Monday Reading: Galatians 5:1
Key Verse: Galatians 5:1
1 Stand fast therefore in the liberty with which Christ has made us free, and do not again be held with the yoke of bondage.
Devotion:
There are several places where the word ‘yolk’ is used to describe the bondage that we live in/under; this being one of them. If you look at what a yolk is, it is a form of trap from which the animal that is being yolked cannot escape; that being the whole reason for the yolk in the first place. But if we look at it from another point of view, that yolk is there for a reason and serves a purpose. Sin, you may think, has no purpose. I beg to differ on this one because without sin we would not know what is wrong – yes we would be much better off without having to know sin, but we are born into a sinful world so we live with it.
When we can identify that sin by comparing our so called normal lives with God’s Word we then can find out that what we may think of normal is far from actually being normal when God created us. Our normal is nothing like that which God had planned for us! So when this verse says that we will be made free it is the freedom from that yolk that has held us back from the beginning. What we thought was normal was a wandering away from God. What we thought was normal was a bondage that held us apart from God and His ways.
Because of what Christ has done for us on the cross we are freed from that yolk in that we do not have to serve it any more in our lives. It does not mean that we are taken out of that life never to see it again because we continue to live alongside others who continue to be trapped in that yolk of sin. That long time that we have spent in sin should have prepared us to fight free from that very yolk; but without the knowledge of Christ first we would not know that we could be set free! Christ continue to try to get us to read His Word in the hopes that we will be able to identify this yolk that is holding us back from a free life with Him; we just need to read it and believe it!
Points to Ponder:
Do you feel trapped in this world?
Do you realise that there is a freedom for all?