Freedom is an awesome thing. The one great thing about our nation is that it was established to promote freedom. Freedom is release from illegitimate bondage—something that has no right to hold you hostage. Did you know that the good news about grace is that it offers freedom? Freedom from our attempts to make our own selves acceptable to God. Freedom from our flesh to control us anymore. It is liberation from something or someone that wants to make you a slave. We’ve all known what it is to be a slave to our own impulses and sinful desires—to be a slave to circumstances that we want to get rid of.
Grace is a freedom fighter.
It sets us free from the handcuffs of our sin so that we can become what we were created to be. It’s Satan’s goal through the world and through the flesh to keep us hostage and to hold us in an incarcerated situation in our own hearts and minds and lives and spirits.
But the grace of God, when it has been released in our lives connects us with the provisions of God so that we can experience all that God has planned for us. This is why it is in the best interest of the evil one to keep us from growing in grace: so he can keep us hostage.
One of the ways he does that is through legalism—our own attempt through the flesh to meet God’s standard. We can try to spiritualize legalism, for example, “I’m trying real hard. This is my New year’s resolution. I’m putting forth my best effort,” but that’s not how grace works. What grace gives us is a battery—a tool that empowers something to work. When God infused us with His grace when we trusted in His Son, it came with batteries. The Holy Spirit’s job is to release us to be free, but when we stop looking at and living by grace, we are literally cutting off the resource. We are turning off the power that’s already provided within. You want to get all the grace you can handle so that you can experience all the freedom that God offers.
