When you think about rules, what comes to mind?  Do you view them as restrictive?  Limiting?  Oppressive, even?  A rain on your parade?

How about God’s rules – specifically the Ten Commandments?  You know, the ones about not lying or stealing… the ones about honoring your parents and not misusing the name of God.

Do you feel like God wants to limit your freedom?

In the USA, we pride ourselves in being free.  We live in a free country, deal in a free market, worship freely, speak freely, and are free to pursue our own happiness.  Sounds pretty great, doesn’t it?

So let me try something on you.  Hear me out.

Since you are such a free individual, why don’t you decide to keep God’s commandments?

Easy, right?  Since you’re free to do whatever you want, you should have no problem choosing to follow ten simple rules for a little while.

But I’ll even make it easier on you, since I’m in a generous mood.  Forget the ten.  I’ll give you one.  Piece of cake, right?

Here you go: Don’t covet.

That’s it.  Don’t covet.  

Simple.

I’ll even define it for you in case you think that a covet is something you find at Bed Bath & Beyond shelved between a cover and a duvet.

Coveting is having a wrongful desire for something that is not yours to have.  It is being discontent.  We tend to covet things like money, possessions, popularity, beauty, and a Technivorm Moccamaster Coffee Brewer, just to name a few off the top of my head.  We even covet relationships with other people.

So try this whole “not coveting” thing for a week and let me know how it goes.

My guess is: not so well.

It’s the same way with so many of our goals and New Year’s resolutions.  We want to do something good for ourselves – work out, lose weight, stay in touch with friends, eat healthily, read more, pray more, give more, spend more time with family.  We make these commitments and then, somehow, we don’t fulfill them.  

Why is that?  

We may have good intentions, but our desire for comfort limits our efforts to work out.  The urgency of our own needs restricts our plans to give more.  A sudden, irresistible craving for fast food rains on our healthy eating parade.  (And, yes, children throw out individually wrapped asparagus stalks at these parades.)

As much as we like to think that we are free, more often than not we are controlled by our desires, not the other way around.  The Bible even goes so far as to say that we are enslaved by them.  We can joke about caving in to a greasy burger and a pile of fries every now and then, but it’s not as funny when we talk about alcohol addiction.  It’s not funny when we talk about the destructive habit of anger.  It’s not funny when we talk about pornography.  

But then again, we don’t actually talk about these things.

We like to hide these unsightly habits so that we can hold onto the illusion that we are free to do as we choose.  If we actually faced up to all the things we would like to change about ourselves – but do not – we couldn’t avoid coming to the same conclusion that the Bible does.  We are enslaved to our desires.

The apostle Paul wrestled with this same problem.  He wrote, “I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.  For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”

True freedom is not the freedom to do whatever we feel like doing.  True freedom is being free from the control of our impulses and desires.  True freedom is being set free to live as the person God made us to be.  True freedom results in love, joy, and peace with God – both now and in eternity.

True freedom is exactly what Jesus, the Son of God, offers.

He knows our problem:

    “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.”

Then he adds:

     “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”

What about you?  Are you free?