It’s not that we were once wild and Jesus tamed us but rather that the world tamed us, and Jesus set us free to be wild!

The reversal

I get a sense that Christianity sometimes doesn’t get a reputation of a faith that frees you as much as it tames you. When people hear the gospel being preached or when somebody shares about how Christianity is something they should desire I feel like the battle that goes on in the listeners head is “do I want to be tamed by this Jesus guy”. And that is the illusion already in place in that person. The person feels like they are already free and now to “be free” is merely to follow certain rules which grants freedom. You can see why people would decline such a invitation. But the Bible says we are already condemned, enslaved, and dead in sin and our only hope is in Christ. Here in Europe, postmodernism has “liberated” the people to “be wild” and it has relieved them of anything that would otherwise “tame” them in how they are allowed to live. Here in Europe anything that claims to be representing of Jesus Christ is not looked at as liberating, but rather oppressing. This has been largely formed by believers over emphasizing the things we can’t do over what Jesus called us to do.

Who is our liberator?

Jesus said in Luke 4:18 when reading Isaiah 61:1 and embodying the words of God that he will set free the captives. In Galatians 5:1 it says it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. So who is our liberator? And what are real chains? The world says Christianity has chained us to absolute morality and we need to be freed of it to be fulfilled. My question is if Jesus came to Earth to set you free (wild), why would he command you to follow something that would tame you? Anything he asks of you to follow is only to maintain your freedom.  On the other hand I have seen friends take their freedom to make “wild” decisions that have now brought them to a lifestyle that they never wanted but feel they can never change. This is the enslavement to sin that the Bible talks about that has tamed people from reaching their potential. The good news is Jesus made a solution to this problem and offers it freely to whoever wants it. So that you would be completely free and wild to decline the things of the world that would destroy your life and accept the things of God that will edify your life and bless those around you.

To follow Jesus is to embark on a wild ride. You can see the disciples in the New Testament being tested in their belief in the miraculous over and over. Jesus brought them to radical situations that needed wildness to see them through. They had to be free of fear and doubt to obey what Jesus was asking of them. Before Jesus met the disciples they learned what to fear and doubt by what the world told them to fear and doubt. The world was in a process of taming them to be ordinary men that history would never remember. But Jesus had other plans for them, plans to have fulfillment in life that they could never dream of. Jesus has a wild life waiting for you, if you choose to want it.

 It’s not that we were once wild and Jesus tamed us but rather that the world tamed us, and Jesus set us free to be wild!