30 Days - an Overview of the Bible in Just Thirty Daysનમૂનો

True Freedom

Shane Taylor was considered to be one of the most dangerous prisoners in Britain’s jails.

He says:

"Basically I grew up in the Peterlee area in County Durham and I got in with the wrong crowd and started to pinch cars, burgle houses. Me and my friends became known as very high profile thieves really and I was the kind of person where, if you pulled a knife out, I would use it. I wouldn’t back down, I would have to use it. As i grew older, i just started to become mentally unstable. I ended up stabbing someone in the head. I ended up stabbing someone, just missing his heart, and going through the top of his chest and his shoulder and he dropped to the floor, so I was on the run for two attempted murders.

When i went to prison I had such a hatred for the system and I couldn’t’ handle being told what to do, I couldn’t handle prison officers mucking me about. I got a prison officer and I stabbed him. Prison officers came to the door and took me and my friends to the segregation unit. But before that there was a Christian who used to always go on about God and try and tell us about God and everyone thought he was nuts. I remember he’d just come bouncing in the cell saying: “Jesus loves you! Let go of your heart!’ And i just thought he’s off his head, we’d chuck him out.

But one day, he was talking to me and he was saying: “I’m doing life, I've been in for ages and I’m probably neverever going to get out, but I’m free.” And that hit me, I just thought, how can you be free?"

John 8:31–36

There are many different forms of freedom. There is national freedom: a country is free from being governed by another country. There is political freedom, including free speech, worship, elections, movement and a free press. There is racial freedom, the freedom from racial discrimination, as witnessed in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. There is individualfreedom which is lost, for example, when people are taken hostage. All these are great freedoms, worth fighting for and in some cases worth dying for.

But there is an even greater freedom, one worth giving everything for. The freedom which Jesus speaks of here is the highest and purest form. It is independent and different from all the others. On the one hand you can have none of the freedoms listed above and still be free. In the last 2000 years men and women have willingly given up all these ‘outward’ freedoms because they wanted to attain something better. On the other hand you can have all the other freedoms and still not be free. The freedom Jesus offers is a personal and inner freedom of the soul. It is vital for us all. What does it mean?

1. Freedom of the heart (v.36)

Jesus points out that sin leads to slavery (v.34). Sin is self-centred. It involves self-assertion, pride and arrogance. It can involve selfish ambition: the lust for power, money and glory. It sometimes leads to selfish indulgence including drugs, alcoholism or sexual immorality. All this makes us ‘a slave to sin’.

But Jesus promises that ‘if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed’ (v.36).

• Freedom from shame

Guilt destroys. The only place to get rid of shame and guilt is at the cross.

• Freedom from addiction

Addiction destroys but Jesus sets us free. We are not set free from temptation, but we are free from the addictive power of sin.

Charles Kingsley, the nineteenth century Christian social reformer, said that there are two freedoms. First, there is false freedom, where a person is free to do what they like. Secondly, there is true freedom, where a person is free to do what they ought. Jesus sets us free to be our true selves as God intended us to be.

• Freedom from fear

Jesus came so that ‘by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death’ (Hebrews 2:14–15).

Death is not the end for those whom Jesus has set free. Rather it is the gateway to heaven. When Jesus sets you free from the fear of death, he also sets you free potentially from all other fears.

• Freedom to know God

Jesus sets you free to have a relationship with God like his own. He makes it possible for you to know God.

• Freedom to be yourself

Rather than attempting to be a second-rate version of someone else Jesus sets you free to be your true self as God intended you to be.

• Freedom to love

Jesus sets you free to love (the opposite of the self-centredness of sin). He sets you free to love God, to love your neighbour as yourself and even to love yourself in the sense of accepting yourself as you are.

2. Freedom of the mind (v.32)

Christians are sometimes accused of being ‘narrow-minded’ or ‘anti-intellectual’ – as contrasted with being a ‘free thinker’. Jesus says here that the opposite is true. Following Jesus is the way of intellectual freedom and integrity. The ‘truth’ (v.32) is what has been revealed by God. Jesus is the truth (John 14:6), God’s ultimate revelation. Knowing ‘the truth’ is not about assenting to philosophical principles but about knowing a person. Knowing God and Jesus broadens our minds, gives us depth of insight and scope of understanding. It does not provide all the answers but gives us a true and reliable framework of thinking, a firm basis which allows us to explore life in all its fullness.

Four months after meeting Robert Bull, Shane was transferred to Long Lartin maximum-security prison where he ended up on an Alpha course.

He says:

"I was on the Alpha Course, but my intentions were the free biscuits – I got to help myself! And I went back, and I would argue, that we came from the big bang and just everything else I could argue with. I could have said the nastiest of stuff to them and they would have said: ‘Oh that’s great, that’s your opinion.’ It came to the Holy Spirit day and the pastor, I remember, he came to me, he prayed for me, did things and nothing happened.

We went into the chaplaincy, and when I went into the chaplaincy he put a chair and he sat and then he said: ‘Pray.’ And I said: ‘God, if you’re real, come into my life, because I hate who I've become.’ And as I sat back and we were talking, and as I was talking I felt this energy feeling in my stomach and I stopped talking and thought: ‘What’s this?’ And it started to raise up and raise up and raise up. And I stopped talking and I remember this feeling shooting up and I burst out into uncontrollable tears - and that was the beginning of my life changing."

There is no greater freedom than the one Jesus offers. So let us fight for all the freedoms but let us first make sure that we have the freedom that Jesus alone gives.

This is a great verse to learn by heart: ‘Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free’ (v.32). We find freedom in knowing Jesus Christ: developing a relationship with God through prayer, reading the Bible, obeying him and serving him. It is as we submit completely to God that we encounter true freedom.

Prayer

Lord, thank you for setting me free from the things that kept me in slavery to sin. Thank you that I can now enjoy the freedom to know you, hear you and to be the person that you created me to be. I choose to walk in that freedom again today.

References

© Nicky Gumbel, 2024

This reading plan is adapted from the book 30 Days by Nicky Gumbel. It is published by Hodder and Stoughton in the UK, and by HarperCollins Christian Publishing in the USA.