Who We’re Meant to Be: Free
Ps. Nathan Canto | November 30th, 2025
This Thanksgiving, I was living my best life, cooking, eating, hanging out with family, and of course… watching football. And while the games were on, I was texting back and forth with a friend from my fantasy football league.
If you've ever played fantasy football, you know the tension already.
You draft individual players who score points based on their performance, regardless of what team they play for. Simple enough… until real-life loyalty enters the picture.
I’m a Chargers fan. Meaning our greatest sports enemy is the Kansas City Chiefs.
But on my fantasy roster? I have two Chiefs players.
So suddenly, I’m in this bizarre emotional split.
Everything in me wants the Chiefs to lose. But I also desperately need a couple of Chiefs players to do extremely well.
It’s a weird place to live.
And in the strangest, most humorous act of divine kindness, the Lord answered my deeply spiritual Thanksgiving prayer: my players put up great points and the Chiefs still lost.
A Thanksgiving miracle. Amen and amen.
But I told my friend, “This feels like living a double life.”
I’m cheering for one thing and against the same thing at the same time.
And that got me thinking…
This is exactly how so many believers feel in their walk with God.
We’re fully on Team Jesus. We’re redeemed, forgiven, adopted, made new, and yet we still feel the pull of old desires, habits, responses, and patterns.
We love God deeply but still fight familiar battles.
We want to walk in the Spirit but still feel tugged by the flesh.
If you’ve ever felt this tension, Paul wants you to know:
You are not alone.
This is the universal Christian experience.
The Battle Inside Us
Even the Apostle Paul, a pillar of the faith, writer of much of the New Testament, the man who personally encountered Jesus, found himself in this same struggle.
He writes with raw vulnerability:
Romans 7:15
“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”
Have you ever sat and wondered:
“How can I genuinely love God… and still get pulled into old habits or patterns of thinking?”
Paul looks at us and essentially says, “I get it. I’m right there with you.”
He describes this internal war. A part of him fully alive in Christ, and another part still conditioned by his old nature.
Then he reaches this honest, heartbreaking confession:
Romans 7:24
“What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?”
This is the cry of someone who knows who he wants to be…
but still encounters the version of himself he thought he left behind.
The person who loves Jesus but still battles anxiety.
The person who worships deeply but still fights shame.
The person walking in grace but still gets caught in old patterns.
Then Paul gives us the turning point:
Romans 7:25
“Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
Paul isn’t telling us to try harder.
He’s telling us to live from who we already are in Christ.
You Are Not Who You Used to Be
Your identity is not earned through performance.
Your freedom isn’t secured through willpower.
Your victory isn’t achieved through striving.
You are:
A son or daughter
Adopted into God’s family
Filled with His Spirit
Freed from the law of sin and death
God didn’t save you so you could live in constant contradiction…
He saved you so your life could come into alignment with your spiritual reality.
From Condemnation to Freedom
Paul continues:
Romans 8:1
“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
Not less condemnation.
Not delayed condemnation.
Not “you deserve it but God is being nice today.”
No condemnation.
None. Zero. Canceled.
Why? Because the finished work of Jesus has spoken a final word over your life.
Then Paul explains how this freedom actually works:
Romans 8:2
“because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.”
There used to be a law over you: sin, death, condemnation, striving.
Now there is a new law: the law of the Spirit who gives life.
The Inside-Out Work of Christ
Paul says:
Romans 8:3–4:
”For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”
What the law could not do…
What willpower cannot do…
What self-improvement fails to do…
God did by sending Jesus.
Jesus didn’t come as a warrior, ruler, or judge.
He came as a child, helpless, human, vulnerable, entering the world on our terms to deal with the problem within us.
He didn’t come just to fix creation.
He came to inhabit it.
To transform us from the inside out.
Living Daily in Christlikeness
Paul continues:
Romans 8:5-6
”Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.”
Living free isn’t about perfection.
It’s about alignment.
Here are the daily rhythms that shape Christlikeness:
Prayer: Prayer aligns our hearts with God’s will and trains us to walk in His ways.
Devotion to God’s Word: Scripture renews our minds, shapes our desires, and forms Christ in us.
Submission to the Spirit Spirit-led living is daily surrender, letting Him shape your decisions, desires, and responses.
Connection to God’s Family: Community keeps us accountable, encouraged, grounded, and strengthened.
Condemnation vs. Conviction
Many believers confuse these two, and it keeps them stuck.
Condemnation:
“You’ll never get it right. God is disappointed in you.”
Keeps you hiding and fearful.
Conviction:
“This isn’t who you are anymore. Come back to who God made you to be.”
Leads to growth, restoration, alignment.
The Spirit never condemns you.
He redirects you.
Conviction is an invitation, not punishment.
The Call: Live Free. Live Led by the Spirit.
Practice: Living Free and Spirit-Led
So, what does it look like for us today?
Identify the area where you’ve been living under the law of the flesh.
Fear, striving, shame, control; what area of your life has been dominated by old patterns?Invite the Spirit to work inside of you.
Let Him transform your mind, your heart, your desires.Respond from your identity as a son or daughter of God, not from obligation or fear.
Live Spirit-led, knowing freedom is your birthright in Christ.
Romans 8:14
“For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.”
The tension, the tug-of-war, the double life? It ends here. You are free in Christ. You are not condemned. You are adopted. You are empowered.
This is who we are meant to be.
This is the life Jesus came to give.
This is true freedom.