I want to break free

Port Arthur, Tasmania, convict era prison complex.

The music group Queen had a very popular song “I want to break free.” It expresses what many desire and few attain. To break free, as some have found, can cause more frustration, uncertainty and tears than their previous state. According to Jesus, to be free demands a special realm, a deliberate commitment and constant attention. He said that Truth will set you free! He claimed to be that realm when saying “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life” in John 14:6. Therefore, it’s only in a committed faith relationship to and with Jesus that a person begins to understand what freedom is.

Why then the need for giving your faith relationship with Jesus constant attention? Because there are moral and spiritual forces opposed to Christ Jesus and His lifestyle for His followers. It is also necessary because something within our human nature has a sneaky way of abusing the grace of God and spoiling freedom’s realm. The wonder of our Lord’s mercy to us is the risk He takes for us to learn to live, learn and love in Freedom’s domain. By the ministry of the Holy Spirit we are led into a deeper and refining relationship with the Saviour. In walking in Truth according to His word we discover things about ourselves which needs forgiving, cleansing, refining, restoring, undertaking and achieving.

If only each of us was given the leisure and the peace to come to grips with all of the above. Each area is challenged by people and events, some good, some not good at all, meaning we need to know the Truth, apply the Truth, be guarded by the Truth. For this to be an ongoing reality requires the individual to take seriously Jesus’ direction as to where Truth resides. “Your word is Truth” Jesus declared in His prayer to God the Father (John 17:17). It is God’s Word which informs us of our need and points us to where that need is answered. However, we are required to correctly apply the Truth and not to dilute it or add our ‘ingredients and prejudices’ to it. Within the letters of the New Testament the writers, Paul, John, Peter, Jude, confront the ‘merchants of prejudice, poison and perversity.’

In the next couple of weeks we will endeavour to check out those who seek to rob a man or woman of his and her freedom in Christ. Some are well meaning. Some have evil intent. Some are simply naïve or ignorant of God word, grace and patience. Just briefly for today I would like to point out those who, in Paul’s words, want to put you back into bondage (Galatians 2:4). What he was furious about was the insidious way in which those who believed all should live under the Mosaic Law led people into error. They were trying to make Gentile believers in Christ surrender their freedom and to take upon themselves the yoke of the Law. That wasn’t merely the 10 Commandments but included the ceremonies, the judgements and statutes set out in Leviticus, Exodus and Deuteronomy.

The Law isn’t dead. But when we commit our lives to Christ Jesus we share in His death.

According to Romans 7:4 -7 we are dead to the Law and delivered from it. Does that mean we can do what we please? Hardly! For we have placed ourselves under the authority of Christ and receive His power to know and do His will. Another important passage has to deal with Christ as our High Priest. Those who place themselves under the bondage of the Law unconsciously (I believe) place themselves under the Aaronic Priesthood. In Hebrews 7:12 when Christ is our High Priest we experience a change of the Law. It is the realm of Grace and Truth, a much more liberating and at the same time very demanding realm. For in it we must ever be vigilant and assessing our inner and outer life under the searchlight of the Truth! Peter sums up the challenge in 2 Peter 3:18. We are to grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ Jesus. The Law may have led us to Christ (Galatians 4) but having done its work we enter a new realm of knowing Christ as the Truth and thereby being set free!

More next week.

©Ray Hawkins March 26^th2017.

Whose Prisoner are you

The apostle Paul stood as a prisoner before Festus and King Agrippa, in Caesarea  The record is in Acts 25-26. They heard the greatest offer the heart can hear. Paul’s news was that God was offering forgiveness for sins committed against Him. The cross was the price paid by Jesus, the One foretold in the Jewish Scriptures. The Roman Governor and the Idumean king, Agrippa seemed to have found this too much for their mind to handle. Festus said Paul was mad. Agrippa teased Paul by inferring he, Agrippa, was almost persuaded. This  sums up two of the three responses to the message of the cross. The cry of Festus still echoes through the lips of others to-day. "You're mad!" Agrippa also has many ‘spiritual’ descendants who, like him, are ‘almost’. In that state they die.

Paul, a shackled prisoner though he was he spoke as a liberated man. Paul knew he had a destiny with Jesus. Here was Paul a prisoners of faith  with an unshakeable hope in the risen Christ. Festus, Agrippa, Bernice and the others failed to realise they too were prisoners. Dressed in regal attire they were inwardly shackled by sin, guilt and fear. They wore the iron chains, not around their body, but around their souls. 

We all are prisoners of something or someone. In speaking to the assembled court Paul testified to the fact he was on trial as a prisoner of hope. Such hope was bound up in the promise God had given to Israel. Later on he repeated this truth to Jewish leaders in Rome: ‘It is because of the hope of Israel that I am bound with this chain.’ In effect Paul was a prisoner twice over. One definition is in the literal sense of being in chains for his faith. The other was in the spiritual sense. He was a prisoner of Christ Jesus. On both occasions his hearers were either prisoners of despair, unbelief or playthings of their unholy desires. Paul held on to a promise. They clung to wishful thinking.

Paul a prisoner of Faith spoke to prisoners of unbelief.  In Acts 25 and 26 are such words as ‘hope in what God has promised’: ‘God has raised the dead (referring to Jesus) to bring light into their darkness: to deliver from Satan’s power:’ ‘receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me (Christ.).’  Prisoners of unbelief throw out their taunts as they flaunt their unrestricted lifestyle. But in the silence  the fears of the future or the 'skeletons' of the past come to haunt. 

The Christian life is a paradox.

When Christ is our Saviour we are set free from condemnation by God's Word.

We are delivered from the kingdom of Darkness.

We are made clean within from the offending lifestyle of our past.

When Jesus is our Lord we discover the chains of gratitude, devotion and hope.

These become and expression of a relationship which leads to Heaven. They also say we are His ambassadors in chains of glory.

It sounds incongruous but it is real. True freedom is only found when we live in the environment for which we were created. For a brief moment a fish out of water might imagine it is free from its watery prison only to die disappointed. Those who reject the bonds of Christ Jesus live under the same disappointment. Their indifference to and rejection of Jesus and His invitation to life appears bold and carefree. Death without hope awaits.

As a prisoner of Christ, Paul found Humanity's true environment. 

This is true for all who are Christ's! 

It leads from this life, through death, into His presence.

Ray Hawkins November 27 2016.