Escape from slavery

Escape from slavery

You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. . .. If the Son sets you free, you are truly free. – John 8:32,36

Romans 6:14-17

 14 Sin is no longer your master, for you no longer live under the requirements of the law. Instead, you live under the freedom of God’s grace.

 15 Well then, since God’s grace has set us free from the law, does that mean we can go on sinning? Of course not!

 16 Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living.

 17 Thank God! Once, you were slaves of sin, but now you wholeheartedly obey this teaching we have given you.

The abhorrent practice of slavery is a horrid artifact of the malevolence and selfishness of fallen DNA. Attaining freedom from slavery is a momentous and uplifting accomplishment for anyone who suffered from this loathsome human institution.

In America, before the Civil War, thousands of enslaved people attempted to make the treacherous journey to freedom. It was typical for runaway slaves to flee in the dead of night. They were often pursued by “slave catchers” accompanied by howling bloodhounds. Most were eventually caught. Some enslaved people devised ingenious ruses to escape. For example, Henry “Box” Brown mailed himself north in a wooden crate.

In 1848, Ellen Craft and her husband, William Craft, “pulled off one of the most daring and ingenious feats of self-emancipation imaginable” (Terry Edmonds). They devised a scheme to hide in plain sight to escape slavery and gain freedom.

Ellen was a fair-skinned quadroon. She disguised herself as an ailing, wealthy young white man. William, her husband, assumed the role of her caretaker.  They boarded a train in Macon, Georgia, and began a four-day journey to Philadelphia. Ellen played the part of a privileged, wealthy, but ill Southerner. Before setting out on December 21, 1848, William cut Ellen’s hair to neck length. She wore a stovepipe hat, tinted glasses, and facial bandages. She improved on the deception by putting her right arm in a sling, which would prevent hotel clerks and others from expecting “him” to sign a registry or other papers.

They knelt and prayed and took “a desperate leap for liberty.”

During their escape to freedom, they stayed in the best hotels. Even with the lavish accommodations, the journey was filled with close calls and nerve-wracking moments that could have led to their discovery and capture. The Crafts later wrote in their 1860 book, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, “Courage, quick thinking, luck, and “our Heavenly Father” sustained them.

They were successful, and upon their arrival in Philadelphia, Ellen and William were quickly provided assistance and lodging by the underground abolitionist network. In 1850, they fled to England. After 20 years, they returned to the States and, in the 1870s, established a school in Georgia for newly freed blacks.

Enslaving others is a horrendous human disorder. Spiritual slavery, slavery to sin, is similarly hideous and dreadful. Yet most people have no idea that they are slaves to sin. Slavery to sin is a common universal consequence of fallen DNA. The Lord Jesus Christ came to set us free from slavery to sin so that we might serve the living God.

John 8:32 You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

John 8:36 So if the Son sets you free, you are truly free. 

REFLECT & PRAY

When we are free from sin, sin is no longer the dominating power of our lives.

Father thank You for sending Your son, the Lord Jesus Christ to explicitly state the Truth so that all children of the King can live from slavery to sin and serve You.

INSIGHT

People who do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ are convinced they are free. Thinking that they are free, accepting Christ appears to be nothing more than bondage and the loss of freedom. But are they really free? The Scriptures provide an unequivocal answer. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sin is personified as a master enslaving those who obey it.

Romans 6:16 Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey?

Whatever one yields to and obeys becomes their master. When they surrender to sin, they become a slave of sin. Sin becomes their master. When people believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, they are freed from slavery to sin and made the servants of Christ (Wiersbe). When a person accepts Christ, the exchange masters. “Servitude to sin is replaced with servitude to God” (Mounce).

The fallen condition of humanity results in being born dead in sin. Being born dead is somewhat oxymoronic. However, all children of the King were once dead in their sins.

Ephesians 2:1 Once you were dead in the trespasses and sins

If we are dead in our trespasses and sins, then we are also slaves to sin.

What a pitiful and sorry state of existence. But the Lord Jesus Christ came to set us free from slavery to sin. We have escaped slavery once and for all and are now free (2 Peter 2:20).

Galatians 5:1 Christ has truly set us free.  

The Father provides every child of the King with a whole new way to live. Rather than living as slaves of sin, we can choose to become slaves of righteousness. “Paul set forth two masters: one is sin, and the other is obedience [to God]. There is no possibility of living without an allegiance to one or the other” (Mounce). “There is no absolute independence for man, our nature requires us to serve some master” (Nicoll).

Regrettably, many who are not people of faith think they are free as they are. And if they were to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, they would give up that freedom. This is not the case. Rather than being free, they are slaves to sin. When they become children of the King, they exchange one master for another. Instead of being servants of sin, they become servants of the Father.

Romans 6:14-17

 14 Sin is no longer your master, for you no longer live under the requirements of the law. Instead, you live under the freedom of God’s grace.

 16 Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living.

 17 Thank God! Once you were slaves of sin, but now you wholeheartedly obey this teaching we have given you.

The Romans understood being set free from slavery to sin. “Responding to the truth that they had been set free from sin as master, they became slaves of righteousness. The phrase free from sin does not mean that they no longer had a sinful nature. Neither does it mean that they no longer committed acts of sin. The context shows that it refers to freedom from sin as the dominating power in life” (MacDonald).

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© Dr. H 2023