FORGET NONE OF HIS BENEFITS
volume 23, number 3, January 18, 2024

It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to the yoke of slavery, Galatians 5:1.

After the martyrdom of her husband Jim Elliot, Elisabeth wrote in her journal that she could never see herself remarrying. Though her marriage to Jim lasted less than four years, her love and devotion to Jim was such that she could not imagine loving anyone else. That all changed in the summer of 1967, eleven years after Jim’s death, when she was speaking at Tarkio College in Missouri, and met Addison Leitch. She felt a strong attraction to the manliness, intelligence, and devotion to Christ that she saw in Addison. Addison’s wife had been suffering from cancer for over ten years and a year or so later, finally died. After her death Elisabeth (Betty) and Addison began a courtship which resulted in their marriage on January 1, 1969.

Addison took a professorship at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary in Hamilton, Massachusetts and he and Betty bought a house nearby and began their lives together. Their love and devotion to each was very strong and they had a wonderful marriage. In the spring of 1972 Addison was diagnosed with cancer of his lip as well as his prostate. Very quickly the cancers ravaged his body and after a miserable time of severe pain, Addison died in September, 1973.

Prior to her marriage with Addison, Betty had allowed several students from nearby Gordon Conwell to live with her and help her with the lawn and household chores. Two of those men were Walt Shepard and Lars Gren. Walt later married Betty’s daughter Valerie and Walt became a Presbyterian pastor. I served with Walt in Uganda a number of years ago though I have never met Valerie. Lars was also a seminary student from Norway and while he never finished college he was allowed to enter the seminary and take classes. Over the next few years Lars proved to be a big help to Betty. He would take her to the airport when she was traveling to her speaking engagements and he began to pursue a dating relationship with Betty, though she was ten years his senior. Betty in no way saw this as a romantic relationship but she appreciated his companionship and help around the house. At one point in 1976 Lars expressed his love for Betty and asked her to marry him. She refused his advances for several months but then, after praying about the situation, believed God was giving her the go ahead to marry him which she did on December 21, 1977. 

Nine days later Betty told several of her friends that marrying Lars had been the biggest mistake of her life. While Lars at times could be helpful and charming, they were totally incompatible. They had no like interests but even worse, Lars was given to volcanic eruptions of anger, his face turning purple with rage. And according to Dave Howard, Betty’s brother, these outbursts happened daily.[1] Lars also belittled Betty, was constantly criticizing her, and began to control every part of her life. When she gave a lecture, if he felt she did a poor job, he would walk away from her and not speak to her for several days. He told her where she should go and what she could and could not do. He severely restricted her contact with Val and her grandchildren. 

Betty stayed in the marriage, however, because she had committed to it before God and her obedience to God meant that she must keep her word. She also believed in the Biblical doctrine of submission to her husband (Eph.5:22-24) so she allowed Lars to lead her though he was given to all these sinful propensities just mentioned. As Ellen Vaughn in the second volume of her biography on Elizabeth said, “Betty gave up her freedom for security,” and she regretted it the rest of her life.[2] Ellen writes, “As I reread Elisabeth’s sometimes too frank journals, and breathed in her experience in the four years of her second widowhood, all I could see was that Elizabeth’s understandable loneliness, deep need for affirmation, physical hunger, weariness, and desire to be ‘protected’ gradually, insidiously, led her, step by cajoling step, into a difficult third marriage that confined and controlled her for the rest of her long life.”[3] Lars and Betty were married for thirty-eight years until her death in 2015.

It was for freedom that Christ set us free. The context of Paul’s words to the Galatians is their flirtation with Jewish ritual, having been told by the Judaizers that in order to become true Christians, these previously pagan people must embrace Jewish tradition. This is called legalism (that one can obtain or maintain his salvation by doing certain things demanded by others) and it can be deadly to one’s Christian life. Paul told the Galatians they were free from these Jewish, ceremonial laws, that keeping them was not the way to salvation. This freedom did not mean, however, that they were free to live as they please and do whatever they please. Instead it meant they were free in the grace of God to obey God’s word but they were also free from having to knuckle under the manmade dictates of religious formulae. 

Are you living out your freedom in Christ or have you returned to the slavery of manmade religion, ritual, and legalism? Sometimes it may appear that living according to the dictates of others yields security, but in the end, it will enslave. You might be giving up your freedom for security if you believe you:

—cannot place your children in a public school
—cannot drink beer or alcohol or smoke cigars or pipes
—cannot watch R rated movies, Netflix, HBO, or listen to secular music 
—cannot have a beard or must have a beard
—cannot attend a church which has contemporary Christian music
—cannot attend a church which has traditional Christian music
—cannot listen to secular music of any kind or attend secular movies at the theatre
—cannot read secular novels
—cannot own a second home because to do so is being worldly. 

It is very tempting to desire the perceived security of acceptance by others by doing what they expect you to do. To do so, however, will eventually suck the very life from your soul. The guideline is not so much what I cannot do but what I want to do because I love Jesus and I want to serve Him. For example, if at all possible I believe we should place our children in Christian schools or homeschool them, but I cannot say you are sinning if you place them in a public school. Unless Scripture speaks plainly to an issue, we never have the right to tell other people what they should or should not do. Many people cannot afford Christian education and not everyone is capable of homeschooling their children. And besides, I have known some Christian schools to be less than stellar in academic rigor and to allow worldliness and harsh treatment by faculty and other students. I don’t drink or smoke but I cannot say that one doing these things is engaging in sinful behavior. I don’t watch R rated movies but I do watch certain shows on Netflix and I like listening to the Allman Brothers, Elton John, Grand Funk Railroad, and The Who. I very much prefer traditional music in worship of the 18th century variety, but I cannot say that all contemporary Christian music is to be rejected.

I marvel at the way Elisabeth Elliott so willingly submitted to the manifold sufferings in her life. She was an amazing person and I am in awe of her life and writing ministry. Having said this, however, it seems to me that she unwisely placed herself in a harmful marriage. While she wanted the security of a man to lead her, she paid a steep price for that security.

We should learn from her life. Be inspired by how she submitted to Christ but be warned by her folly. Giving up your freedom in Christ for a measure of security is not a good idea.  

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1 Being Elisabeth Elliot, Ellen Vaughn, page 271.
2 Being Elizabeth Elliott, page 272
3 Ibid. page 269.