So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. John 8:36

In the 1994 critically acclaimed movie The Shawshank Redemption, the life of a young successful banker Andy Dufresne is forever altered when he is wrongly convicted of murdering his wife and sentenced to life imprisonment at Shawshank Prison. Over the course of the years he develops long term friendships with other lifers, including Brooks Hatlin, the prison librarian. Brooks has been in the prison for so long that when he is finally up for parole, he tenaciously fights to find some way to stay behind bars- the grinding numbness and predictability of prison has become his only comfort and security.

As another inmate explains: “He’s just institutionalized…The man’s been in here fifty years…fifty years. This is all he knows. In here, he’s an important man, he’s an educated man. Outside he’s nothin’ – just a used-up con with arthritis in both hands. Probably couldn’t get a library card if he tried…these walls are funny. First you hate ’em, then you get used to ’em. Enough time passes, it gets so you depend on ’em.”

Long term inmates often find themselves imprisoned by two sets of bars- the literal metal bars that separated them from freedom on the outside, but also the self imposed mental bars that prevented them from embracing the freedom and opportunity of a new way of life.

The same is true of God’s people. As one author observed, “This is an ancient dilemma of mankind. For instance, we read that it took God mere days to free the Israelites from their slave masters in Egypt. But it took him years to rid them of the internal mentality that enslaved them as they journeyed forth toward the land of promise. Year after year they wandered, repeatedly passing up the entrance to the “land flowing with milk and honey,” because they were not yet free to believe in God’s power to establish them there as the rightful owners.”~

Often the church, God’s kingdom community, is no different. While we acknowledge that we have access to the life-transforming resurrection power of Jesus, we get stuck and are seemingly unable to move past our old mind-set and way of doing things. Rather than experience the true joy and fullness of life that Jesus offers, we are bound by hang-ups and habits of our past and adopt the same coping mechanisms and values of the world around us.

The power of the gospel goes beyond just providing assurance of heaven when we die. It liberates us from the enslaving values of this world so that we are free to embrace a life of meaning and purpose oriented around God’s kingdom.

Christian, the bars are gone… are you free?