Not every loyalty in this world is for life. Some friendships fade and church memberships transfer and jobs transition for upright reasons. But those who remain loyal longer than their flesh wants, and longer than the world advises, will discover the stunning loveliness born of loyalty, the untold blessings of being bound.

In our world of easy mobility and tremendous choice, life can feel like a hallway with a hundred doors.

We choose one among a hundred majors after having chosen one among a hundred schools. Then a hundred careers confront us, along with a hundred places to live. And these decisions aren’t even the most important. We choose a church among not quite a hundred options but many, consider a potential spouse from a hundred physical and digital possibilities, prioritize friendships from the hundred people we have known. True, friendships and jobs and marriages don’t always come easily (our world knows many jobless and lonely people)—yet, for many, the possibilities can seem dizzyingly diverse.

In such a world, we might feel tempted to believe that freedom consists in keeping as many options open as possible. Or if we do walk through a particular door, we would prefer to keep it propped open, just in case something better appears. Many enter one door only to retreat to the hallway shortly after, and then enter another door only to do the same—job to job, church to church, friend to friend, place to place. Or if we did choose to lock ourselves into a room (say, by getting married or having children), we might find ourselves chafing, itching, imagining what life might be like through a different door.

How hard it can be to believe, then, that in this hallway with a hundred doors, the best, most freeing decision we can make is to close ninety-nine of them. Only then will we discover the blessings of being bound—by covenant, by commitment, by friendship, by faithfulness.

Bound in the Beginning

From the very beginning, the Bible teaches a principle that seems paradoxical, and especially in a day like ours: Binding relationships liberate. Personal autonomy enslaves.

The principle appears as soon as people do. Almost immediately after he is formed from the dust of the earth, Adam, free and sinless Adam, finds himself bound by the two most enduring relationships in the world. He hears his Maker, he beholds his bride, and to both he gives his covenant loyalty (Genesis 2:16–17, 23–24). And so he becomes a worshiper and a husband, bound in spirit to his God and in flesh to his wife. He is not his own—at the same time, however, he is the freer for it.

The short story of Eden gives us glimpses into Adam’s paradoxical freedom. In being bound to God, Adam may have forfeited the freedom of self-rule, but he gained the freedom of enjoying God’s presence, reflecting God’s character, and fulfilling the mission God made him for (Genesis 1:28; 2:9, 19). In being bound to Eve, he may have lost the freedom of bachelorhood, but he gained the freedom to be fruitful and multiply and to live with one who was bone of his bones—his home in human flesh (Genesis 1:28; 2:23–24). Here is freedom without bitterness or regret, freedom naked and unashamed.

The joy of Eden was a binding joy, a committed joy, a joy where you found yourself by losing yourself. It was a joy that would weave a whole fabric of relationships, each with its own kind of binding: children, kin, and neighbors to love as yourself. And in such joy, we get a glimpse of the life God made us for. As fish need water and birds need air, as trains need tracks and cars need roads, so we need the kind of relationships that tie us to others with cords far stronger than convenience.

We need marriages bound by covenant and sealed with vows, children who call forth from us a glad fidelity to family, church communities that feel as indivisible as the human body, friendships sturdy enough to withstand opposition and offense. We need loyalty strong as a tree with roots long grown.

For as Adam and Eve show us, the alternative to such loyalty is not freedom, but a far, far worse kind of bondage—the tyranny of autonomy.

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