In Christ, you are bound. Bound to mercy. Bound to grace. Bound to a God who won’t let you go. And because of that, you are free—gloriously, joyfully free.
Imagine being completely free from God. No commands. No guilt. No expectations. You answer to no one but yourself.
That kind of freedom might sound attractive—until you realize it’s actually a description of hell.
What seems like liberation from God is, in truth, slavery to something else. The irony is painful: the further we run from God, the deeper we fall into bondage.
People often ask, “Does the Bible teach free will?” The answer is both yes and no. No, it doesn't teach that human beings are free moral agents who can decide on their own to get right with God. But yes, the Bible does speak of a kind of freedom, and tragically, it ends in self-destruction. If there is any freedom of the will, it will always choose bondage, and it looks a lot like Romans 1-3. Apart from Christ, our “free will” is simply the freedom to serve false gods and chase our own desires into the grave.
“Free will is really a fiction, a term without reality, because no one has the power to will anything good,” says Martin Luther in The Bondage of the Will (LW 33:64).
Apart from Christ, we are free from God and in bondage in this world. In Christ, we are bound to God and free in a world given back to us.
Free From God
Paul writes in Romans 6:20, “When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.” It’s a haunting sentence. Before Christ, we were indeed free—but only free from righteousness. Free from God. And that kind of freedom is actually bondage.
The truth is, we don’t start out neutral toward God. We start as his enemies (Rom. 5:10), not his seekers. Left to ourselves we are opposed to God, we fight him at every turn, seeking to be god rather than to have a God. We reject his rule, thinking we can live on our own terms. But when we rebel against God’s authority, we don’t find freedom, we simply find a different god, one we think we can control.
Luther described the human will apart from Christ as "curved in on itself" (incurvatus in se). Instead of living outward in love toward God and neighbor, we spiral inward, obsessing over self-justification, self-expression, and self-preservation. In rejecting God, we don’t become independent. We become slaves to something else.
In Bondage to This World
Galatians 4:3 says, “We were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.” That bondage takes many forms, and it doesn’t always look like rebellion. Sometimes, it looks like religion.
To be enslaved to the world means to live under its demands: success, image, control, hustle, and performance. It’s the relentless pressure to prove yourself, the nagging voice that says you’re never quite enough. This kind of bondage doesn’t just show up in the office or on social media—it shows up in church, too. Some of the most weary, guilt-ridden people you’ll meet are those striving the hardest to be “good Christians.” The world’s way of measuring worth creeps into our spirituality, turning even faith into another performance metric.
We chase perfection, approval, and identity through jobs, parenting, ministry, politics, and even spirituality. The world gives us endless tools for self-justification—and they all demand more.
In this kind of bondage, our sense of worth is always on the auction block—sold to the highest bidder, one who will give us just a little bit of recognition and approval. Our very existence and certainly any hope we have of contentment and happiness becomes contingent on our success.
Created things make cruel gods.
One misstep, one disappointment, and the whole house of cards collapses. That’s not freedom; that’s slavery disguised as self-expression. Left to ourselves, we cannot enjoy the good things of this world—instead, we demand that they give us meaning. We look to work, relationships, reputation, or even our own virtue to fill the void only God can satisfy. As Paul says in Romans 1:25, we exchange the truth of God for a lie and worship the creation rather than the Creator.
But created things make cruel gods. They can’t bear the weight of our hopes, and they will always leave us restless, disappointed, and hungry for more.
Bound to God
But then comes the gospel. Then comes Christ.
In Galatians 4:7, Paul says, “So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.” God doesn’t just forgive us; he adopts us. He doesn’t just let us off the hook; he brings us into his family.
This is what Luther called passive righteousness. It means we don’t climb to God; he descends to us. We don’t earn his favor; we receive it. Our righteousness before God does not originate with us—it’s Christ’s, credited to our account as if it’s our own.
Paul says it like this: “For our sake, He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). That’s not a metaphor. That’s a real exchange. Christ takes our sin. We get his perfection.
To be bound to God, then, is not to be crushed under his law but to be united with him through faith. It is to be set free from yourself and placed under the rule and reign of Christ. It’s to find rest in his grace. It’s the end of striving and the beginning of peace. It’s to be put to death as an enemy of God and raised to new life as his redeemed child, his forgiven friend, and his sanctified servant.
Free in the World
Here’s the surprise: once we are bound to God, we are finally free—not from the world, but in the world.
Luther called this active righteousness: our call to love and serve our neighbors. But notice the order. We do not love others to get God’s approval or get anything at all. We are free to love those around us without needing anything in return. This is the freedom of vocation. God places us in specific roles—child, parent, spouse, employee, citizen, friend—and tells us that these ordinary places are holy ground. We don’t need to escape the world to serve God. We serve him precisely by serving others. These good works that we are called to walk in were created by God beforehand, and they flow forth from our lives in very natural ways (Eph. 2:10).
In Christ, we are free to fail, free to rest, and free to do for others what we wish they would do for us.
No more spiritual rat race. No more ladder-climbing. In Christ, we are free to fail, free to rest, and free to do for others what we wish they would do for us (Matt. 7:12). Our value is fixed in Jesus. Our work is no longer a means of proving ourselves but of loving our neighbor.
This flips everything upside down. Freedom doesn’t mean detaching from responsibility. It means being so secure in God’s love that we can finally show up for others.
Living the Paradox
The Christian life is a paradox. We are bound to God and free in the world. We are justified apart from our works and given the freedom to do good works. We rest in Christ and rise each day to serve.
You are not what you do or what you accomplish. Your worth is not measured by your ministry success, your reputation, or your performance. Your life is hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3:3). That’s who you are. From that safe and unshakable identity, you’re sent into the world—not to prove anything, but to love freely.
God isn’t asking you to change the world. He’s calling you to live faithfully in the life you already have. You don’t need to invent ways to serve your neighbor; opportunities are already woven into your daily routine. The office, the dinner table, the grocery store, the awkward family gathering: these are the sacred places where love takes shape.
As a member of Christ’s body, you don’t need a new life crafted for you. Instead, you need eyes to see the freedom you already possess. This freedom allows you to be a vessel of God’s grace in small, unnoticed, and profoundly ordinary ways.
So yes, in Christ, you are bound. Bound to mercy. Bound to grace. Bound to a God who won’t let you go. And because of that, you are free—gloriously, joyfully free.
Free to live. Free to love. Free to fail. Free to be insignificant.
Free to be his in a world given back to you.
