Thursday May 7, 2020

Your Daily Dose of Inspiration:

So it is that in order to be free of sin, you must submit to the Lord. We must recognize that our own nature is corrupted, and we need to surrender our will to the Lord. We must choose to give up our notions of independence and live as slaves of righteousness. But slavery to Christ is not as slavery to man. Men have enslaved each other for all of history and have proven to be cruel masters. The Lord Jesus, however, is kind and gentle master who seeks to make us not only slaves, but children of God.

Galatians 4:7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

Furthermore, while the slavery of man, and of sin, is compulsory, our submission to God to made willingly and out of a heart of love. Consider this statue from the Mosaic law.

Exodus 21:2-6 When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing. (3) If he comes in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. (4) If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out alone. (5) But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’ (6) then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall be his slave forever.

Understand, firstly, that man enslaving other men is not the perfect will of God. The Mosaic Law was not perfect; indeed, it could not be. Christ proved the imperfection of the Old Covenant by establishing the new one, for law could not make any man righteous. The law was given to man in order to prepare him for the perfect will of God in Christ Jesus. We may, however, find great and powerful truths within these verses. See first, that the Lord establishes that even the slave has the freedom of choice. Under the Mosaic law, a man could choose to sell himself into slavery in order to pay off debts, or to avoid going into debt. At the end of 7 years, that man would be set free from that slavery, unless he chose to stay. In the same way, we have the freedom to choose our master. We may leave the Lord and return to our sinful ways, or, like the willing slave, we may say, “I love my master, I will not go out free.” In doing so we shall take our flesh to the post and bore it through, nailing it to the cross with Christ. And it shall be a sign to us that we are forever the slaves of Christ, because of our love for Him.

-Jared Freeman, “Slaves Of Christ”