“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” - The Declaration of Independence, 1776
These familiar words are especially celebrated and remembered when we proclaim the July 4th holiday in America. But have you ever considered just how much the freedom celebrated as an American ideal is based on the opening chapters of the Bible and on Christianity?
At the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence, the famous Liberty Bell rang all day. Inscribed at the top of the Liberty Bell is a portion of Leviticus 25:10, “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof”. Here in this section of the Bible, with the sounding of the ram’s horn, God laid out His marvelous provisions for “Jubilee” - for ensuring perpetual freedom and productivity for all the people of Israel if they would have observed the commands.
Free is what God created man to be. In Genesis 1:26, God dignifies mankind by saying, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion…”. And consider that in the very beginning of the Bible we read “…and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2). The Spirit is specifically mentioned as being present when God (“Elohim”, plural) spoke creation into existence. God’s Spirit is particularly characterized and identified as “free” in the Bible (e.g., Psalm 51:12, 2 Corinthians 3:17).
God’s dignifying of man with an inherent freedom is clarified in the next chapter of the Bible, which goes back into the specifics of how He made man and put him in the Garden of Eden paradise. God told the man, “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat” (Genesis 2:16). But as you know God commanded the man not to eat of the fruit of the one “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”, and gave him a warning that if he did so he would die.
How, you might ask, was man truly free if he had that one key restriction?
The answer is in considering not only every other freedom God gave mankind in the Garden, but also the freedom of choice for relationship and morality arising with the one restriction. By adding the stipulation about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,God allowed man to be a truly free moral agent, capable of accepting or rejecting God’s will. Here is dignity – that man in the image of God was given real liberty of choice for a personal relationship of love and respect with his Maker!
Now, through the Incarnation of Christ Jesus, God the Son, we also have that freedom-respecting choice for reconciliation with our Maker in an eventual restoration of eternal fellowship and paradise! Have you made that reconciliation with Christ?
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