Life in the Spirit

Many of us have heard in various accounts of slaves receiving and sharing the news of their emancipation, their joyfully exclaiming to one another, “We’s free! We’s free!” The prayers of their ancestors, after hundreds of years of bondage, had finally been answered. But we know that for many of them, freedom brought with it the question of “Now what?” History tells us that a few, overwhelmed by the prospect of their newly bestowed freedom, did choose to remain in the familiar hell of plantation life, at least temporarily.

This is somewhat like the predicament a newly saved individual finds herself in, upon understanding the meaning of her salvation (freedom). How does she keep from going back to the plantation of the condemnation of sin? With the desires of our unsaved flesh waging war with the standards of Christ, how do I “stay saved”? By grace.

When the Emancipation Proclamation was written into law [with respect to the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution], it was, for all practical purposes, irrevocable. Without qualification, this is how we might understand the work of grace that has redeemed us from sin and death. We are not keeping ourselves—it is the irrevocable work of the triune God that keeps us. By the will of the Father, the shed blood of Christ His Son, and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, we are kept for God’s own purpose until His return.

The permanence of our changed position by virtue of Christ’s redemption is clarified by another metaphor from slavery that was shared with me by my pastor many, many years ago. When a slave was sold from one plantation to another, she was still a slave. She may have been sold from the Smith plantation to the Jones plantation, but her legal status remained that of a slave. This is somewhat of a reminder that we might gain victory over one sin and find ourselves ensnared by another—thus, the ineffectiveness of the Law in cleansing us! But if that slave was purchased out of slavery, her legal status was changed. She was no longer a slave, to be sold from one plantation to another. When we put our faith in the redemptive work of Christ, our status is permanently changed. From that point on, the former slave perseveres in her freedom and gradually—by that same grace—assimilates and grows. As she lives her life as a free woman, her life and memories of enslavement are never forgotten, but surely they become more remote and more repugnant to her as she lives her life of freedom.

Oh, for grace! “We’s free! We’s free!”