He Thought He Was Breaking Free
He Thought He Was Breaking Free
I know a young man who just turned eighteen. He was raised in a Christian home. Homeschooled. Protected. Sheltered from the filth and chaos the world calls normal. He was taught Scripture, taught restraint, taught to deny himself. Dating was supervised. Media was filtered. Freedom was defined by obedience to Christ, not by impulse. To him it always felt like a cage. He felt watched, restricted, trapped. He wanted out. He wanted what the world calls freedom. So he rebelled hard. So hard that his own parents, grieving and broken, had to ask him to leave their home. Now he is celebrating his new life. He calls it freedom. But what he does not know is this. He was free when he was in Christ. And the moment he ran from that freedom he yoked himself to slavery.
Jesus said it plainly. “Whoever commits sin is a slave of sin” (John 8:34). The world laughs at that verse. It says sin is choice, expression, authenticity. But Scripture says sin is a chain. It promises liberty and delivers bondage. This young man thinks he broke free from rules, but he did not break chains. He traded one master for another. He did not escape control. He changed controllers.
The world thinks Christians live in bondage because they say no. No to lust. No to drunkenness. No to self worship. No to flesh driven impulse. But the truth is the opposite. Christians say no because they are free. The world says yes because it cannot stop. The world must chase pleasure. Must chase approval. Must chase identity. Must chase trends. Must chase the next feeling. That is not freedom. That is compulsion.
Look at the so called free world. They dress alike. Talk alike. Think alike. Rage about the same topics. Cancel the same people. Chase the same fads. Repeat the same slogans. They call it individuality while marching in lockstep. They believe they are choosing freely while being driven by algorithms, peer pressure, hormones, fear of rejection, and the constant need for validation. Scripture describes it perfectly. “According to the course of this world… the prince of the power of the air… the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2). They are not leading their lives. They are being led.
Satan never puts chains on the front end. He puts them on the back end. First comes excitement. Then habit. Then dependency. Then identity. Then bondage. What begins as I can stop anytime becomes I cannot stop at all. What begins as freedom ends in slavery.
Christ does the opposite. He calls you to die first so you can live. He calls you to deny yourself so you can be free from yourself. He calls you to submit so you can be liberated. “For freedom Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1). Not freedom to sin, but freedom from sin. Freedom from compulsions. Freedom from needing the world’s approval. Freedom from being owned by desires that never satisfy.
That young man thinks he escaped bondage. In reality he walked out of a safe haven with the door wide open and stepped into a cell whose bars he cannot yet see. One day he will feel the weight. One day the celebration will fade. One day the chains will tighten. And only then will he understand that the strict home he fled was not a cage but a shelter. The discipline he hated was not oppression but protection. The Christ he ran from was not a jailer but a liberator.
The world says Christians are bound and sinners are free. Scripture says sinners are bound and Christians are free. Only one of those masters breaks chains. The other only hides them.