— Spiritual food for today —

We are Free!

“If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (Jn 8:36).  What a marvelous piece of news!  In the midst of some seven billion persons on this planet (most in captivity of one form or another) Christians are free.  How utterly blessed!  Now, is this to say there are no longer any locks on prison doors?  Of course not.  Does it mean that an evil tyrant ruling over us is blind to Christians?  Er, don’t bet your lunch money on that one.  Are we free from accidents, sickness, loss and/or injury?  Not really.

Nonetheless ... we are free.

We’ve been set free from the penalty of mankind’s most deadly three-letter scourge and it’s not HIV (nor “him” or “her”).  It’s  S-I-N. “Ah!,” you (hopefully) ask; “Now that I’m a Christian, I no longer sin?” Not hardly, but wouldn’t that be a fantastic bit of news?! No, but Jesus' atoning sacrifice on the cross delivered us from it’s ultimate death penalty. Moreover, through the power of God's indwelling Spirit, we now have power over sin. "Delivered" from physical death? Uh-uh. NOT unless we happen to be in the company of that final generation which gets raptured out of its Rebocks. "Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord" (1Thes 4:17).

Because of God’s unfathomable love-motivated mercy toward mankind, and by the still-hard-to-imagine self sacrifice of His Son, Jesus, Who, in so doing, paid the penalty for all our sins, death’s cold grip has been loosed from our eternal souls (Jn 3:16). Our genetic (and subsequently well-earned) death penalty has been commuted.  In spite of that inborn encumbrance and all the evil we’ve perpetrated against a holy and sin-abhorring God, He’s forgiven us our trespasses; set us free.  Friend ... this is not only GOOD news, it's phenomenal!  Scripture reassures: "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed" (Jn 8:36).  Amazing!

However, we had better not think, even for a nanosecond, that we can sin with impunity ... that we can trample divine grace (Gal 2:21). Though forgiven by God, sin still has consequences; temporal and eternal. Our Lord reminds: "... for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known" (Mt 10:26b).

In Christ, we are free from the fear of being eternally separated from He Who loves us more than mother or brother. "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom 8:38,39). We are free to love and freed from the bondage of “get.” We are free to forgive and free to give, most notably, that which we have so freely been given: the Gospel of Salvation. We are free to prostrate ourselves before heaven’s throne of grace in repentance for the manifold sins we still commit (Heb 4:16). We are free to worship God with abandonment, to bask in His presence; walk in His ways.  Oh, saint! Let us repent and rejoice, then rise up and live in this freedom. "As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving" (Col 2:6,7).

ABOUT US:  Founded in 1993, Hallelujah Living Ministries is a donation-based, non-denominational Christian outreach to uplift, inform and challenge followers of Jesus Christ.  For more information or a copy of our always-free print newsletter, please include a  postal mail address along with your comments and prayer requests.  Thank you for visiting  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

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