Jesus: If you hold to my teachings, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.
Jews who had believed: We are Abraham’s descendants and never have been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?
Jesus: I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.
How is it that we can be slaves and not know it? Sadly, it happens all the time. It happens when our sinful nature is bound by chains we cannot touch and by captors we cannot see.
Money – though mere paper, metal and virtual transactions – is nevertheless a master that demands complete allegiance and, in exchange, leaves us unsatisfied and hungry for more. Lust, itself, has no human form, but those who harbor it are forced to watch as, without mercy or conscience, it destroys lives, marriages and families. Some dance with alcohol only to remain trapped in its liquid grasp long after the music stops. Fear, arrogance, cowardice, envy, hatred … on and on and on goes the list of oppressors that, while unable to hold a gun to our heads or shackle us in irons, nevertheless abduct and torment our sinful nature as though they did.
But the Son of God – truth incarnate – set us free from enslavement to sin (John 8:31, 36). He did so not by changing our sin nature, but by breathing into us his sinless nature that never has been enslaved to sin and never will be. That’s what being born anew is: the Spirit births Jesus' eternal life into us. He becomes our life, his spotless nature becomes our new nature and we are free.
Yes, we are free as Christ is free. Christ is not bound by fear, so Christ in us is not a slave to fear. Christ is not held hostage to unforgiveness and, with his Spirit living in us, we need not be chained up in grudges, either. Money has never mastered Jesus and, through the power of him in us, we are no longer locked up inside its suffocating vaults. Jesus is love, righteousness, power, mercy, truth, strength, soundness of mind ... and this Jesus is our life, the substance of our new eternal nature. His life is our life, so we are free as he is free.
It is so important, then, that we not be deceived into thinking sin holds power over us. Our sin nature is what it is – ugly and unchangeable – and it will hang onto us like an annoying, useless appendage as long as we walk this earth. But we need not serve sin anymore. For we are no longer slaves outside of the family of God, rather we live freely as members in it.
Truth has set us free. Christ has set us free. Today, let us choose to live in our new nature ... in the family of freedom.
