Take me back to prison

I was pleasantly surprised earlier to find out that Independant was in fact having a Sunday Evening Bible Study tonight so I went down to see it. Jean was preaching from Romans 6 and he used an illustration that (like so many of Jean's illustrations) stuck with me. He talked about a man in Florida who'd been released from prison after a long period of incarceration. He ended up walking into a convience store, stealing a six pack of beer, and then just sitting on the curb outside the store till the cops came to arrest him. While being taken to county lockup this man asked a police officer if his beer theft was a misdemeanor or a felony. When told he'd committed the former, the man remarked "I guess I'll have to committ a felony when I get out next time. Then maybe they'll send me home" Home! That's how this poor man viewed prison! He was so conditioned to a life of incarceration and confinement that he actively sought a return to the state pen! I immeadiatly thought of Brooks from The Shawshank Redemption who, upon his own release from prison, missed incarceration so much he ending up committing suicide.

When we hear stories like those they just don't seem to make sense. How could anybody prefer a life in prison to a life of freedom? Then it hit me: That's me in those stories. Not just me but every believer! You see, The Gospel of Jesus Christ has freed me from the prison of my sin. I can honestly sing with the hymnwriter Thomas Kelly "It is finished! All is over; Yes the cup of wraith is drained!" ......Yet I don't live like a free man. Sin to me dosen't feel like a prison from which I've been freed.....it feels like the "good stuff" my wet blanket of a God won't let me have. What's worse I think that's how most believers feel about sin. That's why we think things like "Well, maybe I'll just get drunk this one time" and "I don't have a boyfriend right now; might as well hook up with this guy tonight". When we think and do things like that we're asking to be let back in to the prison from which God freed us.

I don't think we want to be free from sin so much as we want to be free to sin. That is, we don't want to be released from the power and the effect of sin so we can live as we were meant to; we want the Atonement to function like a get out of jail free card so we can live like we want to. That's a frightening reality; but it's a really to which my life tesitfies on a daily basis. Praise God that His grace is big enough to overcome my will. Amen