I came across a great illustration recently that helps clarify the reality of our freedom in Christ.
Let me share it with you!
Romans 6:3-14 teaches us that we, by nature of our union with Christ, are dead to sin and alive to God. It’s a profound fact of our salvation.
Since Jesus died to sin (our sin) once for all, death no longer has dominion over him. And since we’ve, by faith, died and been raised with Christ, we share in his glorious freedom!
Death and sin no longer have dominion over you and I! Death and sin are not our masters anymore. We have been legally set free from sin—no longer weighed down by its chains.
Yet, even with this fact clearly laid out in Scripture, why do you and I still act as if sin and death have a hold on us?
Maybe it’s because we need to learn to live out our freedom—to daily and consistently “consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11).
In a little book called “The Way of Victory” by James H. McConkey, written in 1928, I found an illustration that helps explain this freedom we have in Christ.
McConkey first states the biblical fact that victory will come as we claim our emancipation (freedom) through Christ. He then reminds his readers of the sorrowful reality of the slave trade in America, where thousands of people were enslaved—many times in brutal environments.
But thanks be to God, they were finally emancipated (set free) by legal authority.
McConkey writes that,
“When Abraham Lincoln’s pen finished signing that emancipation proclamation, at that instant every slave in this broad land was set free. Whether [a slave] believed it or not; whether he acted upon it or not; whether it instantly began to change his inner and outer life or not, nevertheless that selfsame instant of the signing of that historic document he was set free.”
McConkey then bridges the illustration to our freedom in Christ, writing,
“The instant the Son of God cried out on His torturing cross, “IT IS FINISHED,” that instant every man who was, or ever should be, IN HIM through faith, was set free. Whether he believed it or not; whether it has yet affected his inner and outer life as a slave or not; whether he is knowing the power of that emancipation or not, yet HE IS SET FREE from the slave-mastership of sin.”
Amen!
You and I are free because Jesus “signed” the legal document of our freedom with his blood!
And just as many slaves in the slave trade had to learn to live out their newfound freedom, you and I as well need to learn to live out our freedom in Christ.
We are no longer under sin, but under grace! Death has no dominion over us! And thanks be to the blood of Christ!
We are FREE in Jesus!