freedom on Liberation

Have you heard the old spiritual “Down to the River to Pray” or “The Good Old Way”? It is most famous in popular culture because of Alison Kraus’s version of the song recorded for the movie O Broth...

Jesus says to us, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight...

Lord Jesus, who came to liberate the captives, remem­ber the prisoners, we pray, those locked up in jails. …Release from the prisons of their own making all those who struggle with habits that bind t...

Pastor: God our Redeemer, you have saved your people through Jesus Christ, your Son. You have delivered your people out of slavery to sin and have freed us into new life. Yet, we still wander through ...

Leader: God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. All: Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? Leader: The LORD...

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

The Shawshank Redemption contains a poignant scene in which a prisoner, Andy, locks himself into a restricted area and plays a record featuring opera singers. Beautiful music pours through the public ...

In a way, the Reformation began in one monk's overwhelming guilt. Martin Luther was riddled with guilt and filled with anxiety because he could see that he could not live up to God's standard ...

After a sojourn in the United States where he experienced the vibrancy of Black churches, Dietrich Bonhoeffer returned to Germany in 1931 to teach at the University of Berlin. His pastoral ministry co...

License they mean when they cry liberty.

Go in the love and peace of Christ, claiming your freedom to live victoriously in Christ’s love, and in harmony with our brothers and sisters who have been reconciled by Christ’s grace. Amen.

Its [Romans] message is not that ‘man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains’, as Rousseau put it at the beginning of The Social Contract (1762); it is rather that human beings are born in sin ...

God’s people are not freed so that they may go their own way. They are saved so that they may realise the purposes of God.” We are saved for God, not for ourselves. Freedom is not freedom from all con...

A particularly brutal set of slave owners we recently encountered in South Asia held more than twenty slaves in a rice mill. They and their thugs beat the slaves, sexually assaulted the women, even do...

The lost enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded.

Every movement toward the humiliation of the false self, if we accept it, is a step toward interior freedom and inner resurrection.

This difference between possession and enjoyment is well illustrated in the story of Louis Delcourt. He was a young French soldier during the First World War who overstayed his leave and, fearing disg...

Freedom is never given; it is won.

The goal of human freedom is not in freedom itself, nor it is in man, but in God. By giving man freedom, God has yielded to man a piece of His Divine authority, but with the intention that man himself...

If my testimony of the gospel revolves around a plotline of, “I used to struggle with this, but God gave me the victory and now I’m free/healed/saved/fill in the blank,” I have immediately distanced m...

May we think of freedom, not as the right to do as we please, but as the opportunity to do what is right.

There is power in bringing untold stories to light. The freedom to speak about the reality of suffering and death results in a freedom from denial.

“Christianity promises to make man free,” Anglican priest William R. Inge writes; “it never promises to make them independent.” Freedom and independence are polar opposites. The former leads to wellne...

Being free means “being free for the other, because the other has bound me to him. Only in relationship with the other am I free.

As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison.

Political freedom is great. But personal, social, and emotional freedom—when it becomes an ultimate end—absolutely sucks. It leads to a random, busy life with no discernible direction, no firm foundat...

Lord, you now have set your servant free to go in peace as you have promised; For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior, whom you have prepared for all the world to see: A Light to enlighten the nat...

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,     according to thy word; For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,     which thou hast prepared before the face of all people, To be a light to lig...

For most of us it takes a long time for the Spirit of freedom to cleanse us of the subtle urges to be admired for our studied goodness. It requires a strong sense of our redeemed selves to pass up the...

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.