Set Free

Set free

This story that you are about to read probably doesn’t happen to many people, but it is a little bit more common up here in our frigid Minnesota winters.

One chilly winter day while I was playing on the playground, one of my fellow classmates dared me to stick out my tongue and touch it to one of the freezing cold pipes of the swing set. I was young, and rather foolish, so I took that dare and stuck my tongue to the metal. And if there is one thing that I have learned over the years, it is that wet things freeze in the cold, and that is exactly what happened to my tongue. It became stuck in place as I became effectually imprisoned and unable to easily free myself, and it was only after I patiently breathed onto the pipe until it slowly warmed up enough that I was able to free myself.

As you can probably guess, the next time that someone dared me to touch my tongue to the swing, I said, No thank you! There was no way that I was going to do that again.

The apostle Paul in his letter to the Galatians taught the church to not get themselves caught up in trying to go back into the bondage of the Law from which they had been set free.

Galatians 5:1-5  “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.

For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law.

Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.

For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.”

When Jesus died on the cross it marked the end of the Old Testament and the Law, and He brought in the New. He kept the Law Himself, and took it away, setting us free from the demands of the Law. He gave us liberty, and this is what Paul had been trying to teach the church. They had been freed from the Law; why would you try to go back into it again to try to keep it?  If there was anything that should have been learned over the years is that no one could keep and did keep the Law, except for Christ. 

Salvation cannot be attained through trying to keep the Law, because of it was then what would have been the purpose of Jesus coming to the Earth to save us? There would have been no point. Jesus took the Law from saying “do this, and this, and this, and this” to “love one another, as I have loved you.” He made our burdens light. (Matthew 11:30)

In the book of Acts, a certain group of Pharisees had begun to believe in Christ, but they were still hanging onto the teachings of the Law and we’re telling other believers that they needed to be keeping the law of Moses. But after much discussion and disputing, Peter stood up and taught them that it was through the grace of God that we are saved, and not through the Law.

Acts 15:4-11  “And when they were come to Jerusalem, they were received of the church, and of the apostles and elders, and they declared all things that God had done with them.

But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed, saying, That it was needful to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses.

And the apostles and elders came together for to consider of this matter.

And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up, and said unto them, Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel, and believe.

And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us;

And put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.

Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?

But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they.”

We have been set free because of Christ’s sacrifice of love toward us. The Old Testament is just that: old. It is done with, over, and complete. We live in the New Testament now. Don’t go back to the Old and try to keep it-it has been shown already that we cannot keep it perfectly. Live in the freedom that Christ has provided.

In Christ,

Andrew