The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
~ Albert Camus
For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
~ Galatians 5:1
Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times. “Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.
~ from Matthew 18
Oh beloved, it is true. We have been saved. We have been mightily saved by The Triune One through the very death of the Son. The debt we owed was simply beyond our comprehension. Even in our faulty exercises of minimization, we realized we faced a mountain that could not be climbed.
While difficult to see at first, the situation was so much worse than we could even imagine. As the servant in the story would have had to work nearly two thousand centuries to pay off his debt, we do not have enough life (actually any) of our own to bring to bear on our debt of sin, and therefore the only return is death.
And He cries out, “It is finished.”
Some of us, by His Grace, hear this call of the new creation across the centuries and we look to the Cross from which this pronouncement was screamed by our Saviour as He fully absorbed the wrath of all quarters of the universe. Evil itself wanted Him dead. The Father had the just wrath of Divinity, and we (read you and i in all our sin and fear and shame and wretchedness) put Him on that tree.
To come to understand what happened at the Cross, is to come undone. The utter aloneness of the One who is now our best Friend tears at our heart. The horrible pain and thirst and humiliation of The Prince of Peace and Fairest Among Ten Thousands, shames the senses of the most senseless sinner. And then to understand that it was the unfailing Love of this same Jesus – along with utter faith in His Father – that took Him victoriously through the process, shows us that this was the foulest thing ever done to the purest of Men.
And then it hits us. We a free. Completely. Utterly. Astoundingly Free in Him. Everything we were and everything we have done, put Him on the cross. His infinite Love and payment and absorption of wrath from all quarters has cast the darkness of our past as far away as the East is from the West.
Read this again beloved. You are free. Nothing binds you from the Life you have always dreamed possible. Deep eternity will only be a deeper revelation of the truth that is already true in your life. You. Are. Free.
Free to Live… Free to Love… Free to Give… Free to Know… Free to Speak… Free to Receive… Free to Heal… Free to Grow… Free to Hope… Free to Share… Free to Forgive.
Free to forgive. For nothing else makes any sense any more. We have seen the greatest injustice meted out of the most Just Person just to put us into our current position. And so now, for us to begin to hold somebody in contempt for their failures towards us would only serve to slow us down, or to limit our now-infinite freedom.
Can we see it? To not forgive is to drop out of operating in infinite spirit space and back into the “phone-booth” of four dimensions and all the limitations that this implies. Yes, G_d wants us to forgive. But the reason is simple: forgiveness (this [as the writer says] giving up all hope of a better past) is how freedom works. There is no other way. Forgiveness is the fulcrum upon which freedom turns.
And yeah, the world does not get this. For forgiveness cannot be generated from the fallen systems of this world. Forgiveness only flows from the One who could give it – to us – and through to others. So, would you live free beloved? Look to the Cross. Listen for the cry of its completed work from the One there. Allow the forgiveness of that work to flow and wash away all that binds you.
Tonight is your night beloved. Time to Live free. Forever.
