I am blessed with a work family that is loving and gracious. Last week was my birthday and among many other friends and family, my coworkers made it special in many ways. One of which was wearing these silicone bumble bee bracelets that read different plays on “bee” such as, “bee honest, bee kind, bee humble.”
As I reviewed the options for the one I might most pray for in my life, I considered these virtues one by one, but one phrase stood out to me above the rest.
“Bee free.”
The word “free” felt different than any other virtue listed. The word “free” is more fundamental. It is the key that opens the door to all the other attributes listed.
If someone is having trouble being honest, humble, or kind, it is because something is preventing them from doing so. Something is standing as a barrier, feigning it is more important than the effort it takes to cultivate these qualities.
I think Christ understood this very well. His journey to the cross demonstrates that what humanity needed most was not to be corrected, reformed, or punished.
They needed to be free.
Free from the shame that eats at the core of our hearts, free from the anger that grows like a cancer over our thoughts, free from the pride that strives to conquer and control, free from the pain that skews our understanding of perfect love.
When Christ uttered the words, “It is finished,” he may as well have been saying, “You are free.”
Because Christ intimately understood that for his love and light to flow through us in this world, for us to exemplify honesty, humility, kindness, and the fruits of the spirit to grow ripe and full, for us to lean into the abundant life he desires to give, we must first be free to love this way.
We do not follow him because we feel guilty, we do not follow him because we should, we follow him because in him, we are truly free.
One of my favorite Jesus stories is in John 8, when the woman is brought to Jesus to be stoned to death for committing adultery.
The Pharisees are wild with self righteousness. They want a spectacle, they want punishment enacted, they want brutal justice, they want more than anything to force Jesus’ hand to act in alignment to the law they have come to know as security, order, and Lord.
But Jesus, in his steadfast presence and love, is unrattled. We know in this story he protects the woman and ultimately sets her free. But do you notice who he tries to set free first?
“So he stood up and said, ‘Alright, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone.”
There is only one present who has never sinned and he is obviously not throwing stones. He is drawing quietly in the dust beside them. With this statement, Jesus offers freedom to the Pharisees. Freedom to trust him, freedom from the fury of trying to uphold one another's image, freedom from the brutal punishment they seem to think only the woman deserves, but in reality all have earned in their own prideful sin.
Sin is a natural barrier to all good things in our lives. It keeps us from freedom, bound in chains.
But there is only one barrier to sin, one soul that can stand as a guard against it running rampant in our lives.
Jesus.
That is exactly what he demonstrates here for these people in this story. The sin superhighway is running full speed between the adulterous woman and the prideful Pharisees, but when Jesus steps onto their road, everything stops and he opens a detour for us to exit this highway and sets us on a pathway to a more abundant life.
Then he tells the woman, “Go and sin no more.”
Christ has made us completely free to be the best version of ourselves. The cross is our exit from a heinous humanity into abundant life. We have no excuse to cling to our pride, pain, and punishments.
All that is left is for us to decide what to do with this freedom.
What has Christ freed you from today? Can you name it? What virtues have you been liberated to live fully into?
