Being Set Free
0 comments | Posted by Steven Layson on 14 Mar 2010 in From Steve's Study ::
Nothing riles the human spirit more than slavery. None of us like to feel like we are constrained. We don’t like to feel helpless, or like our destiny is not in our own hands.
At one level, this is good and right. It was right, for example, for the abolitionists of the 18th and 19th century to campaign for an end to slavery and equality for people of all races. It is right to make a stand for those who are unable to stand on their own.
The problem with Australia, of course, is that we live under the illusion that we are free, when in actual fact there is an insidious slavery that pervades our society. I’m not speaking about some kind of conspiracy theory where “big brother” is watching and controlling everything we do, but of something much deeper.
In today’s passage (Luke 13:10-17), we read of a woman who was enslaved. She was the victim of an evil spirit who had made her crippled for 18 years. When Jesus sees her, he sets her free from her sickness and she is able to straighten up and walk properly. As he explains what he’s done, he says that it was indeed necessary for her to be set free, for this is what Jesus came to do. In Lk 4:18-19 he said that he had come to “preach good news to the poor… to proclaim freedom for the prisoners… to release the oppressed”.
What Jesus came to do was to bring freedom. But it was not freedom from the political oppressors of the day (the Romans) that Jesus was talking about, but rather from the spiritual slavery of the world and the devil. In Jesus day, as in 21st Century Australia, the most prevalent and insidious slavery was that which holds our souls captive and prevents us experiencing eternal life with our creator.
But Jesus death has brought us freedom from this slavery – a freedom to live as we were always designed to live, as beloved children of God. This is the freedom we celebrate today in the baptism of Phoebe. Today we rejoice that Jesus has set her free to grow up to know and love God as her personal Lord and Saviour, and as part of the family of God.
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