We have seen that the believers are made a new creation by being regenerated, by receiving the Spirit, by having eternal life, by being renewed, and by being transferred. In this message we shall see that, as the last matter concerning the believers being made a new creation, we are made a new creation by being freed.
In God’s redemption the believers are freed from God’s judgment, out of the curse of the law, from God’s wrath, and from the fear and slavery of death. This freedom is objective and positional. In order to become a new creation, the believers also need to be freed subjectively and dispositionally.
First, we are freed from sins. Matthew 1:21 says, “She will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.” Jesus is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Joshua (Num. 13:16), which means Jehovah the Savior, or, the salvation of Jehovah. On the cross the Lord Jesus bore our sins, shed His blood for us, and suffered God’s righteous judgment. In this way He solved the problem of our sins. Then He was resurrected, becoming the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). As the Spirit He entered into us to become our living Savior so that we may be set free from sins. Therefore, by His death and resurrection and by His coming into us as the Spirit, He is able to save us out of our sins.
First Peter 2:24 tells us that Christ “Himself carried up our sins in His body onto the tree, in order that we, having died to sins, might live to righteousness.” The phrase “having died to sins” literally means “being away from sins.” As fallen human beings, we were full of sins. But Christ put our sins upon Himself and carried them up onto the tree, the cross, where He suffered God’s righteous judgment for our sins so that we may be released from them.
We should not only have the objective cross but also the subjective cross as well. The objective cross needs to become subjective to us in our experience. This depends on the working of the life-giving Spirit within us continually to carry out the subjective aspect of Christ’s cross in our being. Christ’s death has drawn a separating line between us and sins. Now when we call on the name of the Lord and have fellowship with Him, the life-giving Spirit operates within us. Spontaneously we experience the subjective working of the cross to make a separation between us and sins. Then, in a practical way in our experience, we are freed, released, from sins.
In addition to being freed from sins, the believers are released from the power of sin. In John 8:34 the Lord Jesus says, “Everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.” A slave is always under a certain bondage. Satan, the Devil, has brought all humankind under the bondage of sin by imparting himself into man as the sinful nature that compels man to sin. It is impossible for anyone to free himself from such a slavery.
The Lord Jesus is qualified to forgive our sins and able to set us free from slavery under the power of sin. Satan’s subtlety was not only to cause us to do something wrong but, to inject himself into us. Thus, sin is not merely outward, objective wrongdoing. Sin is subjective; it is in the nature of our being. Our slavery is not an outward thing; it is inward, in our nature. For this reason, nothing outside our nature can help us in dealing with the sin that is in our nature. We need another life, a stronger, richer, higher life, to set us free from this slavery. Only the Lord can be such a life, and He truly is such a life because He is the divine life (John 11:25; 14:6). Having become the life-giving Spirit, He is able to come into us to be our life to encounter the sinful nature within us and to release us from the power of sin.
John 8:32 and 36 reveal that we are freed from the power of sin by the Son as reality. This reality is not the so-called truth of doctrine; it is the reality of the truth which is the Lord Himself (John 14:6; 1:14, 17). In John 8:32 the Lord Jesus says, “The reality shall set you free,” and in verse 36 He says, “The Son shall set you free.” This indicates that the Son, the Lord Himself, is the reality. Since the Lord is the embodiment of God (Col. 2:9), He is the reality of what God is. Hence, reality is the divine element, the element of God, realized by us. When the Lord as the great I Am comes into us as life, He shines within us as light. (John 8:12), which brings the divine element as reality into us. This reality, which is the divine element imparted into us and realized by us, sets us free from the bondage of sin by the divine life as the light of man.
Romans 6 reveals that the believers have been freed from the power of sin. “Knowing this, that our old man has been crucified with Him that the body of sin might be made of none effect, that we should no longer serve sin as slaves; for he who has died is justified from sin” (vv. 6-7). “Sin shall not lord it over you, for you are not under law but under grace” (v. 14). “Having been freed from sin, you were enslaved to righteousness” (v. 18). “Now, having been freed from sin and having been enslaved to God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end eternal life” (v. 22). We need to see that we have been released from sin. Based on our seeing, we reckon ourselves as such by believing. Then we need to cooperate with the divine life by rejecting sin and by presenting ourselves and our members to God. We have a position to reject sin, for we are “not under law but under grace.” Sin has no ground, no right, to make claims on us. Instead, we, standing under grace, have the full right to reject sin and its power. Furthermore, by taking sides with Christ, we present ourselves and our members as slaves to Christ so that the divine life may work within us to sanctify us.