Enslaved

Enslaved

Read: John 8:31-47

“I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.”

John 8:34

“Jesus Christ is the key which unlocks the door of the prison cell of our own making.”

—Kenneth Pillar

IN WORD We live in a rights-obsessed culture. Our courts are flooded with cases, from the reasonable to the absurd, in which people feel their rights have been violated. As “politically correct” speech becomes codified in our laws and slight offenses become major litigations, people are intensely aware of their sense of freedom—from government, from discrimination, from social restrictions, and more. All the while, the real battle is fought at another level. We aren’t just people struggling with slight infringements on our freedoms. We’re slaves.

The Jewish religious leaders defined freedom much as our culture does: in terms of political oppression. They may have been dominated by Rome, but technically they were living in a free territory. They, like us, missed the real issue. Life isn’t about the physical ability to do what we want to do. It’s about being released from spiritual bondage. The frustration that most people feel when they encounter limitations is not usually about the visible situation. Deep down, we are frustrated with an ominous reality: God created us to soar, but our sinful human nature clipped our wings. We were crafted for glory but wallow in captivity.

In our optimistic moments, we console ourselves with the mantra of self-acceptance—“I’m only human.” But we know there’s more to life than the humanity we settle for. We long for the glory of God’s riches. Far too often, though, we misdiagnose the problem.

IN DEED The problem is sin. It’s a part of us and we can’t escape it, not by ourselves. We think we need to try harder, do better, know more, think clearer, etc. No. We need Jesus. We need to realize the gravity of the problem—the sin that plagues us—and beg for freedom. It comes from outside of ourselves, not from within. It comes from Jesus.