Free and Not Yet Feeling It

Jesus said to men who thought they were already free, and were not, a sentence that cuts through every counterfeit version of the word. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. The word indeed is doing quiet work there. It marks the difference between the freedom people talk themselves into and the real thing that only Christ can hand a man.

Here is what a struggling man needs to hear carefully. This freedom is not primarily a feeling, and it is not measured by your best week. It is a status the Son confers, an actual change in who owns you. You were a slave to something, and Christ purchased you out of that ownership, and the purchase holds even on the days the old master still shouts as if he had rights over you.

That means your freedom does not evaporate the moment you feel bound again. The feeling of bondage after a fall is real as a feeling and false as a verdict. The Son has set you free, and what the Son does, he does indeed, all the way, for keeps.

So you fight from freedom rather than for it. The war is real, but you are a free man in it, which changes how you stand.

Jesus, I confess I often feel like a slave still. Remind me that you have already made me free, and teach me to live today as the free man you say I am.