Slave (No More)

Slave -- a person legally owned by another; a person under dominion of another

Before our new lives in Christ, each one of us was bound to sin -- enslaved to it, held prisoner by it. But once we turned out lives over to Christ, he set us free from sin and its slavery and imprisonment.

But are we acting like we're free?

Stockholm Syndrome is a condition in which people who have been imprisoned for so long come to see their captors as the ones are actually taking care of them, and become afraid to break free from the ones that are holding them -- afraid that life outside the prison is worse than the captivity they've been living in. Is that how we're treating our old lives of sin?

Romans 6:1, 12 reminds us that God granted us forgiveness not so that we could keep sinning but so we could have the power to move out from the continual sin into true freedom from it. Sin sometimes seems so easy and naturally that we can get lulled into thinking that that's just the way it is -- a part of life, and we have no choice but to fall back into it as a part of life. But that's simply not true. Sin is imprisonment from life; it may look like a nice hotel, a safe haven from life's harsh realities, allowing us to focus on something other than reality and get something other than real consequences -- but it's not. It's the "virtual" bliss that drains us and pulls us away from what really sustains us: the life of Christ.

Are we continuing to submit to sin, even though it's not our master anymore? Are we reacting to sin like Pavlov's dog -- involuntarily responding to its call, unaware of the hold we continue to allow it to have? Or have we broken through our conditioning to fall back into the ways of our old selves? We have to break the cycle of constantly needing to be set free from "the sins which so easily beset us" (Hebrews 12:1).

Jesus didn't just set us free, He made us free (John 8:32). It's not like he broke us out like slaves running from their masters; He came and legally made us a free people. There's no need to run in fear of having to submit again. We need to remember who we are; the free people that we are. Be like Kunta Kinte (and if you haven't seen the miniseries Roots, go find it, because you need to); no matter what name the devil tried to give to you (bound, unforgiven, weak, unable-to-change), remember that God is the One with your real name. What He calls you (Son/Daughter, king, priest, heir) is what you are.
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What things have you been a slave to, knowingly or unknowingly?

What "silent killer" prisons have you mistaken for safe havens?

How do you break the cycle of constantly falling back into the things you have been freed from?