Evangelical freedom
Evangelical freedom is a central concept of Christianity . He gives the general human striving for freedom a specific answer based on the words and deeds, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ , that is, the Gospel . In the literal sense of the word, the term is not meant to be confessional (in the sense of the Evangelical Church ), but is viewed by the churches of the Reformation as their spiritual focus.
The fundamental theologian of evangelical freedom is Paul . In his letters, especially in Galatians and Romans , freedom is the constant theme.
"But you, dear brothers, are called to freedom."
Paul teaches how through Christ a person's conditions of existence change and how real freedom is possible in Christ.
The starting point is man's lack of freedom to achieve good, culpably caused by his detachment from God and his turn to the created. The law given to the Jews demands the complete surrender of man to God and his neighbor in deed, word and will. The law is holy and good, but it reveals man's bondage precisely because it puts him in an insoluble conflict between obedience and self-assertion.
Christ is the fulfillment of the law and of freedom, since in him the actual purpose of the law can only be fully seen. In his death and resurrection, however, God turns the tide to unconditional mercy. The requirement of the law and with it the claim of sin to exercise power over a person no longer exist. Paul formulates this process as dying. Man died for the power of sin ( Rom 6:10 LUT ). The sinner who enters the living space of the risen One with baptism may believe, hope and love without fear in the love of Christ.
From this point of view, evangelical freedom is not a state, but the once and for all opportunity to go over and over again with Christ from death to life, from being caught up in evil to the freedom of God's children.
Pauline's reflection on freedom was particularly effective in the history of theology with Augustine ( De spiritu et littera ) and Martin Luther ( On the freedom of a Christian ).
Paul already mentioned the danger that the inner dialectic of evangelical freedom, which for him presupposes the absolute validity of the legal requirement, dissolves into a content-free arbitrariness. He opposes this danger with the primacy of love , the fruits of which a life in evangelical freedom should bear.