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| Some of my cichlids |
I have recently been reflecting on something I heard about fish while I was living in Ecuador.
Fish were made to live in water.
It sounds pretty obvious, I know. But the amazing thing is that there are times that my fish do not seem to understand this fact. I have lost several fish over the years because they jumped to their deaths. They sought freedom from the tank they were in, and in doing so they wound up dead.
It is as if my fish long for something that can only really be found by remaining in their apparent “slavery.” Sure, they can prove their rejection of the tank they have been enclosed in by jumping out. They may even enjoy the leap through the air and their first few flops on the dry ground they have so longed for. But after a short time they will realize the error of their ways and pay the consequences for it.
Now this is not how the story ends every time. I have, more than once found a fish still alive and writhing on the floor (and once in one of my dresser drawers). This is where the fish faces its next choice. It can either let me pick it up and put it back in the tank, or it can flop around, trying desperately to keep out of my grips. Those who succumb easily are placed back into the tank quickly and allowed to rest easy knowing that today will not be their last. But the fish that writhes and flops does nothing more than seal their fate. Eventually they tire and stop fighting and I am able to pick them up and try to get them back into their home. These fish are often dropped back into the tank motionless and upside down. They sink to the bottom and the other fish come and start picking at them. Sometimes they manage to right themselves and continue their lives of “confinement.” Other times it was too little to late. They are too tired for their gills to function again. The other fish pick at them a little too much, and their final taste of freedom is a ride on the porcelain express.
I think you know where I am going with this.
As fish can long to find freedom from their tank, we long to find freedom away from God. We ignore what the Bible teaches about purity and obedience because “we've been saved by grace!” But Paul says in Romans 6:15, “What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means!"
Don't misunderstand me. I certainly do not believe that it is our obedience that saves us. The gift of forgiveness is free and cannot be earned. But if we think that God's forgiveness has set us “free” we are mistaken. Paul goes on to say in Romans 6 that we are no longer slaves to sin, but slaves to righteousness. That is, we are slaves to doing what is right and proving through our obedience that we really believe that God is who he says he is.
We choose to remain in the confines of the holy life God wants for us because we have learned that like the fish, we need water to live. We can choose to run from God all we want, but that lifestyle only leads to death. God designed us to flourish by living within the confines of obedience to him. True life comes when we relinquish our desire for pseudo-freedom and submit to the will of God because we know that life is only found in him.
When we make the mistake of jumping out of the tank we can humbly allow God to bring us back to obedience, or we can fight him to the bitter end. Perhaps when we finally are so tired of fighting that we just can't fight anymore we will finally allow God to take us back. But some will fight him until death has taken them, and the freedom they so desperately sought will perhaps not seem so worth it.
“Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves to the one you obey – whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.”
Romans 6:16-18 (NIV)
