Freedom is becoming who God designed you to bePastor-Teacher Freedom is becoming who God designed you to bePoint 4. Isagogics, examining Roman and also Greek slavery in the ancient world. We learned about slavery in the Roman Empire of the First Century A.D. The most free you can be as a human being is to live as a slave of Christ Jesus. Most people think that slavery and freedom are opposites, and that they are mutually exclusive (the strongest kind of opposites). We have seen that, historically, the one thing that slaves wanted most was their freedom. Point 5. The relationship between slavery and freedom in the New Testament. eleuqeria - eleutheria In the New Testament, eleutheria is used almost without exception to mean spiritual freedom. Cognate = related in origin, as certain words in genetically related languages descended from the same ancestral root; the word cognate derives from Latin cognatus “blood relative.” eleutheros - adjective = “free” eleutheroo - verb = to liberate, to make free, i.e. (figuratively) to exempt (from moral, ceremonial or mortal liability) Our word eleutheria and its cognates are used to refer to spiritual freedom. 1. Freedom from bondage to sin. 2. Freedom from the yoke of the Mosaic Law. Freedom from the law means freedom from legalism, from self-lordship before God [Kittel - “in the guise of serious and obedient law-keeping”]. 3. Freedom from death. 4. The resulting state of emancipation. 1Pe 2:16 Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God. Kittel contrasts what the Greek philosophers thought about freedom with what the New Testament teaches about true freedom. To the Greek philosophers, especially the Stoics, freedom took the form of independent self-determination. To find freedom, we must explore our nature, said the Stoics. |