Spiritual Direction: Free At Last- Act Like It

“Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.”  Martin Luther King Jr. in his I Have a Dream Speech, August 28, 1963.
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

The Apostle Paul also spoke of Freedom in his Epistle to the Romans (Freedom From the Law. Romans (7 1-6) 

Freedom from the Law

Romans 7 1-6

1 Are you unaware, brothers (for I am speaking to people who know the law), that the law has jurisdiction over one as long as one lives?

2 Thus a married woman is bound by law to her living husband; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law in respect to her husband.

3 Consequently, while her husband is alive she will be called an adulteress if she consorts with another man. But if her husband dies she is free from that law, and she is not an adulteress if she consorts with another man.

4 In the same way, my brothers, you also were put to death to the law through the body of Christ, so that you might belong to another, to the one who was raised from the dead in order that we might bear fruit for God.

5 For when we were in the flesh, our sinful passions, awakened by the law, worked in our members to bear fruit for death.

6 But now we are released from the law, dead to what held us captive, so that we may serve in the newness of the spirit and not under the obsolete letter.

Brothers and sisters we are free at last under Jesus Christ.  He came to atone for our sins and because he willingly gave up his life for us, we are no longer under the law.  For if we were still under the law why would he have come?  For if we were under the law why did he not tell us this?  For if we were under the law, why would we need Christ, could not man save himself by simply obeying the law?  If obeying the law would lead to perfection would not man have done so many years ago?  The early Church congregation in Rome was made up of many converted Jews.  They were confused about following the Jewish Law and laws of Christ.  At this point, the Jewish laws had been codified and were very familiar to the people who were Jews.  This was not true of the early Christian beliefs.  These early Christians were meeting in synagogues or in people’s homes. They would have the Service of the Word on Shabbat and then a resurrection meal (Eucharist Service) on the next day-Sunday.  

Paul clearly explains, “But now we are released from the law, dead to what held us captive, so that we may serve in the newness of the spirit and not under the obsolete letter.” This means that we are at this time free from the old laws and under the new law of Jesus Christ.”  Brothers and sisters, we may begin to start acting like this too!