Freedom

 Galatians 5:1: "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery." 

Today I want to discuss why Jesus came to die.
I’m sure different people might answer why Jeus came to die a little differently. But I want to focus what today’s verse tells us and that is “freedom.” 

“For freedom Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1).

His birth into our broken world... and His death at the hands of wicked men were meant from all eternity to set you and I free.
He came and died to liberate us from the chains of sin.

We all know how slavery is an ugly, awful, and oppressive reality that has taken place since the beginning of time. That for a millennia — and sadly even still today people have unjustly, and violently subjected other people created in God’s image to their own selfish needs and passions and greed.

Yet, even more tragically the most cruel and corrupt examples of slavery in history are only a faint shadow of the horrifying hold sin has on every human soul.

Romans 6:20, tells us how we were all slaves to sin, completely helpless to resist its power and daily letting it lead us into rebellion against God. 

The slavery of sin is so subtle we barely felt the chains, but so intense it influenced everything we thought and did.

We carried out the desires of our flesh, unknowingly welcoming the infinite, and holy wrath of God as explained in Ephesians 2:3.
How we were dead in this slavery of trespasses and sin - Ephesians 2 and were without God and without hope - Ephesians 2:12. 

But God came in Christ to bring freedom. The key here is - In Christ!
Through faith, we are dead to sin and have been set free from its reign in our heart and now we are alive to God and His righteousness (Romans 6:7, 18).

As horrible and cruel that physical slavery is it pales in comparison to the slavery of sin, and the liberation that spiritual freedom has given to those who experience freedom in Christ.

 Are you free?
Do you feel the weight of condemnation?
Or maybe you have an underlining sense of guilt in your relationship with the Lord, and you question whether you’re good enough for God’s love?

Satan (whose name means “the accuser”) has a thousand ways of enslaving us to all kinds of lies.

But God has given us His Spirit and His Word as weapons against him. 

2 Corinthians 3:17–18, tells us what this freedom looks like. 
“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty [emancipation from bondage, true freedom]. And we all, with unveiled face, continually seeing as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are progressively being transformed into His image from [one degree of] glory to [even more] glory, which comes from the Lord, [who is] the Spirit.” (Amplified version) 

You see, the freedom Christ brings through the Spirit releases the believer.

The one who has turned to God in faith from the hopelessness of their slavery to sin - to greater and greater Christlikeness.

Freedom in Christ finally equips us to do what we were created for.

We’re finally free to display God’s glory through increasing (although still imperfect) joyful conformity to Him. Our freedom begins to transform us more and more like God.

When we experience this freedom that comes in Christ, we don’t use it to secure our own safety by trying to prove ourselves and we don’t try to secure our own fulfilment by attempting to find pleasure and identity in the things of this world.

God obtained both our safety and our satisfaction - in Jesus.

As we are told in 1 Corinthians 1:30, “...because of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption,”

We no longer need to serve ourselves because Christ has purchased our freedom with His broken body and by His blood and in Him, we have all things!