Beware of “the deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews 3:13). Sin always promises freedom but in the end brings bondage. It promises life but instead brings death. Sin has a way of gradually binding a person until there is no way of escape, apart from the gracious
intervention of the Lord. Even the bondage that sin creates is deceitful, for the people who are bound actually think they are free! Too late they discover that they are prisoners of their own appetites and habits.

Jesus Christ came to bring freedom. In His first sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth, our Lord sounded forth the trumpet call of freedom and the advent of the “Year of Jubilee” (Luke 4:16-44). But Christ’s meaning of freedom is different from the apostates’— as is His method for achieving it.

In the Bible, freedom does not mean “doing your own thing” or “having it your way.” That attitude is the very essence of sin. The freedom that Jesus Christ offers means enjoying fulfillment in the will of God. It means achieving your greatest potential to the glory of God. The Quaker leader Rufus Jones, paraphrasing Aristotle, said, “The true nature of a thing is the highest that it can become.” Jesus Christ frees us to become our very best in this life, and then to be like Him in the next.

Verse for today: “Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into marvelous light … as free, and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God” (1 Peter 2:9,16).
Also read: 1 Corinthians 6:11; Galatians 1:3-4; 2:20.

Action assignment: Thank God for the marvelous freedom you have in Christ and ask Him to enable you to use your freedom from sin to bring honor to Him today.