You Weren't Made to Be a Slave // You Have Been Set Free, Part 3

Christianityworks Official Podcast

It’s pretty obvious, but let me say it anyway. You and I were not made to be slaves. You and I were made to be free. So why is it then that so many people are intent on living their lives as slaves these days? Hmm?

From Slaves to Heirs in Christ

Official figures tell us that there are around twenty-one million slaves on the earth today. That’s a shock, isn’t it? "Isn’t slavery a thing of the past? Surely!" Well, actually, no it’s not, and unofficial figures put it much higher at more like one hundred million slaves on the earth today. It’s shocking to think of it, but it’s true. There are that many people in slavery. You might be thinking, "Surely not!" but the facts speak for themselves.

But let me bring this even closer to home. I wonder whether you would consider yourself as someone who, to some extent at least, is a person in slavery: A Person in bondage. Have a listen to this interesting exchange between Jesus and some Jews, God’s own people, men and women who considered themselves to be free. John 8:31-36:

Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in Him, ‘If you continue in My Word, you are truly My disciples. And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’

They answered Him, ‘We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do You mean by saying, you will be made free?’

Jesus answered them, ‘Very truly I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there for ever, so if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.’

Perhaps you’ve heard part of that quoted before: That Jesus came to set you free, but it’s interesting how the Jews of the day (in a sense) took offence at what Jesus said. "We’re not slaves!" They responded indignantly. "Sure you are," said Jesus. "You are slaves to sin and that ... That’s what I’ve come to set you free from."

Jesus came to set us – you, me, everyone else who puts their trust in Him, free from the slavery to sin that robs us not just of our lives here on this earth, but of a permanent place in the household of God. I wonder what sin is robbing you, enslaving you, keeping you from being all that you can be: All that God made you to be. Come on, what sin has put you in the shackles of slavery? Because it’s that very sin, that very slavery, that Jesus came to set you free from.

Is it really worth it – the anger that’s swirling around in your heart; the resentment; the dishonesty; the sexual sin; whatever it is in your life; whatever your Achilles heel happens to be? Whatever sin you’re hanging onto, is it really, really worth it? Would you like to be set free? Because let me tell you, if Jesus sets you free, you’ll be free indeed.

A few years after that, Paul the apostle continued on with this whole metaphor, this whole discussion about slavery. So here’s a question: Would you rather be a slave in your master’s household or one of his children? I mean, come on. Wind the clock back to the first century when the apostle Paul posed that question to his friends in Galatia. Galatians 4:1-7:

My point is this. Heirs, as long as they are minors, are no better than slaves, though they are the owners of all the property, but they remain under guardians and trustees until the date set by the father. So it is with us.

While we were minors, we were enslaved to the elemental spirits of the world, but when the fullness of time had come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law in order to redeem those who were under the Law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father.’ So you are no longer a slave, but a child; and if a child, then also an heir through God.

Ok. What’s Paul’s point? There was a time when we were acting as minors. You know how kids are. They don’t want to listen to their parents; they think they know better. When they become teenagers, they roll their eyes in the back of their head when Mum or Dad tells them to do something. You’ve been there? Me too, and at that point, children are no better than slaves. They remain under guardianship, under a bunch of rules and regulations, almost like slaves in a sense. They’re not free.

When you’re a child, whether at home or at school, you’re told to do something and you have to do it, and that’s what religion is all about. It’s about following a bunch of rules that, quite simply, is not freedom, but then God sent Jesus to redeem us from those rules. The idea of redeeming a slave was to pay the price to his or her master to set them free: To buy them out of their slavery. In a very real sense, that’s exactly what Jesus did. That’s why He’s able to say, "If I set you free, you will be free indeed."

So many people today believe in Jesus, but they aren’t living in the freedom that He purchased for them. I wonder: Are you one of those? Are you still trying to follow a bunch of rules, kicking and bucking against them, wondering why you constantly fall short. Or do you wake up each morning, open your eyes, and remember in your heart that you are a child of the living God because Jesus set you free? Because that’s exactly what He did. He set you free from the rules and from your inability to keep those rules.

Look, this isn’t some theory lesson; this is real. It’s about the sort of life that you’re living. It’s about how you feel each morning when you wake up. It’s about whether you look forward to the next day with a sense of anticipation, or a sense of foreboding. You were made to live in freedom, and Jesus came to set you free.

The Reality of Freedom

A good friend will always tell you the truth. In fact, I love the saying that a friend always stabs you in the front. There are plenty of people out there who will tell you nice things to your face, and then go behind your back and whisper things about you. Right? You have those people in your life; I have those people in my life, but a true friend is someone who stabs you in the front – someone who tells you how things really are. We don’t always like it. None of us likes criticism, but as you read in Proverbs 27:17:

Just as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.

I have just a handful of people who do that for me in my life. I trust them. I know they have a good heart. I know they have my interests at heart, and so when they come to me and they have something difficult to say, as much as I’m like the next person, as much as I don’t really like criticism all that much either, I sit down, I listen, I evaluate, and I take to heart what they have to say to me. That’s the sort of relationship that the apostle Paul had with the church in Galatia, back there in the first century AD. Friend, he loved those guys.

He’d been there at the beginning. He’d been the one who told them about the amazing grace of God through Jesus Christ, but it wasn’t long until some Jewish Christians came along (while Paul was away elsewhere) to convince the Galatians that this whole idea of grace was a nonsense. After all, all these freedoms that Paul had taught them about lead to loose living.

No, no. Go back to the old Jewish Law; to circumcision; to tithing; to all the things you have to do to appease God. After all, in many respects, you look around at all the other religions in the world and they’re all about appeasing one or more gods, so Paul writes this to them. Galatians 4:8-11:

Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods. Now however that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits? How can you want to be enslaved to them again? You are observing special days and months and seasons and years. I am afraid that my work for you may have been wasted.

Let me hit you right between the eyes. Is that what you’re doing? Having heard about the grace you have in Jesus Christ, have you returned back to the old ways of following a bunch of rules? Because if you have, the work of Jesus Christ on that cross for you is being wasted. Completely wasted.

When you think about it, what the apostle Paul is trying to do is to get his friends in Galatia to wake up to the truth. There is such power in the truth, and today I want to share something incredibly important with you about the truth – the truth. You see, in this world, people don’t often want to hear the truth. The truth often is incredibly inconvenient. It cuts across vested interests. We all struggle with the truth. We all want to sweep things under the carpet. The problem is that that doesn’t solve anything. In fact, often, it just makes things worse.

When you think about it, Jesus was in the business of telling the truth. He told the religious leaders about their hypocrisy in no uncertain terms, and to common, ordinary folk, he spoke about a truth that is all about setting us free. Sounds odd, doesn’t it? Have a listen to the way Jesus puts it. John 8:31-32:

Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in Him, ‘If you continue in My Word, you are truly My disciples. And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’

A number of times, Jesus makes the point that He came to set us free, and the place where you find that freedom is in the truth; in hearing His Word, knowing His Word, and taking it into our hearts as the truth. Here’s the thing. You and I, we’re masters of self-delusion. We’re all too ready to criticise others. Come on, we are, but we want to cut ourselves plenty of slack. We want to make excuses for ourselves when deep-down, we know that what we’re thinking or saying or doing is wrong.

And when we get into that guilt trap, then all of a sudden, we find ourselves caught up in that whole cycle again of feeling unworthy, so we pedal harder to do better, and there you have it. There you have it. You’re living a life trying to appease God by following a bunch of rules. Jesus died a gruesome death on a cross so that you and I wouldn’t have to do that. Jesus paid the price of all our sins and mistakes. Colossians 1:13-14:

He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

I receive so many Emails from people around the world who watch or listen to the programmes that we produce here at ChristianityWorks and one of the most common things I hear, over and over again, is that people don’t feel that they’re forgiven. They’re not experiencing God’s forgiveness, and so they can’t forgive themselves for the things that they’ve done wrong. What an incredible burden to carry around all your life, and it’s that burden that Jesus came to set you free from. That’s the truth.

But the question is, how do we actually lay hold of that freedom? Well, as well as the Word of God, there’s the Spirit of God. Freedom is such a precious thing. I talk about it a lot because so many people are caught up in the yoke of slavery: Slavery to their old ways; slavery to their sins; slavery to the things of this world; slavery to the expectations of success; slavery to that sense that, "I’m just not good enough, and what’s more, I never will be"; slavery to ... Well, to just about anything, and yes, the truth is important. That’s why Jesus said that if we continue in His Word (if we believe what He says) that we will know the truth, and that truth will set us free.

There you have it. Freedom. Great, but have you ever read those words in the Bible and thought to yourself, "Well, I see the words on the page; I can read them; I can even repeat them over and over again, but somehow, they’re not real for me. They’re not penetrating my heart. I want to be free; I want to believe, but it’s just not happening." Have you ever felt that? Well, you wouldn’t be alone. The apostle Paul was writing to his friends in Corinth this one time about this very thing. People (he said) were getting caught up in the letter of the Law, but they weren’t experiencing what God was doing for them. 2 Corinthians 3:17-18:

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image, from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.

Where do you find freedom? In the Spirit of God. In the Holy Spirit, who is given to each person who believes in Jesus. Listen up. If you believe in Jesus, then the Holy Spirit dwells in you and where the Spirit of the Lord is there, right there in you, is freedom.

Father God, I pray that Your Holy Spirit would bring that freedom to life in each one of us. Lord, we know the theory, but we long, we hunger, we yearn to experience Your freedom. Dear Holy Spirit, make that sense of freedom real in our lives. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

I’m believing with all my heart that God is about to do a mighty work in you: A work of freedom; a work of revealing to you, deep in your heart of hearts, the freedom that you have in Christ. Freedom isn’t a concept; it’s not a theory; it’s a reality. Jesus died to purchase that freedom for you. He rose again so that you can live out that freedom in your new life, in Him.

Living the Life

Ok, so Jesus came to set the captives free. That’s what He said of Himself. Luke 4:18-19:

The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favour.

Hey, that sounds a lot like freedom to me. That’s the promise that Jesus holds out to you and to me. That’s great, but a lot of people who believe in Him don’t experience that kind of freedom. So, either He was lying when He said that (I’d give that option a fairly low probability), or those people are doing something wrong (a much higher probability, you’d have to say).

There’s a battle going on inside each one of us between living for Jesus and living for ourselves. You and I are essentially pretty selfish individuals and, if you’re anything like me, we have a propensity to go wandering off, living our lives for ourselves rather than for Jesus. It’s almost as though we’ve been given freedom, but we decide to head straight back into a prison again. So compelling is this desire of ours to botch up our lives that we need some help. Fortunately, that’s no surprise to God, and it’s something that He’s already given us in the form of the Holy Spirit. Galatians 5:16-17:

Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh. For these are opposed to each other to prevent you from doing what you want.

There’s the battle: Between what the Holy Spirit would do in our lives, and what we would do of our own accord, and here’s what I’ve discovered: The things that I want to do end up robbing me of the freedom that Jesus wants to give me – the freedom in fact that He’s already given me, and let’s face it. Those things, by and large, are not good things. Galatians 5:19-21:

Now the works of the flesh are obvious: Fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I’m warning you, as I warned you before: Those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Not a very salubrious list, is it? I mean, really, come on. God only tells us not to do the things that are going to hurt us; the things that are going to rob us of the freedom that Christ came to bring us. Listen to the Holy Spirit, and He’ll keep you away from those things. He just will.

Do you know what I’ve noticed? The more I make a point of spending some quiet time with Jesus each and every day, the easier it is to avoid sin. Most days, first thing in the morning (I’m a morning person, you see; I always have been), I just spend a quiet half an hour or so with the door of my study closed and my Bible open; sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less. Now often, there are things on my mind: Stresses, pressures, this isn’t going quite the way I’d like, there’s a struggle in a relationship over there ... Whatever.

It can get you down, can’t it? The burden; the load; the pressure, and when you’re carrying that sort of stuff around, you start behaving badly. You do. You get cranky; agitated; resentful; there’s bitterness in your heart perhaps, and man, on those days, the devil is going to have an absolute field day with you. But somehow, in that quiet time with Jesus, He stills my heart. Invariably, I end up walking away and starting my day with an incredible peace; with this joy in my heart, and it’s much, much harder for the devil to attack me and to tempt me. Have you experienced that too?

You see, I think that what’s going on there is that the Holy Spirit is doing His work in us; lifting God’s Word off the page; etching it into our hearts so that it becomes part of who we are, and that ... That bears fruit in your life, as opposed to the rubbish that you and I are prone to carry on with. Paul goes on in Galatians 5:22-25. He says:

By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.

That fruit of God’s goodness just naturally grows out of those times with the Lord each day. I think ... I think that’s what it is to walk in the Spirit. Look, I’ve tried doing it the other way; just racing off and doing it all by myself, but each and every time, the devil trips me up. Each and every time, he robs me of my peace and my joy. Each and every time, I end up bound up in my old sinful ways again, instead of living out the freedom that Jesus died and rose again to give me. Jesus didn’t just do the whole cross and empty tomb thing for us two thousand years ago. He also sent His Spirit to live in us to make those things real; to make the freedom real.

The question you have to ask yourself is, why do we imagine that we can go it alone? Why do we rush into our day and try to do things in our own strength when we know, I mean we know one hundred percent, that we’re going to fall flat on our faces; that the devil is going to attack us from every direction, because he knows that our flesh is weak? Why do we do that? I don’t know, but we do. People do it over and over again, and then they wonder why they’re not experiencing the freedom that Jesus promised.