James 1: 22- 25 states, “But be doers of the message and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves, because if anyone is hearer of the message and not doer, this one is like someone staring at his own face in a mirror, for he looks at himself and goes away and immediately forgets what sort of person he was. But the one who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues to do it, not being a forgetful hearer but a doer who acts, this one will be blessed in what he does.”
Without freewill choice we would be “mindless robots”. Almighty God does not want robots, instead HE requires that those who would spend eternity with HIM must do so by choice and then follow through with obedience to HIS laws. Like the person who looks in the mirror and then walks away without doing anything. That person has decided to take no action.
The law of liberty may be illustrated in a personal experience with an encounter of myself and two other friends when we picked up two hitchhikers that had the undeniable appearance of late 1970’s “Hippies”. My friends and I were hoping to share some pot with them in hopes of getting to share some of they might have, assuming their dress style would match our stereotype of them. As I rolled a joint, lit and pulled the first toke and then passed it to the first one in he took it and passed it to his friend who again passed it on without taking a hit.
When I asked why they passed the joint on the answer came without hesitation, “We don’t want any. Go ahead, don’t let us stop you. Jesus set us free. It’s not about being “against our religion” we just don’t want any.”
John 8: 31-37 “Then Jesus said… if the son sets you free, you will truly be free…”
In today’s world there are those that have life threatening addictions with family members and other acquaintances intervening with multiple agencies and treatment centers in hopes of establishing a socially acceptable lifestyle for the addict. Most fail. Some find a more acceptable addiction to replace the “high” all addicts seek to maintain, but in the end it still an addiction. The only freedom there is comes from Jesus.
Isaiah 61: 1 “The Spirit of the Lord Yahweh is upon me, because Yahweh has anointed me, he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim release to the captives and liberation to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of Yahweh’s favor…”
In the early part of Jesus’s ministry, he announced after reading the above verse that, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Who are the captives or those bound referred to in the verse of Isaiah? In the spiritual warfare raging around those of us engaged in making disciples as defined in what we call the great commission I would submit that addicts come to mind as primary “prospects”.
“Our mission, should we decide to accept it”, using the Mission Impossible cliche is to tell the captives and those who are bound that Jesus came to set them FREE. Should we choose not to follow Jesus and walk away from looking in the mirror of the law of liberty our path will automatically take us into the enemy “hive” or “collective” to use Star Trek language. Another way to say it might be even more familiar with the “Borg” claim, “You will be assimilated, resistance is futile”.
Luke 19: 10 “For the son of man came to seek and to save those who are lost.”