SETTING RELIGIOUS CAPTIVES FREE
In Bible times, when one king battled with another king and won, the winning king took the people from the defeated kingdom home and forced them to worship the gods and idols of his kingdom. The captives became slaves who were obligated to work for and worship the conquering king who was commonly considered to be divinely appointed to his kingship. This is the context in which God sets people free from religion in which they are obliged to worship and serve other gods (i.e. kings that function as religious leaders). This kind of warfare goes on today, but the war is won with words that deceive and attract people to join a religion — not with physical weapons. Religious people call it evangelism. God calls it making sons of hell.
Enemy kings who fear losing their slaves will, of course, resist the soldier’s attempts to rescue their slaves so they can enjoy freedom as citizens of God’s kingdom. Kings will do whatever they must to hold onto their slaves while discrediting, disarming, discouraging and bullying those who want to set them free. This is exactly what happened to Jesus and is the spiritual environment in which all of God’s soldiers do battle with the enemy for people who are slaves to other gods.
This ongoing battle is the basic story of the Bible. It is a story told in a variety of ways at the personal and community level. It is all about the challenges of getting free from religion and then going back to set other captives free. Fighting this battle with religious enemies is the fulfillment of the scripture that says it is for freedom that we have been set free. But this scripture does not mean only that we should live lives free from religion. Just as important as our freedom is the help we give to others who are still religious. In other words, we overcome religion and then help others overcome it. This is how we lay down our lives for our friends.
STUDY TIP: See Two Deaths
The command to lay down our lives for our friends is a difficult command for casual Christians to understand. They tend to see fulfillment of the command as doing good for others in one way or another. Jews don’t feel obliged to obey Jesus’ commands, but they are very big on obeying God’s commands and doing good to others.
However, neither Jews nor Christians understand that the command to lay down their lives carries the same risks as God’s commands to destroy religious kingdoms. Religious leaders, like kings, queens and princes of worldly kingdoms, do not take kindly to rebellion. What the Pharisees did to get rid of Jesus is a graphic picture of what any religious leader will do to discredit, deter and eliminate threats to their authority, social standing and income. Spiritual warfare is no exception.
W could say that Jews and Christians have willfully overlooked or ignored the command to destroy religious kingdom out of self interest: They would need to tear down idols and high places for which they have great affection. It is more accurate to say, however that Jews and Christians have not obeyed the command to destroy religious kingdoms because God has not opened their eyes to understanding the mystery of warfare.
Once God does open their eyes they will not call themselves Jews or Christians anymore, When the New Covenant is established in them, they have a new name (i.e. identity. character) which only they and God know. From that point forward, they will no longer have a need or desire to be publicly recognized as a member of a religious organization or any of its subgroups. They are done with working with their hands to make a public name for themselves as spiritual people who are close to God.
As New Covenant disciples, they will sacrifice the security of being part of a recognized community (e.g. worldly Babylon, worldly Jerusalem, etc.) that has been a critical part of their life to the degree that it has become an idol that they could not do without (i.e. they were intoxicated and addicted to it). Instead, they will be satisfied that they are members of God’s invisible, spiritual community (i.e. invisible, spiritual Jerusalem). All that matters for them is that God’s laws are written on their hearts. They are no longer motivated by or directed by by human laws and religious leaders. When the law is written on their hearts they will understand that warfare with the purpose of setting captives free from religion is not optional for God’s chosen people. They, like Jesus, will willingly suffer the wrath of the religious establishment by openly criticizing its traditions and correcting its doctrines.
The inability of Jews and Christians to set people free from religion would seem to be bad news for people who are held captive to religion. There is good news, however, in the fact that in this present age many people are breaking free from religion themselves. We see this phenomenon in the statistics about the decline of religion. But this is good news only if those who do break free follow God’s command to reach back and set others free also. And they will do this when they realize that it is for the freedom of others that they have been set free and that failure to do this kind of work is not optional for New Covenant disciples.
Only New Covenant disciples who are conformed to his image will understand that what Jesus said about bearing good fruit, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, casting out demons, comforting the brokenhearted and visiting prisoners is symbolic language for setting captives free from religion. Only New Covenant disciples will understand that, because they are created in his image, the anointing Jesus has is the anointing that empowers them to fulfill God’s commands to do all things — even destroy religious nations, tear down high places and set captives free from slavery to religion.
To rephrase this, it can be said that New Covenant disciples have the same responsibility, authority and power that Jesus had to destroy religious nations, tear down high places and set captives free from slavery to religion. Or, to put it more strongly, New Covenant disciples must put their emotional and relational lives on the line for their religious friends. If they are not willing to sacrifice their lives, they will be like the men who, instead of producing good fruit (i.e. lead religious captives to freedom), built a house on sand and were sent away to eternal punishment because they did not feed the hungry (i.e. religious people who do not have spiritual food) or visit the spiritually sick (i.e.those who are religious) in prison (i.e. captivating religion).
Being intoxicated with defiled religion (i.e. religion based on traditions of men and empty religious works) they do not understand that the only kind of religion that God honors is the work that helps spiritual widows (i.e. they do not have God as their spiritual husband) and orphans (i.e. they do not have God as their spiritual father).