Freedom Isn't Free
by Katie Harding on June 30, 2025
Several summers ago, three women from our church were baptized in a creek not far from our home. The day was hot, but it was filled with great joy and anticipation as the women shared their testimonies and then proceeded with the assembled crowd down the path, through the woods, and to the embankment of the creek.
I remember it well — the excitement, the life stories, and the gathering of cheering witnesses. But there is something else I remember from that day, too. It was a phrase printed on the front of a t-shirt worn by one of my friends getting baptized: “Freedom isn’t Free.” I remember it specifically because there was a discussion about whether or not that phrase is true.
Our immediate response when we see or hear a phrase like that might be, “No, freedom IS free; it is a gift from God.” We know we are justified by the faith of Christ, so we don’t have to earn our freedom in Christ. While that’s true we don’t have to earn it because it is a gift; it doesn’t mean our freedom is free.
I remember telling my dad once about a friend who worked at Burger King and gave me a FREE burger. As a teenager, I was very excited to get something for free, but my dad drilled home a serious life lesson that day. He said that although the burger was free to me, someone else paid the price so I didn’t have to. It wasn’t free, even though it was free to me.
It’s just like the freedom we have in our country; the freedom we will celebrate later this week on the Fourth of July. It might seem “free” to us, but it isn’t free. Over the years, countless men and women have paid for our freedom with their lives; and the freedom we have in Christ is no different. The gift of freedom we have received from God was paid for by Jesus. It’s free to us because it’s been paid for by Him. Jesus sacrificed His life on a cross to give us an abundant life and freedom from the penalty, power, and presence of sin.
May we never take our freedom for granted. Let us live gratefully for the freedoms we’ve been given.