Just as fish are made for water, a Christian is made for confidence in Christ and for unselfish love of neighbor. If teens search for freedom in people-pleasing or selfish independence, they’ll be enslaved. But if we teach them to live as God has made them, aligned with their Christian identity as “perfectly free lords” and “perfectly dutiful servants,” they’ll be wise and truly free.

When kids are young, we work hard to train their consciences, to teach them God’s commands and how to choose between right and wrong. But as kids get older, they must learn to navigate issues that aren’t black and white. They need wisdom to discern between good choices and those that are best.

One of the best ways to train a teenager in wisdom is to talk to him about what Martin Luther called “Christian freedom.” For us, “Christian freedom” brings to mind disputable matters like whether it’s appropriate for Christians to drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes—topics that are important but daunting to bring up with your child as he heads toward his adult years.

But while Luther did write about matters of conscience in On Christian Liberty, his treatise accomplished much more. Luther wrote to help believers find wisdom and true freedom by living in accordance with their Christian identity. The twofold path to freedom he described is biblical, and it’s worth teaching to Christian youth today.

Freedom from Proving and People-Pleasing

Suppose your teenage daughter feels peer pressure to get her hair highlighted. She doesn’t really want to do it, but all her friends are. So she thinks she’ll have to go along. Suppose another daughter wants to dye her hair pink, but a moralistic friend says, “You can’t wear your hair that way and be a Christian!” How would you counsel these girls before their salon trip?

Luther said, “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.” If you’ve been accepted by Christ, you don’t need to please people or conform to their cultural vision of what’s stylish or even of what’s Christian. Luther wrote,

No external thing has any influence in producing Christian righteousness or freedom. . . . It will not harm the soul if the body is clothed in secular dress, dwells in unconsecrated places, eats and drinks as others do, does not pray aloud, and neglects to do all the . . . things which hypocrites can do.

When he wrote about “secular dress,” Luther wasn’t addressing dyed hair or clothing styles but whether it was necessary for clergy to wear vestments during worship. Yet his principle still applies. Nothing done to the body determines the nature of one’s soul; if you belong to Christ, nothing can snatch you from his hand. If you’ve trusted Jesus, you have nothing to prove. It’s God’s justifying declaration over you that makes you who you are.

As I’ve written before, “What God says about you as his beloved child is more important than what anyone else says.” That’s the first principle I’d teach my daughters, but I wouldn’t stop there. Luther didn’t either.

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