If the Son sets you free,
you will be free indeed.
—John 8:36
When Jim escorts visitors through the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force near Savannah, Georgia, he always describes the euphoric joy he and his fellow World War II prisoners-of-war experienced the day they were set free.
In Jesus’ first sermon in Nazareth after his temptations, he said God had appointed him to tell the Good News: “He has sent me to tell the captives they are free” (Lk 4:18).
In Paul’s first sermon in Pisidian Antioch, he proclaimed: “Understand what we are telling you: . . . through Jesus everyone who believes is free from all sins” (Acts 13:39). And he wrote in Romans 6:22: “You have been set free from sin . . . and the result is eternal life.”
Those words should put us in a mood of ecstatic joy.
Freedom from sin is a gift,
not an achievement.