GOD'S PROMISES #15

'If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.'

This promise complements the promise quoted last week, 'the truth will set you free', and in doing so presents us with two significant equations: that 'knowing the truth' equals 'knowing the Son', and 'the truth' equals 'the Son'.

This 'Son' is Jesus Christ - the eternal God, who for a while, lived among us humans as one of us.

He 'sets us free' in two fundamental ways: firstly, he sets us free from all of our delusions, darkness and ignorance about who or what 'god' is. He defines, he displays, he identifies God precisely. To know him is to have our questions about God answered, for here, in the Son, we see God. We need search for God no longer.

Secondly, Jesus Christ sets us free from that cosmic human mentality that seeks to attain and maintain union or reunion with 'god' by its own human effort. His death demonstrates once and for all that this quest, this human longing to gain acceptance with God is futile: that it can only end in condemnation and rejection.

But the death of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, also provides for the reversal of that condemnation and rejection: here, in his death, our sin is condemned and punished; here, in his death, we are rejected. In the death of Jesus Christ as our substitute, we are set free from the damnation due to us.

Thus, in his living, the Son sets us free from our ignorance of the true God, and, in his dying, he sets us free from the just penalty and condemnation of our sins.

To receive this Son of God is to be free indeed.

Scriptures: John 8:36, 32; 1 John 5:20; John 1:14; 12:44-46; 14:5-10; Romans 3:19-20; Philippians 3:1-9; 1 Peter 2:24; Romans 8:1; 2 Corinthians 5:19.