now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. [2 corinthians 3:17]
so why do I feel imprisoned? despite my emancipation, i cling to my cell. like a child who gorges himself on candy and insists that any other food is slop, so i often have no taste for godliness.
why do we submit to our former masters? are we so demented that we find their scorn and abuse more comforting than the law of liberty*?
if there is anyone amongst us that knows this freedom, and lives it perfectly, and does not on any occasion feel the temptation to return to slavery – let that one write to us.
don’t we often feel like the Israelites, groaning to return to egypt, the freedom of the LORD only producing jadedness in us? ** we have been slaves all our life, how could we now be expected to live free?
without Christ in you – in me – our freedom will have been won in vain. we will either forget our new citizenship and submit to our former slavery or forget our Savior and use our freedom for evil.
i encourage you today to meditate on both your deliverance and your Deliverer. the freedom we have in Christ can hardly be understood, but it must be believed if we are to become pure. *** pray in earnest that your freedom in Christ would not be in vain but would produce a fruit of righteousness through faith. ****
Lord, may you be known amongst to all people by the freedom you have once and for all bestowed to us.
* for freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. [galatians 5:1]
** then all the congregation raised a loud cry, and the people wept that night. and all the people of israel grumbled against moses and aaron. the whole congregation said to them, “would that we had died in the land of egypt! or would that we had died in this wilderness! why is the LORD bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? our wives and our little ones will become a prey. would it not be better for us to go back to egypt?” and they said to one another, “let us choose a leader and go back to egypt.” [numbers 14:1–4]
*** to the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled. [titus 1:15]
**** but the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. [james 1:25]
~ graham bachman