It’s been 244 years since the founders of our nation signed a document which continues to shape the course of history. On this very day, the Continental Congress gathered together to put their signatures

on the Declaration of Independence. In it, we find words many of us memorized in grade school. “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.”

What the Founders of this nation were after, in composing these words and fighting with England was freedom – The freedom to govern themselves and no longer be held accountable to a foreign king. The Declaration of Independence breathed life into a country already engaged in war. The young nation was founded this day upon a principal which, in every age, across thousands of years, people have hoped for. The desire for freedom didn’t begin with the Declaration of Independence. It just seems to be woven into the fabric of human life that we all yearn to “breathe free.”

Three thousand years before Thomas Jefferson put pen to paper, the Hebrew people longed for freedom in Egypt. God sent a man named Moses. While Pharaoh wished to keep God’s people in slavery, Moses stood up and said (I won’t sing it to you) “Let my people GO.”

Fast forward another thousand years and we’ll find the Jewish people yet again enslaved under a tyrannous ruler. This time it’s the Roman Empire as well as all those other powers and principalities as Paul calls them that kept God’s people shackled. Yet again, God acted to liberate his people by sending Jesus Christ into the world. In his very first sermon, Jesus announced his mission “To bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and to let the oppressed go free.

Jesus Christ came bringing a new kind of freedom. One that was far more precious than freedom from the Romans. Jesus Christ came to liberate us from our two worst enemies. Jesus Christ became human and died upon a Cross to free us from sin and death.

And it points to the very heart of God’s nature that such a thing simply had to be done because as his creation, we need to be free. God alone created us. He made us in his image. If he’d wanted to, God could’ve designed us to be mere puppets, programmed to do precisely what he wished.

But God didn’t do that.

Instead, He created us to bear His image.

And you see, God is utterly and completely free to do anything He’d like. Being fashioned in His image means that we should, as humans, always breathe free. Freedom is stitched into every fiber of our existence for no other reason than we are utterly God’s creation.

But as we’re all painfully aware, something happened which warped us, stripped us of our freedom.

Being God’s good creation, not puppets but free in every regard, we chose to sin. Sewing our oats, we used our freedom to flaunt God’s sole prohibition in the Garden of Eden. Adam and

Eve partook of that bitter fruit.

From that point forward until Jesus Christ, we were no longer really free. We were held in slavery by sin. Sin distorts us to the point where we can no longer, of our own accord, will ourselves to do right. John Calvin calls this total depravity. St. Augustine, generations before called it the brokenness of our free-will. By this he meant that our wills are no longer FREE because apart from God, we’ll always do the very things which distort God’s image within us.  

But Jesus Christ changed the dynamic.