New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional

by Paul David Tripp

It is universally true that what seems to us to be freedom isn’t really freedom after all. When Adam and Eve stepped outside of God’s boundaries, they didn’t step into freedom. They stepped into toil, temptation, suffering, sin, and bondage. Denying God’s existence, desiring his place, ignoring his rules, and determining to make it on your own might seem like pathways to freedom, but they never, ever are. You and I weren’t designed to live independently. We weren’t meant to live in our own strength. We weren’t created to rely on our own wisdom. We weren’t given the ability to write our own moral codes. We weren’t put together with the independent knowledge of how to live, how to steward the physical world, or how to properly relate to one another. We were not created to live by ourselves or for ourselves, and to attempt to do so never leads anywhere good. So as God blesses us and changes us with his grace, the result isn’t a greater ability to live an independent life; the opposite is true. Grace doesn’t free us to live for us. The purpose of God’s grace is not to make your little kingdom of one work better. The purpose of God’s grace is to free you from your slavery to you so that you can live for a much, much better kingdom: “And he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised” (2 Cor. 5:15). True freedom is never found in putting yourself at the center, with your choices and behavior shaped by y...