Day 3477 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Galatians 5:1 NIV

For our to have been set free, or at the very least offered the suggestion that we might indeed be freed only means that free is not at all what we’ve been but is rather a gift that it took another to begin.

Because the mere fact that this faith is so able, and rightly so, to paint freedom as a gift given proves that those to whom it was given, is given were not, are not otherwise aware that they were not already there. Indeed, to be free is to be human, or so it seems. For we live our lives doing as we please, assuming this the most obvious evidence of our self-supposed sense of liberty as seen and shown in our disregard to even the mere hint of limit in regard to self-restraint or self-denial. No, we’ve known no such humility as to deny such vanity.

Which is blatantly why this is in fact a gift that we’ve been given for which we should be grateful.

Alas, it seems also that we’re so enslaved to such things as assumptions and status quos that we don’t really know how to handle this brutal honesty of our being now found having never been free but rather indeed only slaves to everything from self to society and the sin which flows a friend through the two into what has become a life so lifeless that we’re afraid to lose this death all because it asks a death to do so. Yes, we are terrified to lay down our lives and live that for which we were created, both free and faithful.

For we’ve become only faithful to our folly. And as these fools we’ve become, foolish without fail, we fail only to find any figment or fragment of gravity given to the fact that freedom is a gift given that we cannot actually otherwise actually self-impose. Because for even a soul to proclaim itself free only proves that it’s a slave to the selfishness that’s usurped that ability from He to whom it belongs in order to now think that we can ourselves be something simply because we say we are.

Indeed, this is something of growing alarm in our world anymore, self-identification. All around the world folks are literally devolved to the point of even physically making it up as they go. Even the eternally irreversible aspects of life itself such as truth and morality and love and responsibility, they’re all anymore seen as something altogether subjective, subjected to the perspectives and presumptions of an individual person. Even the immutability of gender is under attack.

And yet we still audaciously claim ourselves free, not realizing that within anything in which we allow either ourselves or the world which has so inspired us to so conspire against He who made us to be what this world has refused to remain, such is an enslavement all its own. For here we’re far more likely to be owned by a world so filled with every degree of the depravity in which we’ve dissolved to delight. And thus we know nothing of freedom as freedom is lived only out in the light of He who is the Life that we’ve not once lived.

For if we had, or could have had, could still up ahead, He wouldn’t have come to this world to die in order to revive us back to the life He at first created us to live. He wouldn’t have had to bring us new life at all if the one we were living wasn’t one lost to the wages of sin which are as they’ve always been, nothing but death. And thus we see that we’ve been neither alive nor then free as freedom is only found and felt in life, and so our having lived within the death of sin defines why Christ came to do what He did that He didn’t have to.

But He did. And now because He did, well that cross stands forever as the only evidence needed of our having never been free as it proves that we’ve not lived a proper life before. And what’s even more, that cross also stands as a living testimony, meaning that it continues to testify against us, as it stands there calling out against our every choice made that proves us still at times willing to choose death rather than life, wrong rather than right, doing something that leaves us hiding in the darkness instead of walking free out in the light.

For, “this is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.” John 3:19-21

And that’s undeniably something we cannot confess in regard to our lives lived before Christ came into them as we ourselves can look back and see all those dirty and decrepit deeds that we were at once so very ashamed of that we hid them away in whatever way we could. And our having done so many things, anything at all in fact, for which we’ve felt that need to hide in shame, this only proves that we’ve been enslaved to our fear of the fact that we’ve not at all been the righteousness that God created us to be.

Because He created us in His image, the image of the righteous Father, holy and wholly unblemished by all sin and stain. But that we’ve come so far in what is this horribly wrong direction as proven by our having hidden anything we’ve done out of fear that we felt at the idea of our deeds coming into the light and thus being seen clearly by all, this defines the fall. We have indeed fallen short of the glory of God into an enslavement to fear felt in our worry about our works being seen and shown, and thus known by another.

And this worry is what’s formed the chains that have held us in captivity to the ways in which this world’s taught us to succumb to our selfishness as inspired by watching everyone around us do the same. We have shared in the enslavement to sin, and sadly we walk amongst a great many who are so vastly lost in denial as to that reality that they only really hate any and all who dare leave their chains behind as it to them proves that they could do the same. But alas, that would demand change, and there’s not much this world hates more than that.

Thus defining the fear we discussed day before yesterday in our worry as won by a world that won’t do what He calls us to, and in return for our trying only turns up the heat felt by way of persecution meant to inspire us to be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Only this time one of both sin and fear of sinful man.

And yet this is the freedom that God’s granted us in Christ, the opportunity to leave behind our deeds of the night and walk out of that tomb in which we’ve lived alongside so many doing all that oughtn’t be done. Because unto any who do in Him lay down their lives as lived in sin, for them that is when freedom can finally begin. Because only then can we agree with what Paul had to say on the subject.

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.” Romans 1:16

And this salvation as defined in this Gospel of Christ Jesus and this gift He’s given that came to free us, it’s one that makes us right in the eyes of the One we’ve wronged within all those deeds done that shouldn’t have been, a realization we ourselves validate anytime we do something we feel the need to hide. For that urgency to cover something up only proves that we know we messed up and thus we’ve in fact fallen so very far that we’ve come to testify against ourselves.

And how then can we ever honestly say that we’re anything near free when we are the ones who have testified against ourselves that we are not at all the righteousness that God’s created us to be or cleared the way for us to become again through the precious blood of the Holy Lamb of God?

No, such a proclamation of our personal liberation must not be at all feasible as it’s something that we’ve clearly always been unable to give ourselves. Because the mere fact that we must confess that we’ve done anything wrong is now evidence that we cannot absolve even our own guilt, meaning again that we’re not at all free as, if nothing else, we’re enslaved to the guilt that we cannot otherwise, despite great effort and ego given unto trying, assuage now knowing we’ve so grown to incur.

This has to be a gift, and that is why Christ laid down His life. It was to both grant the gift but also to evidence the gravity of it in order to verify the necessity of what He now asks us here in that we never again adhere to or accept any other sort of enslavement be it to the sins we’ve known, the sins we’ll be shown, the fear we’ve felt for our many failures and flaws, or the fear we’ll feel for not going along with those still living outside His righteous Law.

No, we cannot live that way anymore, not that we know both what freedom really is and too what it really cost for us to have even the hope of ever feeling it in anything close to full. For our fall has left us so far apart from He who is life and liberty, freedom and salvation, hope and healing. Indeed, this fear we’ve long been feeling that our deeds might be seen is nothing but proof that we’re nothing we could have been, should have stayed, should still be.

For rather than our having lived in the freedom in which God created us, we’ve chosen instead to delve the depths of everything indifferent and unrighteous. So we’ve never been what He made us to be as we’ve lived as slaves to sin rather than in lives lived free. Indeed, since we’ve known nothing of righteousness, we’ve known nothing of freedom either. For the opposite of righteous is wicked and wickedness fears the wrath it deserves from the God it wrongs.

Thus we’re all slaves to fear of what we know we deserve. And yet this in and of itself defines the gift of the Gospel. Because “this righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” Romans 3:22-24

Justified freely, just given freedom, justly called then, as freedom is a gift, to not use that freedom as a license to sin but rather as an eternal reason to fight against who we’ve been.

Indeed, “you, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.” For it is, as proven again in Christ, undeniably better to give rather than to receive. And thus we find what it means to be free. For to be free is to be unaware that we might run out, might fall short, might fail all over again. That is the freedom that God calls us to in Jesus. The freedom to live out the rest of our days unafraid of anything.

And yes, that even means of our pasts coming into the light.

Friends, we’ve been enslaved to far more than we’ve ever known. Fear is a yoke. Worry is a yoke. Regret is a yoke. Dishonesty is a yoke. Denial is a yoke. Depravity is a yoke. Selfishness is a yoke. Gluttony is a yoke. Greed is a yoke. Lust is a yoke. Foul speech is a yoke. Laziness is a yoke. Faithlessness is a yoke. Foolishness is a yoke. Fellowship with this world so loving its enmity against God is most definitely a yoke as it seeks to always inspire us to again fall back into our old lives lived to conspire with them against Him.

And we cannot do that anymore. Because simply put, that is neither what freedom is nor then what we are now here for. For Christ has left us here as if living testimonies of what a life lived free really looks like, feels like, sounds like, lives like. Live like you are free, so very free that you fear nothing, not even your mistakes being made known as you know that should they be, well then the world would only see the sheer gravity of God’s grace poured so as to cover our mistakes.

Yes, who we’ve been so enslaved to sin gives us the very best platform from which to praise from. Let this world see what freedom is, because this world has no idea where freedom begins. And you and I are the ones who have now the chance to show them all, tell them all that it begins only in Christ!

Only in Christ.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold