A Reflection On Freedom

When I need to shed the things that are holding me in sin

Bound by strips of linen around his hands and feet, with a cloth over his face, the resurrected Lazarus hears this command immediately after Jesus calls him out of the grave: “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.” Similarly, when Jesus raises us out of our sinful state of death, there is something left to do before we run free. The grave clothes must go.

What grave clothes have had us bound? Habitual sins? Guilt? The philosophies of this age? We must be free of them, and we are helpless to shed them on our own. Jesus raises us to new life, but we in the church must be in the business of “taking off grave clothes and letting people go.” In bearing one another’s burdens, in our fellowship with one another, we, the walking resurrected, are assisting one another in removing the remnants of death. This is the work of the fellowship of believers.

Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

John 11:43-44, NIV