FREEDOM IN CHRIST (2)

The New Covenant is based on a personal relationship with Jesus. The Old Testament was an “unbearable yoke” (Acts 15:10). Jesus’ yoke is easy and his burden is light (Matt. 11:28-30). It is light because he makes us want to do as he desires and gives us the power to do so. When we focus on Jesus, and what he has done for us, we want to do what is right.

Jesus’ ministry changed the focus from the physical to the spiritual (John 4:21-24). People who are focused on Jesus are spiritually-minded people. They would rather think about Jesus and the things pertaining to the kingdom of God than anything else. They are free from being dominated by worldly things.

Believers who are focused on Jesus are outward looking. “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or arrogant conceit, but in humility let each of you consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:3-5). Jesus frees us to care about other people.

As long as you are trusting in other things, you do not know victory. “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 15:57). “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith” (1 John 5:4). In Christ, we are free from sin. This is the good news of the gospel.

We are free from our past. That means we have been freed from sin’s penalty. “Justification” is God’s work in saving us through Christ. “Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:18). “Jesus was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification” (Rom. 4:25). We need to think of justification as something that God has done for us in Christ. He bore the penalty of our sins.

The gospel message by which we are saved and in which we stand (1 Cor. 15:1-2) is the good news of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. It is not the trading of one legal system for another (Gal. 5:1-4), it is not a “yoke of bondage” (Matt. 11:30; Acts 15:10; Gal. 5:1), and it is not a message that centers on what we do. “For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your bondservants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor. 4:5). Jesus means true freedom.

Any message that emphasizes what we do rather than what God has already done is not the gospel regardless of who preaches it (Gal. 1:8-9). A man or woman may quote a thousand verses of the Bible, but if they do not present Jesus rather than some man-made doctrine, then they have but “twisted” the Scriptures to their own destruction (2 Pet. 3:16).

We are free from the penalty of sin (Rom. 6:23) because Jesus bore the penalty for us. He took our punishment. “But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all” (Isaiah‬ ‭53:5-6‬ ‭NLT‬‬).

Dewayne Dunaway