Doing whatever you want isn’t true freedom. We often think freedom means being free from rules, expectations, or anyone telling us what to do—but God gave us free will for something much deeper: the freedom to love.

Shownotes

Freedom From vs. Freedom For

• Our modern culture often defines freedom as being free from outside control, restrictions, or expectations.

• While freedom from coercion is important, there is a deeper freedom we were created for. God gave us free will for the sake of love—so that we can freely choose to love God and others and make our lives a gift.

Freedom Requires Formation

• True freedom requires skill, practice, training, and formation. In the same way, living well and loving well requires us to develop the virtues that allow us to give the best of ourselves.

• We are called to imitate the virtues of Christ—His kindness, gentleness, compassion, mercy, courage, generosity, sacrifice, forgiveness, and trust in the Father.

Freedom for Excellence

• Dominican theologian Servais Pinckaers contrasts two types of freedom:  “freedom for excellence” with “freedom of indifference.”

• Freedom of indifference sees freedom primarily as the ability to choose between different options, regardless of whether those choices are good.

• Freedom for excellence is the ability to choose and act well—to become the kind of person who can give the best of himself or herself.

• Virtue strengthens our freedom because it gives us the ability to consistently choose what is good.

Freedom Exists for the Sake of Love

• True freedom isn't ultimately about pursuing our own preferences or avoiding responsibility.

• When freedom becomes centered on “doing whatever I want,” it can actually lead us into selfishness and make it harder to love, commit, sacrifice, and serve.

• As St. John Paul II puts it, “Freedom exists for the sake of love.”

• We experience the fullness of freedom when we are able to make ourselves a gift to God and to others.

Scripture 

• Romans 8 — We are called to be conformed to the image of Christ.

• 2 Corinthians 3:18 — We are being transformed into Christ's likeness “from one degree of glory to another.”