In Lesson Thirty-six we saw the freedom which we receive when we are redeemed. In this lesson we will continue to see the freedom which we enjoy when we are made a new creation. To be freed is to be released. When we are regenerated, receive the Holy Spirit and God’s eternal life, and are renewed and transferred, we are freed, released, from all bondage of sin, law, self, Satan, and the world.
No matter how well-educated a person is, how high his position, and how good his conduct, as long as he is a person of the world, he is a person under bondage. Not only is he serving under sin as a slave and as a captive (John 8:34; Rom. 6:17; 7:14), but he is also being held under law (Rom. 7:6). Furthermore, in his self he is entangled with the flesh (Rom. 7:24) and bound by the old man, and he is even under the hand of Satan (1 John 5:19; Acts 26:18), caught (2 Tim. 2:26), bound (Luke 13:16), and oppressed by him (Acts 10:38). Lastly, he is under the bondage of the world’s temptations (1 John 2:15-16), course (Eph. 2:2), and current (Rom. 12:2). Hence, man needs deliverance that he may be freed, released, from all kinds of bondage.
Now we will see the various aspects of the freedom that the believers enjoy after they have received God’s salvation.
The first kind of bondage to man is sin. Man under sin is just like a slave; he is dominated and manipulated by sin and has no freedom whatsoever.
Matthew 1:21 says, “He [Jesus] shall save His people from their sins.” We were sinking in sins and could not rescue ourselves, even if we tried. However, through incarnation the Lord Jesus came into the world to be our Savior (John 1:14). He was God incarnated as a man, that in His human body, through the redemption of His death and the power of His resurrection, He might deliver us from sins that we might become transcendent and free.
Once we are saved, we are delivered from the power of sin and we enjoy real freedom. Although people today greatly promote freedom and all like to enjoy freedom, they are under sin’s domination and are without freedom. They indulge in the enjoyment of sin as if they are following after their heart’s desires. But in fact, they are going contrary to their own wish and acting against their own conscience. Serving sin as slaves, as captives (John 8:34), they have no real freedom. It is not until they receive the Lord Jesus as their Savior that they are really free. This is because the Lord Jesus as the Son of God has the life of God in Him. When man receives Him as the Savior, the life of God which is in Him enters into man as the power of life that enables man to resist the enslaving sin and thus be freed from its power and enjoy the real freedom (John 8:36).
Furthermore, John 8:32 says that “the truth shall make you free” (ASV). The truth is Christ Himself as the reality of the divine things (John 14:6). Since Christ is the embodiment of God (Col. 2:9), He is the reality of what God is. When Christ comes into us as life, He shines within us as light (John 1:4; 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 slavery of sin by the divine life as the light of men.