“Give me liberty or give me death.”
Patrick Henry’s famous words have echoed through American culture for 250 years. They show up on T-shirts, bumper stickers, and church signs. They get quoted in sermons, usually around the Fourth of July.
But here’s the thing: Patrick Henry wasn’t quoting Scripture. And if you read what the Bible actually says about freedom, it sounds almost nothing like what Americans mean when we use the word.
This matters because American Christians have fused two very different ideas of freedom into one. We assume the freedom celebrated in the Declaration of Independence and the freedom celebrated in Galatians are basically the same thing.
They’re not. And the confusion has cost us.
American Freedom: Freedom FROM
The dominant American understanding of freedom is simple: I am free when no one can tell me what to do.
Freedom means the absence of external constraint. It means autonomy, self-direction, the right to pursue my own happiness without interference. Don’t tread on me. Leave me alone. My body, my choice. My property, my rules.
This understanding has shaped American life in countless ways, many of them genuinely valuable. It underlies our commitment to religious liberty, our rejection of tyranny, our legal protections for individual rights.
But this is not what Scripture means by freedom.
Biblical Freedom: Freedom FOR
Scripture consistently presents freedom not as the absence of constraint but as the presence of a particular orientation. Biblical freedom always has a direction. It’s freedom from something for something else.
The exodus narrative makes this obvious. God liberates Israel from bondage in Egypt, but that liberation finds its purpose at Mount Sinai, where God establishes a covenant calling the people to a new way of life together. The point of leaving Egypt was never “now you can do whatever you want.” The point was “now you can live in harmony with God and one another.”
Freedom from Pharaoh was always freedom for Torah.
This pattern runs throughout Scripture. Psalm 119:134 captures it: “Redeem me from human oppression, that I may keep your precepts.” The psalmist doesn’t ask to be freed from oppression so he can finally be his own boss. He asks to be freed so he can live according to God’s ways.
The purpose of liberation is faithfulness, not autonomy.
For more on what the Bible means by “redemption”, watch this helpful video from the BibleProject and its associated guide on Redemption:
Paul’s Outrageous Claim
The New Testament takes this even further. Paul’s letter to the Galatians contains one of his most emphatic declarations of Christian freedom. But listen to how he frames it:
“You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Galatians 5:13-14)
Read that again. Paul says we’re genuinely free, then immediately tells us to become slaves to one another.
To American ears, this is incoherent. If I’m free, how can I be a slave? If I’m a slave, how can I be free?
But Paul isn’t confused. He’s operating with a completely different definition. For Paul, freedom isn’t the absence of obligation to others. Freedom is the capacity to love and serve others without the distortions of sin getting in the way.
We are freed from sin precisely so that we can love.
This is freedom as love.
What Freedom Is Actually For
The difference between American freedom and biblical freedom comes down to purpose.
American freedom is essentially negative: it defines what should be absent (external control).
Biblical freedom is essentially positive: it defines what should be present (love, service, harmony with God).
Augustine understood this. He wrote, “There is no true liberty except the liberty of the happy who cleave to the eternal law.”
For Augustine, freedom isn’t the ability to choose anything. It’s the ability to choose what is genuinely good. A person enslaved to addiction may have no external constraints preventing them from drinking, but they are not truly free. True freedom is the capacity to live as God designed us to live.
This means Scripture always speaks of human freedom against the background of our dependence on God. Only God has absolute autonomy. Human freedom exists within a web of relationships and responsibilities. We are free creatures, but we are also created creatures, designed for communion with God and community with one another.
Any definition of freedom that ignores this is not biblical freedom at all.
The Damage
This isn’t academic. The confusion between American freedom and biblical freedom has produced real harm.
When Christians define freedom primarily as “no one can tell me what to do,” we start to see any claim on our lives as an attack. We become suspicious of sacrifice. We resent obligations to neighbors. We treat any mention of the common good as a threat.
You can see this everywhere in American Christian culture right now.
Suggest that Christians have obligations to the poor, and someone will call it socialism. Point out that Scripture commands care for immigrants and refugees, and someone will say you’re being political. Mention that loving your neighbor might require personal inconvenience or sacrifice, and someone will start talking about their rights.
“That’s socialism” has become the reflexive response to any proposal that might cost us something for the sake of others. But here’s what’s strange: the Bible never promises you low taxes. It never guarantees your right to accumulate wealth without obligation to the vulnerable. It never suggests that caring for the poor is optional, or that government efforts to protect workers and immigrants are inherently unchristian.
In fact, Scripture is relentlessly clear that God’s people are obligated to care for the widow, the orphan, the foreigner, and the poor. This isn’t a progressive talking point. It’s Deuteronomy. It’s the Prophets. It’s Jesus.
When Christians shout “socialism” at anyone who suggests we should strengthen the social safety net, we’re not defending biblical values. We’re defending our wallets with religious language.
The logic runs like this: if freedom means the absence of external constraint, then any constraint is an attack on freedom. Any obligation is tyranny. Any sacrifice is oppression.
But this logic is foreign to Scripture.
The biblical vision of human flourishing is inherently communal. We are created in the image of a Triune God who exists in eternal relationship. We are designed to live in community. The common good is not a threat to freedom rightly understood; it’s the context in which freedom finds its meaning.
Jesus told a story about a man who ignored a beggar at his gate and ended up in torment. He told another story about people who refused to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and were told, “Depart from me.” He said it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.
None of this sounds like “don’t tread on me.”
When Christians wrap the American flag around the cross and baptize individualism as biblical truth, we haven’t defended freedom. We’ve traded the freedom Christ offers for a counterfeit Christ who asks nothing of us and blesses our comfort.
That’s not Christianity. That’s idolatry with better branding.
Jesus Was Free. Look What He Did With It.
Jesus himself modeled this understanding. The Gospels present him as radically free: free from the religious establishment, free from social conventions, free from the fear of death.
But Jesus never used his freedom for self-indulgence. He used it for others.
He touched lepers. He welcomed outcasts. He washed his disciples’ feet. He gave his life on a cross.
His freedom was entirely directed toward love.
And this is what he calls his followers to embody: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34).
This is the opposite of American freedom. It’s not the assertion of individual autonomy but the surrender of it. It’s not “no one can tell me what to do” but “I freely choose to serve.”
Two Different Stories
American Christians have been formed by two different stories about freedom, and these stories are not easily compatible.
The American story says freedom is my right to live as I choose without interference. I am the center. Constraint is the enemy. The goal is individual autonomy.
The biblical story says freedom is God’s gift that enables me to love as Christ loved. God and neighbor are the center. The enemy is captivity to sin and selfishness. The goal is a redeemed community worshiping God together.
This doesn’t mean everything in the American tradition is wrong. The protection of individual rights, the rejection of tyranny, the commitment to religious liberty: these are genuine goods. But we must be honest that the dominant American conception of freedom is not the same as biblical freedom.
When we confuse them, we lose something essential to the gospel.
The Better Freedom
The good news is that Jesus offers a different kind of freedom.
Freedom from the bondage of sin. Freedom from the tyranny of self-interest. Freedom from the isolation of radical individualism.
This freedom is not the absence of all constraint but the presence of love. It’s not doing whatever I want but becoming who God made me to be. It’s not independence from others but interdependence with others in the body of Christ.
Patrick Henry wanted liberty or death.
Jesus offered something stranger: liberty through death. His death. And, if we’re willing, the death of our obsession with autonomy.
That’s the freedom worth celebrating.