Slavery of any kind is bad, but the worst kind of slavery is where the authority of sin and death enslaves the mind. This kind of slavery is worse because it comes from within, not without. Each person will have to deal with this slavery in some way or another. The Bible says that in Adam, all die; in Adam, all have or will experience some form of slavery. While the idea of slavery can be sensitive, it is real nonetheless. Today, I want to direct us to the Spirit of truth to see the kind of spiritual slavery everyone experiences. In Romans 6, the apostle Paul doesn't stop short of exposing it and giving the solution to freedom.
It's easy to miss the spiritual destruction of slavery when we only focus on it from an outward physical awareness. The hard truth of slavery is that it will never stop on the earth because of the wickedness within people. If people are delivered from sin and death by turning to Christ, all forms of slavery will cease. But while we focus on stopping it, the real problem escapes us because we are only trying to fix what we see as the problem, mostly seen as people imprisoning others. The truth of slavery is found in the spirit and only revealed by God.
Sometimes it's easy to see the things in your life that control you, but it's another to discern the spirits behind them. They are good at hiding themselves from you by causing you to focus on fixing your life in the flesh.
Slavery is imprisonment. The opposite of being a slave is to be a freeman. Slavery can only have its full impact if there is still the hope of freedom in your heart. Your desire to be free is the enemy of slavery. Your oppressor knows this, so the first thing he does is break your will and remove the hope of freedom from you. When an oppressor has your will, you will not try to escape. Only when your desire to be free is gone, and your will is finally broken can sin have its full dominion over you. That's the place in your mind that your oppressor is trying to get you to.
In your brokenness, there is a form of acceptance to it. At that point, you begin to think of yourself as an enslaved person with no hope of deliverance. The devil uses this way to convince you of sin. As long as you continue to believe the lie that you are sins prisoner, you will not escape it.
The spirit of the world.
There is another part of slavery that is more subtle. The spirit of the world is a form of slavery, and if you've grown so accustomed to the routine of it, then you don't even know how subdued you are by it. All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, gives power to the slavery of sin and death and keeps its habits alive in you.
You may think you're not a slave today, but as long as you live in the flesh, you will always be a servant to death until your mind is freed from its prison. The resurrection life of Jesus is the only way to do that. Through Jesus Christ, you can choose to serve righteousness and not sin. Through Jesus, freedom is in your grasp.
Sin doesn't always feel like slavery because you've adapted to that lifestyle, and it doesn't feel like an oppressor. In that mindset, you love being sinful but don't call it sin; you say you're doing what you like. When you love the world and all its sinful ways, you will not try to escape it. In that case, you perceive being free as having to give up the things you love. Watch out because that's when the devil tells you that God is your enemy and wants to take things from your life that belong to you.
Serving God now becomes a harder journey than submitting to slavery. (You can find this example in the book of Exodus when the people of God rejected freedom and wanted to return to slavery because they thought trusting and obeying God was harder than obeying their oppressors.) They had no vision for the promise of freedom. It seemed too hard to obtain because their oppressors convinced them by breaking their will to fight. They considered slavery easier and more comforting than letting God bring them to the promises He had for them.
Of course, they loved the idea of freedom and hated slavery until they found out they had to go through the desert to get to freedom. The thought of the hard journey became stronger than the promise of freedom, and that's why they failed. To be free from sin, you must hope for freedom, and your hope must lead you through the desert to the land of freedom.
There must be a genuine hatred for sin and slavery to appreciate the journey it takes to get to the life that freedom in Christ will give you.
If you truly know what freedom is, you also know that sin and death are true slavery to you. Jesus came to free us from the slavery of sin and death, the works of the law, the judgment of others (also a type of slavery), and the spirit of the world. He will deliver us to a place where we are free to serve God because we love Him, not because He enslaves us against our will.
If you consider the magnitude of what Jesus did when He died to the flesh and destroyed the power it has over you, you will also believe that through His resurrection from the dead, you can and will walk in newness of life, free from the slavery of sin and death.
One last thing to consider.
I have much to say about slavery, and I will continue this writing in another post. One crucial point here is that slavery is real in the mind of people whether they know it or not. Actual slavery is in the mind!
There will be obvious acts of slavery against you from other people in your life, and you will not stop that completely; men and women are just too evil to stop it all. Freedom exists in the mind of Christ. Therefore, He understands all the parables that work in the world and is not frustrated by them. Wicked people will never enslave the mind of Christ; though they imprison the flesh, the mind of Christ will live free. Do not fall captive in your mind to the oppression of men. No one can take your soul; that belongs to God.
Our minds are very powerful, and it's the only place we are free in the world of sin and death. Freedom is real, and Jesus is the author who has written your part in freedom's story. Let's exit slavery and take up the promise of freedom.