The Jail Cell
Luke 4:18 “The Spiritof the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to preach good news to thepoor. He has sent Me to proclaim freedomto the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed”
If you have grown up in church you have most likely heardsomeone say something along the lines of, “Jesus has set the captives free!”But what do they mean when people say that? What has Jesus set his followersfree from? And how did we even get captured, imprisoned, or bound in the firstplace?
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”,everything was fine and dandy. There was Shalom (peace/wholeness with god), Godwalked with man, and man enjoyed life as it was meant to be. And things weregoing to stay this way forever as long as Adam and Eve did what God hadinstructed them to do: take care of the land, have lots of babies, and don’teat from a specific tree. It seemed reasonable so all was as it was supposed tobe. That is for about two chapters of the Bible until things went haywire. The Deceiver(Satan) enters the scene and tells the greatest lie ever told, and one hecontinues to use today, “You don’t need God, He just doesn’t want what’s best (morefun) for you, go ahead, eat the fruit”. This wasn’t just any fruit; this wasfruit from the tree that God had instructed them specifically not to eat from.In this moment Adam and Eve did exactly what we would have done, and exactlywhat we do every time we disobey one of God’s commands. They chose themselves over God. They decidedwhat they wanted was more important than what God knew they needed. Theydecided to try to create happiness for themselves without God. What they, andmost of the time, we don’t realize is that there is no true pleasure withoutGod, there is no happiness apart from Him for He is the source of all Joy. Andso they took a bite of the fruit. And in doing so ushered in sin, brokenness,and loss of Shalom into the world. Not only that but they also inherited asinful nature, not just for themselves but for their offspring, and theiroffspring, all the way down until the baby that was just born while you werereading this. And this sinful nature, and specifically the sin it produces inus, is in fact what binds us, it is what imprisons us, and holds us captive.For we have fleshly bodies, meaning that until the day of Christ we willcontinue to struggle, or if we choose freely give into, our indwelling sin [Phil1:6].
And because we are sinful in nature we can’t do anything about it. We are stuck. We are captives. We are prisoners. We are bound. Butthank God the story doesn’t end there. This is not a sob story of the world gone wrong and that there is nohope for humanity. No it is the exact opposite. The world has gone wrong andthere is hope for all of humanity! This is the story of the greatest rescuemission ever conducted. God new before the beginning of time that we would fallaway from Him, but because His love for us isn’t conditional on that He createdus anyway. But because He knew we would fall away He devised a plan to get usback, a plan that would defy logic, and reason. A plan that the “wise” look at and say it doesn’t make sense it can’t be true, but for those humble enough tobelieve it is their only hope. So how does this great plan work? God has beenwronged by every person who has ever lived, so we all are in debt to Him, Godneeds a propitiation (payment for all sin). But “We have all become like onewho is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy rag” [Isaiah 64:6],so none of us are in the position to pay the debt. Here’s where the hope comes.God knew we could never pay the debt, but because He loves us so much He didn’tjust leave us here stranded. He sent His own Son, fully God, fully man. Hisname was/is Jesus and he came down to Earth in the most humble and vulnerableform imaginable, a baby. Tempted and tried, he remained true without a spot orblemish. He lived a perfect life. But this wasn’t enough, we now have theperfect sacrifice, but the sacrifice still has to be made. For hisrighteousness, perfection, to cover our debt He had to pay the penalty wedeserved to pay. Death. And he did! Jesus knew what he was sent into the worldto do. To live a perfect life and die on a tree to pay for our sins. We in noway deserved it and yet Jesus did it anyway, and that’s why it’s called grace. “Buthe died, how was anything accomplished?” Because three days later he roseagain! Defeating death, sin, and ultimately Satan. Christians believe that inChrist’s death we, along with our sins, were crucified too, and that in hisburial we, along with our sins, were buried too, and that in His resurrectionwe too rose and left the sin in the grave. And so by doing all this we havereceived grace, we have become sons and daughters of God, we have been givenChrist righteousness, meaning that when God looks at us He sees Jesus’righteousness not our own, making us spotless, blameless, guiltless, andperfect in the eyes of God.
Don’t you see?! For those who believe, we are no longerprisoners! We are no longer bound! We, the captives, have been set free! Nolonger does sin, or Satan for that matter, stand over us and condemn us, theycan’t because they have been defeated! The greatest story ever told is that Godloved man, man fell from God, and God loved them so much that he sacrificed Hisown son so that mankind could be reconciled back to Him again. It is a story ofthe captives being set free. But the story is not over. If Jesus’ death was forall that believe it means that if you believe then the bonds of sin will bebroken for you too. It means that you no longer have to face condemnation foryour faults. That no sin will ever be great enough to separate you from thelove of God [Romans 8]!
Jesus has set us free; he has broken the chains that oncebound us in our jail cell. But he didn’t break the chains and free us so thatwe could just sit there in the jail cell and fiddle with our chains; he brokethem so that you can take his hand walk out of the jail cell and passionatelypursue him. He freed us so that we won’t have to sit in the jail cell captiveany longer. He freed you so that you can leave your old self behind. He has setthe captives free so that they can run to him and even though we sometimes tripover our chains it doesn’t change anything because they no longer have any holdon us, they are broken. So we run to him trying as hard as we can to keep our eyesfixed on him and nothing else because at this speed looking away would cause usto trip and we are caught up in the grace in his eyes. Inevitably we will takeour eyes off him, and when we do look away and fall he picks us back up to keeprunning farther and farther away from the jail cell. The road will be rough,long, and rugged. You will get tired and have doubts to whether it’s worth it. Youwill sometimes long for the jail cell for it is a much easier path. But don’tstop running. Keep your eyes focused on Jesus.
I was reading this book and the author used Charles Wesley's hymn And Can It Be That I Should Gain? and I think it explains this much better than I:
Long my imprisoned spirit lay fast-bound in sin and nature's night Thine eye diffused a quickening ray. I woke; the dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
The dungeon door swings open. The chains are broken and fallen off. Look up from the ground. There stands your Savior. The rescue mission has started. Liberation has come. Flee from the jail cell. Don' look back. This is freedom.
-Zach Hollifiield