Romans 6:16 English Standard Version (ESV) Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?

Free will leads us into the arena of serving either sin or God by obedience of faith. Free will allows us to change which yoke we put on and for how long. That sounds like freedom but one must remember this warning, our choices are death or righteousness.

The good news for us is that when we take on the yoke of sin, we take the Holy spirit with us and He will not be bound by sin and will fight on our behalf to break the bondage of sin yet again.

Galatians 5:17 English Standard Version (ESV) For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

Think about this in a new way. You have chosen Christ to be your Lord. You now belong to Him. He has sent the Holy Spirit to guide you in all righteousness and when you choose to sin, you have opposed the will of God for your life. Don’t expect God to sit by idly without taking back what is rightfully His.

This is where the difference between willful sin and the sin of ignorance comes into play. We do not know what sins hinder God in the performance of His will. Willfulness is rebellion and will not be tolerated. Ignorance on the other hand is a matter of being taught what is dangerous to this relationship we have with our creator. 

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. Sound familiar, 1 John 1:8 is incomplete because this is followed by the words, “and the truth is not in us.” The Spirit of truth is still in us but when we say we have no sin, we have put on the yoke of sin which allows the flesh to lie, deceiving ourselves. Once again, the Holy Spirit has to break us out of the bondage to the lie and set us free once again from the lies we tell ourselves.

This should tell us that God does not have a problem with sin, we do. Just how big a problem is up to us in the exercise of free will. Do we choose to remain ignorant of sin or are we going to allow ourselves to be trained in righteousness?

Having the righteousness of Christ abiding in us does not mean we know how to exercise that righteousness.

It is not a matter of law abiding. It is a matter of love abiding.

John 8:31-32 English Standard Version (ESV) 

The Truth Will Set You Free

31 So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

John 16:13 English Standard Version (ESV) When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

When we accept Jesus Christ as Lord He sends us the Holy Spirit who is the Spirit of truth. We suddenly become aware that our most intimate thoughts are being shared. We have lost the illusion of privacy. God always knew and now we know without any doubt, our thoughts are not our own.

Sin is no longer a private matter. We might hide it from others but we can no longer hide it from the indwelling presence of the Spirit of truth. We are known in ways we never expected. What we might have thought of God eternal, being face to face with His Spirit every waking moment is an unnerving reality.

How does that set us free?

We must accept that the Comforter has come to be that companion in life that is our helper in the fight against the power of the Prince of the Air, Satan. His only influence in the world is our sin nature and we were powerless against it without God’s help. Sin no longer has any power over us, so we are free from the power of sin. We now have the ability to say no to our sin nature. That is a choice we did not have before we came to Christ.

Galatians 5:1 English Standard Version (ESV) For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Now we have a choice of who we serve, God or sin.

Free will has not been taken away.