When Freedom Abounds, In Love

Imagine the reality, anew, that there are no have-to-do situations in life, other than loving others, ourselves, and God; that there’s no implicit-life-pressure on us other than that. And the strange thing is, even to love is no have-to-do. There are really no have-to-do situations. Proof of a loving God is a life where there are no have-to-do circumstances. This is freedom; one sort.

There is another sort of freedom—a better sort.

Everything of truth and justice in life attends to the reality, alone, that it pays for us to make love a have-to-do from a want-to-do motivation. That’s because beyond the actualisation of love there’s consummate freedom. Moreover, if we lived lovingly we are free; freer than what we’d be if we lived the first freedom where we chose not to love. That freedom-of-choice, to not love, proves against freedom.

Freedom is something we can imagine—it’s achieved when we love.

We can afford to imagine freedom. And when we’re free to love, unconstrained by many perceptible barriers of fear and intolerance, we feel like this:

“We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise.”

~Romans 5:2 (Msg)

Imagining freedom, via love, because we know God, even the ways of God, we have the keys to life.

In Love, All Things Are Ours

As the Apostle Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 3:21, when we take life in God, all things are ours. This means that the love embedded in grace fills our minds and hearts with the wide open spaces spoken about above. The space within our minds and hearts is enlarged; expanded for more love to fit.

Suddenly we’re under no compunction to do anything, because love drives us, and we do good things from wanting to do them. We’re free to do them. What’s more we’re free to do more than what’s good. This is a tantalising miracle. Not only that, but such freedom means we’re not condemned when we do less than what’s good, for grace accounts for us—we’re forgiven already and evermore.

Living An Expansive Life

This is our privilege under God: that we reflect over life as we know it, assessing what we’ve learned, adjudicating that love’s expansiveness is the only way, and we decide within our command of freedom to go love’s way. Like everyone we’ve got choice.

Choosing not to love when we can is a choice for an unparalleled, yet ever-so-common slavery. The most important choice of all has been made incorrectly. This love-couched life hasn’t been discerned. We haven’t seen the benefits of love, even to ourselves. Because we reject love we deny the truth. We would, therefore, warrant a living hell for ourselves.

Living an expensive life sees the folly in all that, above.

Reverting to our privilege under God, freely choosing to love acquaints us with freedom; and more freedom than we can verily manage. Our praise is copious.

Imagine freedom. When we love, and consistently so, freedom is ours.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.