Forty to fifty million people in this world are living in slavery, that is over 1 percent of the population are in slavery to other people. Somewhere around 8-10 percent of the world’s population (perhaps more) are believers in Jesus Christ. The rest are in slavery to sin. One might say a slave is a slave, yet clearly the difference is defined by the taskmaster.
Jesus said so: “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.” (John 8:34) Paul also wrote, that creation itself will one day be “set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” and that Christians are already “set free from sin and have become slaves of God . . . .”
Slavery to sin is bondage; slavery to God is freedom. While we talk about having freedom of choice, this only applies to those set free from sin, for as a sinner I had no choice; everything I did was sinful. God says this:
But whoever has doubts (about eating food sacrificed to idols) is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. (Romans 14:23)
If faith is missing, so is a relationship with God and sin is bondage because it ruins my ability to know what is true and good. I’m left to do my own thing and even if it looks okay to me (or others), the “way that seems right leads to death” for the wages of sin is death and eternal separation from God.
Without faith in Christ, all actions are sinful. However, redemption changes everything. God’s gift of salvation includes the gift of faith: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8).
Being free from doing my own thing, there are only two choices: slavery to the will of someone else — which is human bondage OR being in slavery to the will of God — who wants the best for me and knows the best for me because He created me and loves me. The first has no appeal. The second is an amazing gift.
However, faith is needed to do what God says. I need to believe that He is right, good, loves me, and knows what He is talking about. How can I know that is true? Only if He reveals it to me. Redemption is a revealed truth. In contrast, sin blinds and separates me from truth. Sin messes with every faculty I have, no matter how good it may appear. For that reason, sin is an awful taskmaster. It leads me away from God to trusting my own judgment but my own judgment is seriously flawed. Sin can even cause me to see good as evil and evil as good.
The grand truth is this: Jesus delivers sinners. He fills us with the knowledge of His will so we can walk with Him, please Him, bear eternal fruit, increase in knowledge of God, endure in patience with joy, and give thanks to the Father who does all this because “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:9–14).
None of that belongs to sinners. We cannot be godly, and most do not want to be godly. Only Jesus can produce that desire, even in people who assume their slavery is the best way to live. Without faith, this is a lie and a trap. Only faith in Christ equals freedom, not freedom to do as I please, but freedom to choose something and Someone to rule my life other than sin.
Oh Lord, thank You for taking me out of the darkness and sin, out of the lies I kept telling myself in my efforts to make life better. Only You know what is best for me, a truth that You keep affirming and that fills me with delight in You. You rescue me from sin and from myself, from thinking I know what I’m doing by constantly reminding me how helpless and foolish I am without You. What a wonder You are!
STUDY: Romans 6-8, 1 Corinthians 4:1–5, Philippians 2:5–11
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