I was not born again until I was almost 22 years old. That means that I lived the first 21+ years of my life without a relationship with God or any knowledge of His word, and it showed. To quote SNL from the 70’s, “I was a wild and crazy guy”. Ask anyone who knew me back then, and they will confirm this. Because of this, I had developed many bad habits and bad patterns of thinking, and you could say that I was a slave to them. I was a slave to sin, and needed deliverance. Just as God delivered the Israelites from the “House of slavery” in the Exodus, so God delivered me from my slavery to sin when I was born again. While God delivered me from slavery to sin immediately when I was born again, breaking free from the old ways of living took time. It was a process, and did not happen overnight. This process can be seen in the Exodus story in the wilderness wanderings and the taking of the promised land by the Israelites. The third aspect of the first sentence that is a preface to the Ten Commandments is that God delivers us from the house of slavery.
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” (Exodus 20:2)
A house usually has rooms within it that make up the house. Tim Keller and others have pointed out that if we do not deal with the root cause of a sin in our life, but rather just stop doing how it manifests itself in our life, the root sin will just pop up in our life somewhere else. A simple example of this might be the root sin of comfort. This might manifest itself as sexual promiscuity. If we just address the promiscuity, and are able to stop doing that, we might soon find ourself overeating for example, or replacing the manifestation of that root sin in some other way. The root sin has popped up in another room in the house, but we are still in the house, the “house of slavery”, and we need to get out of the house by dealing with the root sin in our life that is driving the sinful behaviors.
The Hebrew slavery in Egypt was not going well. Pharaoh was slowly wiping out the Hebrews with his unique form of genocide – drowning the Hebrew baby boys. In those days, to be considered an Israelite, your father had to be descended from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, so children who did not have a Hebrew father were not considered Israelites. (this was eventually changed to require a Jewish mother instead, for various reasons). Additionally, their treatment as slaves in Egypt had gotten harsher, and their future was not looking good in many ways. Similarly, when we are living a life of slavery to sin, it might be fun at first, but eventually our sinful behavior catches up with us and usually destroys. To use an extreme example, drug addiction might be fun at first, but after a while it owns us and usually ruins our life in some way.
God delivers the Hebrews from their slavery to Egypt. Similarly, when we are born again, God delivers us from our slavery to sin. Just as the Hebrews found themselves missing the “pleasures of Egypt”, as new believers we often miss the “pleasures of sin” as we move from slavery to freedom. The human brain has a weird way of often forgetting the bad and remembering the good, creating a nostalgia in our minds that can be quite deceptive when looking back on our life (Fading Affect Bias (FAB). Think of being hooked on smoking cigarettes, how hard it was to quit, how miserable the habit was, how bad we wanted to quit, and yet most who quit eventually look back fondly on smoking and can easily start smoking again if they are not careful. So God delivers us from slavery to sin when we are born again, but it is often a struggle for us to fully walk in this deliverance, just as the Hebrews were struggling with their desire to return to Egypt and slavery.
For most of us who are born again as adults, our sin has a lot of momentum in our life, and it usually takes time to experience in our day to day life the freedom that Christ has given us. There are habits to break, thoughts to bring captive to the obedience of Christ, new habits to form, and so on. This period of life is the born again Christian’s version of the wilderness wandering and the taking of the promised land. In Exodus, God told Israel that their transition into the promised land was going to be a process, and would take time. Regarding driving out the people who were in the land so Israel could posses it, He said:
“I will not drive them out before you in a single year, that the land may not become desolate and the beasts of the field become too numerous for you. I will drive them out before you little by little, until you become fruitful and take possession of the land” Exodus 23:29-30
Similarly, in many cases, God does not drive out all of our sinful thoughts and actions overnight when we are born again. It is a process and takes time. And just as God sent an angel with the Hebrews into the land to help them with the process of possession of the land (Exodus 23:20-28), so God gives us the Holy Spirit to guide us and help us take possession of our life, driving out the sinful thoughts and actions from our lives.
God delivered Israel from the “house of slavery” when He brought us out of Egypt, and God similarly delivers us from our slavery to sin when we are brought out of death into new life in Christ – born again. God wants us to drive out the sinful thoughts and sinful actions of our old life as we move into the promised land of our lives of faith in Jesus. And He gives us His word and the Holy Spirit to help us do this. In Christ we have freedom from slavery to sin and are able to walk in newness of life. When writing about the new freedom from slavery that we have in Christ, Paul writes in Romans:
“Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.”
“What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be! Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience [to God’s word] resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.” Romans 6:12-19
Just as God told Israel to drive out the inhabitants of the promised land, so He tells us to drive out sin from our lives. Israel did not fully drive out the inhabitants of the promised land, nor did they fully follow God’s commands. This led to many difficulties and ultimately to their removal from the land and back into slavery and exile. Similarly, if we will not fully drive out the sin in our lives, we may also experience difficulties in our life, and may even lose fellowship with others (exile) and fall back into slavery to one of our old sinful ways.
An extreme example of this might be seen in a person who was an alcoholic and became born again, but after a while, they do not deal with their addiction to alcohol and they fall back into it. This ruins their witness, often destroys their life (lose their job, family, friends, etc.), and it may eventually even lead to their premature death. They were delivered from the house of slavery to sin when they were born again, but were unable or unwilling to break free from the old ways of Egypt (the sinful thoughts and actions of their past) and were unable to drive out the inhabitants of the land (defeat the sin in their life). They were unable to take possession of the land (live in newness of life as a new creation in Christ).
We are delivered from the house of slavery to sin when we are born again, but we can choose to go back into the house. Jesus sets us free, but we have to work that freedom out through obedience to His word, prayer, fellowship, worship, service to others, being led by the Spirit, putting to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit, etc. It is a war, a spiritual war, and we must get the victory to experience the full benefits of our freedom in Christ.
“For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ,” 2 Corinthians 10:3-5
In Christ we have been delivered from the house of slavery to sin, and we are now to take possession of the land – bringing our thoughts and our actions into alignment with God’s word by the power of the Holy Spirit. We have new life in Christ. We are a new creation and are to walk in newness of life, not as we used to live, but to live in such a way that people see how we live our life and give glory to God. Just as Israel had God’s presence in the wilderness as a cloud by day and a fire by night, and then they had the angel who went before them into the promised land, we have the Holy Spirit with us, leading us and guiding us, into all truth and righteousness. He empowers us to overcome the sin in our life. He opens God’s word to us so we can understand it and apply it to our life. He intercedes for us. Ultimately He transforms us into the likeness of Christ by enabling us to take possession of the land, our life in Christ, while we are here on this earth.
It is a war, just as the Israelites faced war when they entered the promised land. But God is with us, and we must always remember that God will finish what He has started in our life. Our victory is in Him, in His power, not in our flesh. It is the very power of God that is at work in us, enabling us to walk in newness of life in Christ. As Paul wrote in Philippians:
“For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6
I too am confident that He who began a good work in you will be faithful to finish the work that He has started in your life. I encourage you to stay out of the “house of slavery” (don’t go back into it once Jesus has set you free), and wage war with the sin in your life until you have total victory. In the words of Tim Allen in Galaxy Quest, “Never give up, never surrender”. No matter how many times you might fail, stay the course until the victory is yours in every area of your life and you have fully occupied the promised land of new life in Christ.
With this, we are now ready to look at the Ten Commandments and see how the gospel is contained within the Ten Words God gave Moses at Mt. Sinai.
Click Here for the First Commandment. (coming soon)
Additional Bible Verses to Consider:
“Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” Romans 6:4
“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” 2 Corinthians 5:17
“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 [to sin].” Galatians 5:1
“Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” Romans 12:1-2
“But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” Titus 3:4-7
“But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you.” John 16:13-14
“So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” Philippians 2:12-13
“Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.
So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” Romans 8:1-18
Additional Resources:
Counterfeit Gods – Tim Keller
Victory Over the Darkness – Neil T. Anderson
The Bondage Breaker – Neil T. Anderson
Winning Spiritual Warfare – Neil T. Anderson
Walking in Freedom – Neil T. Anderson & Rich Miller
Two Rivers Blog 