Living in freedom from tyranny.

Uni started back this week, so I am once again immersed in books and assignments and lectures, and it's a treat. Learning really is so much fun. But adding to that, the timing of this week's theology lectures has been particularly super. The last two months have been ones of massive change for my family and I and, being rather a stick-in-the-mud, I don't always handle change particularly well. So this week's lectures, which discussed how living in the freedom of Christ means being steadfast because of what He has done within (instead of being changeable based on what is going on outside) were incredibly encouraging. I'm challenged to make choices and responses based on what Christ has already done, rather than what is happening in the moment. And what has Christ done? He's opened the door for us to be part of a new way of life in fellowship with Him.

I love Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of a powerful section of Ephesians 6:6-14:

Could it be any clearer? Our old way of life was nailed to the cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life -- no longer at sin's every beck and call! What we believe is this: If we get included in Christ's sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection.

We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, this of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That's what Jesus did.

That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don't give it the time of day. Don't even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves wholehearteduly and full-time -- remember, you've been raised from the dead! -- into God's way of doing things. Sin can't tell you how to live. After all, you're not living under that old tyranny any longer. You're living in the freedom of God.

Praying that for all of us, this week.

PS. It's been like Spring here in Queensland this week. This afternoon was spent under the sun by the water with a bunch of church friends for an 18th birthday party -- a perfect place to be on a Sunday afternoon.