Brothers and sisters,
we are not debtors to the flesh,
to live according to the flesh.
We don't owe anything to our base instincts and disordered to desires. The sensations, feelings, and emotions, associated with these are often so overwhelming that we feel like a debt collector come for his due. Indeed, we often live as though we have no choice but to yield to the flesh but we must not, for "if you live according to the flesh, you will die". It is the world, the flesh, and the devil, that are together symbolized by this debt collector. Make no mistake, his strength is greater than our own. However, thanks be to God (see Romans 7:25), one who is stronger still has come and given us freedom.
The freedom we have been given is from captivity to the spiritual Egypt of sin. But we must now embrace the journey through the desert to the Promised Land. Our longing for the "the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic" of Egypt (see Numbers 11:5) must be set aside if we are to survive the journey. Anything that draws us back toward the spiritual pole of sin, toward Egypt, puts us at risk. The Spirit will help us on this journey, giving us the power to put to death sin and idolatry in our lives, just as he used the Levites to purify the idolatry of the golden cafe from the people.
For if you live according to the flesh, you will die,
but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body,
you will live.
We may not think of ourselves as having idols, or notice anything in our hearts that needs to be excised and killed. But what was it exactly that drew the people of Israel back to idolatry again and again? It was not so much the idols as what they hoped to attain for themselves. They wanted the comforts that their previous enslavement provided or assurance of success for their own plans. We too long for lives of comfort and success, however we measure those things. As we journey through the pilgrimage of our own lives we need to make sure those things don't hold us back to the degree that we fall behind and are finally left to go our way.
We have been brought out from slavery, from subhuman subjugation to sin. But we are not merely let loose into a neutral world to make of it what we will. The desert is in fact a hostile environment and to it we will quickly fall prey if we do not follow the guidance of God as he leads us on.
For those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.
For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear,
but you received a spirit of adoption,
through which we cry, “Abba, Father!”
We are not merely set free from sin, we are set free for sonship. Contrary to our expectations, it is precisely in God's guidance in and through the desert, even by his discipline, that we most directly and concretely experience his providential protection and his Fatherly care.
There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place (see Deuteronomy 1:30-31).
The Spirit is the pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day that guides us. He is longer as something merely external to us as he was for Israel in the desert, but now rather as witness from inside of us together with our own spirit. He is for this reason said to be "the first installment of our inheritance" (see Ephesians 1:14). To the degree that he lives in us, and that we ourselves surrender to his guidance, even in our suffering, we have the assurance that we will one day arrive at the true Promised Land of heaven. Indeed, his presence in us, and our experience of God's Fatherhood, and the love of Christ who draws us on, all of these are already a foretaste of heaven. Heaven itself is nothing but this experience in its fullness.
This daughter of Abraham,
whom Satan has bound for eighteen years now,
ought she not to have been set free on the sabbath day
from this bondage?
The rest promised by the sabbath was necessary in a particular way for those who had previously been enslaved.
Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day (See Deuteronomy 5:15).
The sabbath was supposed to prepare us for life in the Promised Land and even to provide a foretaste of it as we journeyed on. It was training to prioritize being over doing, relationship over commerce. But in her condition it could not be thus for the crippled woman. The sabbath rest had not yet attained its promise. But Jesus was the one who came to deliver all of us unto the perfect sabbath rest of heaven, and he was not content to leave this woman as he found her.
“Woman, you are set free of your infirmity.”
He laid his hands on her,
and she at once stood up straight and glorified God.
Jesus came to restore the sabbath for this "daughter of Abraham" and for all those who would become his sons and daughters by faith. Those with the mindset of the leaders of the synagogue are still out there are in our world today. They still exist as voices even within our own minds. They conspire with the flesh, telling us that we must remain debtors, captives, and slaves. But this is a lie. Although we are still journeying through the desert Jesus does want to bring us ever more deeply into his sabbath rest, practicing for the coming of the Kingdom until the hour arrives and we receive the promise in all of its fullness.
The father of orphans and the defender of widows
is God in his holy dwelling.
God gives a home to the forsaken;
he leads forth prisoners to prosperity.
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