Freedom!

Happy Juneteenth, everyone, a day when people celebrate the coming together of American ideals and American experience. On June 19, 1865, Union Army Major General Gordon Granger marched 2,000 soldiers into Galveston, Texas, in order to enforce Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation that officially freed the slaves of the south on January 1, 1863. The celebrations that resulted and which continued each year thereafter, came to be known as “Juneteenth.”

Hooray, America!

A favorite economist, author and commentator of mine, Thomas Sowell, wrote, “what was peculiar about the West was not that it participated in the worldwide evil of slavery, but that it later abolished that evil, not only in Western societies but also in other societies subject to Western control or influence.”

Because the threat of slavery (even new forms of it) goes on and the ideal of freedom is not yet the experience of all, not here in the US and not globally, I applaud those who openly speak out for liberation.

As a Christian speaker and author, I am all about freedom, particularly the freedom that knowing the original liberator, Jesus Christ, has upon people. Satan’s desire and scheme is to incarcerate, harm and diminish people through deception, which sometimes comes through the teachings and actions of people. Jesus is the consummate opposite: “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10).

So I stand with Jesus and with His apostle, Paul, who taught and offered to the Galatians a powerful freedom checkup, one that still echoes today in the likes of all who insist that humans are better when they are free: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1 NIV).

The terrible “yoke of slavery” was the ancient Law and Old Covenant, as well as anything and everything that implied that mankind had to earn a good standing with God by satisfying His presumed demand for perfection. But the gift, the fact remains: Perfection is what and who He is, and He offers Himself as that for all—especially you—for free. He is the gift of perfect freedom—the power and the benefit—to all who will have Him.

This freedom and this grace is what gospel fans have been equipped and enabled by the Spirit to hear and to share with everyone. Any other message leads us toward slavery—both the messenger and the hearer—because the Holy Spirit is always and only about life and freedom, not the loss of it.

“He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6 NIV).

If you’ve been thinking or feeling anything other than life and freedom, no matter your circumstances, consider the source of the messages pointed at you: one is satanic and makes hijacked slaves, while the other is godly and makes freeborn sons. That’s heaven’s ideal, and it ought to be your experience.

Here’s to freedom, and to the One who makes and keeps us free.

(Freedom from the spiritual powers of slavery is what my new book, “Life According to Perfect” is all about. You’ll find it on amazon at: https://tinyurl.com/y8bobn33.)