Scripture For Today: John 8:30-36
“If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”
John 8:36
There is a great difference between being free from captivity and simply exchanging one captor for another. Addicts often claim to have gotten victory over their addiction to one drug and are soon found to have only exchanged it for a different, more socially acceptable drug that still has them in complete bondage. They were never free, they just changed the way the bondage looks in their life. The cocaine addict stops cocaine and becomes an alcoholic, proclaims he is “clean” while still addicted, bound, and speeding to destruction. There is a difference between victory over sin, and exchanging one habitual sin for another as well. Anger still controls the one who vents it through verbal outbursts now instead of physical tantrums. Immorality still controls the one who exchanges extramarital sex for premarital sex. They are still bound by the same master, they have just exchanged the substance. Sin still has them in bondage, and no claim of freedom can make that true indeed.
“Disciples of Jesus will still commit sin, but they do not dwell under bondage to any sin”
While Jesus is teaching in the treasury of the Temple we read that many of the Jews believed on Him. Jesus gives them the a path to living in the freedom from the bondage to sin He came to purchase on Calvary. The simple truth is that Disciples of Jesus will commit sin, but they do not dwell under bondage to any sin. To dwell in any sin, is to be bound not free. Jesus tells them that the path that leads to freedom from any and all continuing in sin is to follow Him by continuing in obedience to His Word. They would know the truth by continuing in His Word, and the truth they know would allow them to live free from the controlling bondage of sin. Sin’s penalty would no longer bind them eternally, and sin’s power would no longer bind their thoughts and actions from day to day. They would be free from the bondage of sin to serve Him. Servants serve their masters. Those that continue to be bound by any sin are the servants of that sin regardless of their claims to be sons of God through some means, sons are free and will abide in the house forever, servants who claim to be sons but serve sin will soon enough find they have no inheritance in the house of God. If Jesus has set you free from sin then you are free indeed and therefore you are able to be free from continuing in any sin.
In your life there is “….sin which doeth so easily beset us….” Heb 12:1. The besetting sin is one that always seems to be standing around. It is one that we are easily attracted to, and our flesh is like a radar that spots it and sometimes screams for it. It can be any thing small or large but it is always being presented to us by Satan as necessary and therefore justifiable, just tweak it a little so it is acceptable to most reasonable people around you and it will be fine. Tweaking it instead of submitting to truth and setting it aside is bondage. Besetting simply means to be standing around, it does not mean we are bound by it, just that we are tempted by it more easily or consistently. The answer to the bondage of sin, and the key to victory over sin is to discipline ourselves to continue in the Word; not in principle alone but indeed! Then we will know the truth, and that truth applied will set us free from the bondage of sin and stop the bondage of exchanging one method of sinning for another that is really just the same sin. Don’t exchange one form or expression of the same sin for another just because you have dressed it differently and convinced yourself it is different. Sin is sin, bondage is bondage, and you can be free. Those who are Jesus disciples indeed are free indeed from the bondage of sin by living the truth – indeed.