We Say We Love Freedom

I’ve been thinking about freedom lately—how we say we love it, sing about it, and even renamed French fries for it once. We celebrate free shipping like it’s a minor miracle and map our Costco trips around sample times. (If you know, you know.)

But here’s what I’m noticing: most of the freedom we talk about is freedom from something. Free from cost. Free from commitment. Free from inconvenience. We rarely ask the harder, more interesting question: what is freedom for?

This came up for me on Reformation Sunday—the day we remember Martin Luther and the church’s ongoing work of reform. Not as a “we got it right” moment, but as a reminder that God keeps reshaping us, keeps inviting us into something deeper.

The Freedom We Think We Want

There’s this moment in John’s Gospel where Jesus tells a crowd, “The truth will make you free.” And they immediately push back: “We’ve never been slaves to anyone!”

It’s almost funny, except it’s also heartbreaking. Because they were occupied—by Rome, at that very moment. And before that, by empire after empire. But more than that, they were bound by something harder to name: the pressure to perform, the weight of expectations, the fear of not being enough.

Sound familiar?

We do the same thing. We say we’re free, but so many of us are running on fumes trying to prove ourselves worthy. We’re anxious about keeping up, afraid of falling behind, trapped in patterns we can’t seem to break. We insist we can do whatever we want—but can we, really?

What If Freedom Isn’t What We Think?

Jesus reframes the whole conversation. He’s not talking about political liberation or unlimited choices. He’s talking about abiding—about making a home with him, setting up camp in God’s love, and discovering that being loved is what actually sets us free.

Not free from responsibility. Free for it. Free to stop pretending. Free to fail and still be beloved. Free to serve our neighbors because we’re not constantly scrambling to justify our own existence.

Martin Luther said it this way: A Christian is “a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none”—we don’t have to earn God’s favor. But also, “a perfectly dutiful servant of all”—because that freedom isn’t self-centered. It’s other-centered.

The Freedom That Changes Everything

Here’s what I’m learning: real freedom doesn’t erase commitment—it deepens it. It doesn’t make life easier—it makes it more honest. We can tell the truth about our imperfections and know we’re still loved. We can admit when we’re wrong and keep growing. We can live not to prove ourselves, but to love and serve the world God loves.

This isn’t one more thing to achieve. It’s not spiritual self-improvement. It’s release. It’s the gift of knowing you are loved, you are enough, and your life has purpose beyond your own success or safety.

Luther also wrote: “We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it… This is not the end, but it is the road.”

I find that comforting. We’re not finished. God isn’t finished with us. And the freedom we’re being offered isn’t a trophy—it’s a path.

So What’s It For?

If we really believed we were free—free from the need to perform, free from shame, free from the fear that we’re not enough—how would we live differently?

Would we be braver? Kinder? More honest? Would we use that freedom to protect ourselves, or to love the people around us?

That’s the question that sits with me. Not whether I’m free, but what I’m doing with the freedom I’ve already been given.

What about you? If you knew you were already enough, already loved, already free—what would you do differently today?

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