Slavery and Bondage:Pt2

This is the second part of three blogs exploring the concepts of Slavery Bondage and Freedom in scripture.

Slavery and Bondage : Pt2 : Freedom is Deceptive

In the previous post we set up that we, humanity, in our fallen state, are incapable of defining anything. Especially a concept like freedom, in its truest form, apart from the counsel of scripture. That is to say that God is perfect, and that any error, miss-understanding or misuse of concepts in scripture like freedom, falls entirely on us. So when we try to define things without taking in what the bible says, we set ourselves up for failure, and potential, if not certain, spiritual damages. That being said, we are born sinful and under the deception of that sin. Psalms 51:5: "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. We are unfortunately, born this way, and furthermore, this is crucial to understanding the bondage and slavery we are born into. So with that established, here are a few things about our sin....

1.You are way more wicked than you think.

The reason for this is that scripture clearly points out, that every sin is an act of cosmic treason against God. It is not just a mistake, or doing wrong, it is and act of enmity towards God. Effectively making us his enemies. Part of the deceit we believe here is that our sin is really not "that bad", but scripture makes it undoubtedly clear. Jas 2:10  For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. Now, for all of these points I could give several scriptures, but for the sake of brevity, I'll only give a few. The implication from James, is staggering. You may in fact be the best that humanity has to offer, but that one slip, and we all have more than one, that one infraction carries with it the weight of all of God's law. Why? Again, any and all sin is an act of the highest form of treason towards God. He has created everything and set it to bring himself glory, and to give us joy, and he holds it all together by his power, and we, in and with our sin, look at the holder of that power and curse him to his face.

2.You are unable to do anything about it.                                                                                              The narrative of the bible can be read old from new testament, as man trying to gain equal standing with God and failing. Laws and Judges, Kings, prophets and promised lands, and every time we swing back to the default, our sin. Essentially we all are trying to get back to Eden, to paradise, but by our own efforts, not God's, and the bible has shown that all of man's acts have only pushed us further away. Now many of us don't like this sort of teaching, but its is biblical, and I by know means want to cast any more guilt or condemnation on you than you may already be experiencing, however it is necessary to understand the seriousness of our sin. If we don't take our sin seriously, then we will never take God's answer for our sin seriously, Christ and His Cross. The great hope for this is that God finished the story. After all of our feeble attempts God made a way through the sacrifice of his son.

3.Your sin has control over you and doesn't want you to know it.

Tit 3:3  For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. See that underlined word there? SLAVES! That's pretty clear, right? Hopefully much explanation isn't needed, but the implications are huge. I don't want to minimize. There is clearly in us the ability to choose to sin, this however makes our situation even worse, this makes us willing slaves to our sin. It works like this, we buy the lie, enticed by our own selfish desires, then we are snared, trapped...in need of rescue. Then after buying the initial lie, more lies come up to distract you from destroying the first. It is a trap. You are in it. 

So...
Have you ever know someone who stays in an abusive relationship, or someone addicted to unhealthy and self-destructive habits? Of course you have, if that isn't in fact you. No matter how much reasoning, or pleading from loved ones, they never seem to get out of the situation they have made for themselves. The reason is precisely this, they are in slavery to sin. They are in a bondage of their own choosing and making, but they are kept there by subtle deceptions by a cruel slave master and accuser. 2Pe 2:19  They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved. 

Bondage is made strong by belief.

What is the deal with bondage? Why is it so destructive? Why is it so powerful? Why do people in it seem unaware of it, or like they don't even care? Well lets look closer at the scripture from 2nd Peter above. 

1."They Promise", in this case freedom, but always something that God gives us anyway, and God gives us better. In the first post of this exploration, we looked at Adam and Eve's original sin. The promise given was that they could be like God, and they bought it, they believed it; but belief in something other than God requires the sacrifice of true belief in God. It is an exchange, if you want to believe this, then you have to disbelieve God. So for Adam and Eve, and us, if the promise is happiness apart from God, then in order to believe this was must stop believing in God for our happiness. In Fact, we have to stop believing that He wants our happiness, and that He knows how we can have it. We are all believers in something, but not everything we believe in is able to fulfill the promise they make. Jesus, the truth, is the only object of belief able to keep his promises, but our bondage keeps us from believing that he is. "I know God knows what is best...I know if I trust Him I could...but I'm just not ready yet....I dont feel like I should."

These are the patterns of people in bondage. "Sure God can, but..." They simply reveal that their belief is in something else, something that they believe is more powerful than God, more hopefull and true than Jesus. They have, what Romans chapter ones says, "exchanged the truth for a lie." We made the exchange, but now we are controlled by the lie, we believe the lie over the truth. Bondage is made strong by belief in the lie.

2. Not only do "they promise," but they lie. This is the natural outworking of belief in promise apart from God. They let you down, they can't fulfill whatever it is that they offer. Here is the trick. They lie more. So much so that your life and the lie become indistinguishable from each other.

2nd Peter goes onto state that we are overcame by these false promise, and as a result a slave to them. They turn your head, advert your eyes and only let you hear what they want you to hear. So that friend who in love, comes to rebuke you, to ask you to turn and repent, is now "Shoving scripture down my neck", they are just "Harassing me." When, in reality, what can be more loving than offering a solution to someone's sin? Its what Jesus did, and he loved better than anyone.


The main root of the secondary lie is to keep you from seeing your sin as the problem. Trust me, your friend, church, pastor, the bible and God, are not out to get you, but your sin is. If you sin can convince you to look elsewhere, then you never escape, you never get out. Jas 1:23  For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. Jas 1:24  For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. Your sin never wants you to really look at yourself, or else you will see your bondage and you might actually cry to God for help. So it is easiest to get angry at that friend who holds up the mirror to your face, then it is to look at you reflection.

3. "Your Bondage wants you to believe this is who you are." Fallen, sinful, unable to choose good, this is who you are! And that is true, but not the whole truth, but you bondage does not want you to go any further. It does not want you to believe the whole truth, that by the death of Christ on the cross that you no longer have to be given over to your sin, that the guilt and shame and condemnation is taken away and replaced with a new heart and a new identity. If you just so happen to catch a glimpse of yourself in that mirror, it wants you to accept what you see. It also doesn't want you to remember, that even though this may be how things are, it is not how they are supposed to be. Most certainly it doesn't want you to know that Christ is redeeming everything back to himself. And it most assuredly doesn't want you to believe that you can be a part of what Christ is doing.

The deception is to make you believe that God is out there, and your sin is here. One is far, but the other is close. It wants you to see enough of God to feel more condemned, but not near enough to be set free. The truth is that this is reversed, God is very near, very close, not "out there", but everywhere. He is unlimited in his scoop, your sin however, is not unlimited. As horrible as it may be, and is, Christ has destroyed it through the cross. You sin is limited in its reach, not God!


4. All of this is made to seem like something you want. It brings you comfort, peace, happiness, satisfaction, but it is all vain and false. Unable to surpass in trial, unable to extend to eternity, unable to satisfy in a way that, as Jesus puts it, "you will be thirsty no more." It is a small taste, a dangling of the carrot, just enough, but not the whole.  It does this so that you'll keep wanting more, but eventually the supplies of that sin run out, and you are left hollow and lifeless. We see the people of Israel do this during their wandering in the dessert. At one point their bondage beckons out to them and they began to say stupid things like "We were better off as slaves in Egypt!" Egypt ended in death, but it was okay cause we got feed better.


This is the truth, you can refuse to serve Christ, but that simply means you are serving your sin. You can be bound to Christ, or to your sin. You have a master, but one is cruel and wants you to believe he is benevolent, the other is benevolent and shows you by his mercy and grace. You will be feed by either master. One will give you crumbs from his table, and every now and then you get to lick his dishes. Your sin and bondage only feeds you above starvation, but distracts by the quality of the food. No real substance, but it taste nice. He tells you how honored you should be that you got this much, and this is great and wonderful.


What he doesn't tell you is that as your master, Jesus Christ would sit you at his table as his equal, and share the fullness of his food, that your rest will be with Him and from him. Don't be fooled, you have a Master. Who is it? If what Jesus offers is unappealing to you, than you are in bondage, and maybe you are so bound that you know you are in bondage, but you don't care. Slavery to sin is death, slavery to Christ is freedom. You are by no means free, in any real meaning of the word...but you can be. You may think you are free, but you are not, your "freedom is deceptive."