Working for the military over the years, I was required to do SERE training every two years, among other things. One of the things I learned from this is that once you are being held captive, escape is virtually impossible. As a general rule, we must be rescued to get out of captivity. In the Exodus story, the Israelites were being held captive in Egypt, and in Exodus 20:2, we read that God is the one who rescues the Israelites from their captivity to Pharaoh.
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” (Exodus 20:2)
God brought the Israelites out of Egypt. They did not rescue themselves. He rescued them. Similarly, when we exercise faith in Jesus, God rescues us out of our old life of captivity to sin, transferring us into a new life of freedom in Christ. And again, this is something that God does. It is miraculous. We cannot do it ourselves. He brings us out of Egypt, so to speak.
Egypt is symbolic of sin and darkness, representing a life lived apart from God. It is symbolic of a life lived under the rule of someone other than God. Pharaoh had the Jews building temples, statues, and other things to honor the false gods of Egypt. He owned us, basically, and was forcing us to do his bidding. We were not free to live life as we desired. And by the time of the Exodus story we read that Pharaoh was trying to destroy the Israelites by killing the baby boys.
Similarly, before we are born again, we are figuratively living in “Egypt” in the sense that we are owned by something other than God and are captives to it. The Bible tells us that we are captives to sin prior to salvation (Romans 7:23; Isaiah 61:1; John 8:34). Sin owns us like Pharaoh owned the Israelites. And like Pharaoh, its desire is to destroy us. Things may go well at first, but eventually sin and evil catch up to most of us and destroy our lives in some way if we have not been rescued by God. I have seen this happen in the lives of many of the people I know who have not been born again. And in the end, a life lived apart from God ultimately leads to eternal death.
When we are born again, God rescues us from our captivity to sin. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus sets us free from the law of sin and of death. Sin has been holding us captive our entire lives, but God sets us free when we are born again, just as He freed the Israelites from Egypt.
Summarizing Exodus 20:2 so far, we see that faith in God is our foundation, and that when we are born again (God becomes the Lord of our life) God rescues us from our old life in the kingdom of sin and darkness, transferring us into His kingdom of light (Colossians 1:13; John 1:1-18). We see that the overarching theme of verse 2 is that God saves us first, then come the commandments – not the other way around. In other words, we do not keep the commandments to be saved, but we keep the commandments because we are saved. This is the opposite of most major world religions that teach that we earn our salvation by successfully following the religious practices of their specific religion. But there is one more gospel truth contained in verse 2 that we must cover before we can move into the actual Ten Commandments.
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