Nowadays, it’s taboo to talk about words like “slavery.” Yet, it’s an institution as old as humanity: since our fall, we’ve sought to dominate one another, lord over one another, and belittle one another. Yet it wasn’t humans ushering this institution on one another: through our rebellion against our Designer’s will, we’re enslaved to our sin, and we’re enslaved to death. Many reading this live in countries with anti-slavery laws (though slavery exists, even in those countries; pray that those being trafficked get released!), so we can’t possibly fathom this concept. Yet the enemy of our souls would love nothing more than for us to forget that, while we may live freely, we’re still in bondage.
We are in bondage to our choices, we may suppress or ignore how we feel in the lives we’re living, but we feel the shame and weight and guilt of our lives and choices. Or, we feel that we’re hopeless, and so we continue on in the same things, over and over again, hoping that THIS time, something will be different. Loved ones, we cannot, CANNOT continue on like this! We’re enslaved, living for small moments of pleasure, hoping for retirement, hoping to waste away in some amount of comfort, looking for a small amount of relief, when joy is just around the corner! Jesus purchased you with His blood. He paid the debt of your wrongs, He paid the price for your transgressions, and it’s offered freely, if you would just surrender! And in that surrender is so much joy, so much freedom, so much clarity of mind, it's too wonderful for words!
This does not mean we don’t make mistakes, we do, but what we have assurance of is that His mercies are new every day. We no longer have to live like we are in chains. We were bought with a price, so let us live like we’ve been purchased, and live in His freedom! Submission to Christ is more free than the chains of self-gratification ever can grant, and I am never going back.
Romans 8:1-17
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.
So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
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