Bondage Or Liberty
3 He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, Colossians 1:13 NKJV
Imagine for a moment that you are a slave living in Virginia in 1865. You have lived your entire life in the bondage of slavery and all that you know in life is the physical and mental anguish that is the result of that life experience. You have thought about freedom and liberty and what it would mean, but it is just a wish that is incongruous with all you have ever known. It is not just your life experience that re-enforces this, your father and his father before him, your mother and her side of the family, all have lived this same life of bondage and torment. Freedom is a concept but not a reality for generations. It is more than you could hope or believe for.
But in 1865, the Civil War’s conclusion changes all of that. Congress enacts a law that gives every slave liberty. Can we possibly imagine the swell of emotions and thoughts that would race through the mind of these newly freed slaves? It must have seemed unreal to them and certainly you would expect that one who had never enjoyed the fruits of freedom would appreciate and treasure that freedom beyond anything your or I could comprehend.
Now imagine if you will that same slave after a few years of freedom, going back to his former Master and saying, “Put me back in chains and bondage because I just am more comfortable there.” It is inconceivable to us that such a thing could ever take place. We do not believe that anyone would willfully concede their cherished and long awaited freedom, especially if they realized the price that was paid by so many young men, with their own blood, to obtain the freedom for that slave. That could never really happen, could it?
Yet as incredible as that sounds to us, it is exactly what many of us do with our lives. We discard the freedom that was purchased for us in His blood, and willingly return ourselves to bondage because of the decisions that we make, decisions that are from the sin nature. The verse above tells us that God has delivered us from the power of darkness. You see, in our sin we were in bondage and made slaves to that sin. But in the blood of Jesus we also obtained liberty and freedom from those things that held us in bondage. We were transferred to the Kingdom of freedom and liberty that is found in the salvation of Jesus and His love. In fact, the King James version uses the word “translated” when it speaks of our deliverance to the kingdom of His love. In that liberty we truly experience the same overwhelming emotion and deliverance from torment and suffering as the slaves in that bygone era felt. The key difference is that too often we elect to put ourselves back into that place of bondage by the choices that we make in life. When we willfully yield to sin, we are putting those shackles of slavery back on and we make ourselves slaves to that sin. The suffering of spiritual bondage manifests itself both in our soul as well as in our bodies because sin destroys.
Jesus paid a high price for our salvation and deliverance. Recognize the torments that are associated with, and a result of, our sins. Step out of sin and into the liberty that is in the kingdom of the love of Jesus. Are you in bondage today, or are you at liberty?
J Todd Hostetler