The United States honors the men and women who died or otherwise sacrificed to give and protect the freedoms and rights enshrined in the great documents of our nation: the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

But Another lived and died to give us the greatest freedoms and rights of all: freedom of choice and freedom from bondage to sin, with the right to serve Him and the power to do so — freedoms and rights that came at such great sacrifice to the Godhead and the universe. Christ’s magnanimous death offers freedom to the subjects of the most tyrannical despot ever, liberating them to live according to the laws of His government enshrined on two tablets of stone.

These laws — these rights — such that I have the right to worship God on the seventh-day Sabbath or the right to return to my car and not find it stolen, are rights to a peaceable and harmonic relationship with God and each other. They rest within His throne — at once establishing the rule of righteousness, yet covered by the mercy of God.

Blood has been the price of freedom, the power of causes worth living and dying for and the signature of covenants between God and man, man and his brothers and sisters. Blood is the power behind our nation’s treasured documents and the choice to honor and defend them.

Life more abundantly was the cry of our forefathers yearning for the certain unalienable rights endowed by our Creator, He who died to set the captives free and whose blood-stained banner has been the waymark of prophets, apostles and reformers — martyrs.

We are right to raise our nation’s flag in celebration of our independence and as a memorial to those who fought for freedom. Let us also honor those who responded to the call and said, “Here am I. Send me.” Let us lift high the cross of Christ. Higher, and still higher. Here at home and among the unreached. Not content only to sing our national anthem, let us lift our voices in singing praises memorializing our Savior — He who said to His Father, “Here am I. Send me.” — until we gather to celebrate the anthem of the redeemed of Revelation 14:3.. 

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