's pray. Our Father, thank you that wrestling with what the Word of God says, we come to understand real freedom and real liberation. It is not what we've been told in our world that freedom and liberation is. It is so different, Lord, that it takes all of our concentration just to keep it straight. We live in a world that calls freedom slavery and slavery freedom. We pray that you would straighten us out and help us to see that through Jesus Christ, we can know the truth and the truth will set us free. We pray, Lord, that you would give us the freedom that you offer here because it will glorify you and it will make us all that we need to be in this world. So now we ask for these things and we ask that you grant them for Jesus' sake in his name we pray. Amen. Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel and Life podcast. If you'd like to see more people encouraged by the Gospel-centered teaching and resources of this ministry, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel and Life monthly partner. Your partnership connects people all over the world with the life-giving power of Christ's love. To learn more, just visit gospelandlife.com slash partner. That website again is gospelandlife.com slash partner. Today's sermon was recorded in 2014. The sermon and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.