The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me,I was raised in a strict denomination. We had more rules than freedoms. Yet we talked about how we were free in Jesus.
for the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted
and to proclaim that captives will be released
and prisoners will be freed.
He has sent me to tell those who mourn
that the time of the Lord’s favor has come,
and with it, the day of God’s anger against their enemies.
To all who mourn in Israel,
he will give a crown of beauty for ashes,
a joyous blessing instead of mourning,
festive praise instead of despair. (Isaiah 61:1-3)
On the one hand, we allowed ourselves to be bound hand and foot theologically, yet claimed we were free.
It was an anomaly, a contradiction, just in general a strange thing. It was like prisoners claiming to be free, people tied up claiming to be able to do what they wanted.
The problem was, Jesus did not come to give us rules. He came to give us freedom. and the freedom he came to give us is not just the freedom of the mind (as some who try to enslave the body say) but real freedom. He came to set us free.
And he cannot set us free by imposing more rules on us. You can call it freedom and sing about it all day long, but if you have a bunch of rules and regulations that tie you in knots, and all in Jesus’ name, you are not free. You have just exchanged bondages.
Jesus came to set us free, to bring good news to the poor, to give us comfort and release. He came to dry our tears and give us joy.
The tears we shed were the tears of frustration of not being able to do what we needed, the tears of failure in having wasted our lives, the tears of knowing that we could not do what we needed to do to be right.
He came to give us adequacy, the ability to stand before God anyway. We could not and now we can. We are blessed instead of mourning, we praise instead of despair.
And this is all because we are in Jesus and in his grace.
He came to set us free. Praise his name.
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