He came to Nazareth where he had been reared. As he always did on the Sabbath, he went to the meeting place. When he stood up to read, he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written, God’s Spirit is on me; he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor, sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the burdened and battered free, to announce, “This is God’s year to act!” He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the place was on him, intent. Then he started in, “You’ve just heard Scripture make history. It came true just now in this place” (Luke 4:17-21, The Message).

I love the idea that those who are in Christ are set free and released. That’s what it means to be forgiven. To have that awful weight lifted, to have that sentence of death hanging over your head removed once and for all, to have the jail cell door opened and to walk through it, never looking back.

You never have to be a slave to fear and doubt again. You never have to worry about your standing with God anymore. He looks at you and sees all the purity and righteousness and blamelessness of Jesus in you, because He sees Jesus in you. He sees the blood of Jesus over you.

If you are truly set free and believe that you are set free, you won’t go handing the burden of rules and moral codes down to others. You won’t look down on them or condemn them or nitpick them in their struggles. You proclaim to them that liberty has arrived and freedom is here. You show them by your own lifestyle and testimony what that liberty and freedom look like. You encourage and bless them and rejoice for them when they find that they too have been set free by Jesus.

Can you feel the weight lifting? The fears losing their grip and the doubts fading? If you are in Christ, you are a new creation, and that new creation is just as holy and righteous as Jesus, because the blood declares it! You don’t have to understand it or grasp all the nuances of it. All you have to do is believe it and receive it. That’s all.

Amen and amen.