Do We Throw Off or Throw Up?

It's Easter time, and that means we're inundated with Spring fashion commercials, candy "sales" in the grocery store, colleagues comparing notes on what they're giving up for lent, and of course, Christian comments left and right on Facebook about Easter and Jesus dying for our sins. And if you're like me and you've grown up in the church, or you've been going to church for a while, it might just seem like the same old Easter we have every year. Jesus died for our sins, he rose again, we're forgiven. That's all. We've heard it, we know it, we've memorized the songs and verses that talk about it. But what does Easter really mean for us, and how should it impact us--every minute of our lives?

This afternoon, I was reading Isaiah 58 (thanks Beth Moore study!) and came across a startling statement. Isaiah is talking about how people "fast" selfishly, and in ways that harm others, and then the same people ask why they don't hear from God. Isaiah says, "Duh! Stop the sinful behavior!" He points out that the people need to stop gossiping and pointing fingers and start helping those in need. But the thing that stuck out to me was verse 9, where it says that they also need to "take away the yoke from your midst."

Call me crazy, but I've always thought that it was God who was supposed to take away our yokes. Not that he would take our literal wooden boards that link oxen and plow together, but our figurative yoke of burdens and slavery to sin. Isn't God the one who's supposed to take away the yoke from our midst, not us? That is, after all, why Jesus died, right?

As I sat, puzzled about this passage, I was reminded of a comment someone said to me earlier in the week: "You need to live in Christ's freedom."

I like picture analogies, so here we go: a picture of this cute little Vietnamese dog at a hotel I stayed in last weekend.

I kept trying to get the dog to move from behind the door, but it wouldn't, and I was perplexed. Its chain was long enough to allow it to roam around the whole front of the house, or even the whole front "yard," but it chose to stay in this little, itty bitty, tiny space behind the door. Maybe it felt safer there, or it was too lazy to move. Whatever the reason, it chose not to live in freedom.

You may have guessed it already, but we can be like that dog when we think about the Resurrection and the freedom that comes with it. Christ has already died and risen. He's payed for all of our sins and heavy yokes, and yet sometimes we still choose to live in those sins. Maybe the sin comforts us, or ridding ourselves of the sin is more complex than sure willpower. Maybe ridding ourselves of the sin requires some uncomfortable conversations, counseling or accountability. Maybe, we're continually stuck on our failures, believing that God can't forgive me my sin, because it's an awful sin. We believe we're saved, but we don't believe we've found forgiveness, or we don't believe we'll ever be free of the sin. So we stay in our little sinful corner, when if we just stepped out, we'd experience freedom in Christ we didn't think we'd ever experience. It's not complete freedom from all sin, but there is freedom--and we're called to strive for that freedom. Galatians 5:1 says, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery" (emphasis added).

If we're saved, there seems to be a two-part process of freedom. Step 1: Jesus died to free us. It's already happened, done, finished. Step 2: We live as free people. We need to avoid being burdened by the yoke of sin again. We need to "throw off everything that hiders [us] and the sin that so easily entangles [us]" (Hebrews 12:1) Easily said, hard to do, I know. But we need to actively fight the yoke of sin in our lives, knowing that we are already free, rather than throwing up our hands in defeat.

So will we throw off or throw up this Easter? Will we throw off all sin that entangles, and know that even as we sin again, God's grace still covers us, and we can still live in freedom? Or will we throw up our hands in defeat, believing that our sin is so much greater than God? This Easter and every day, I hope we will all live in freedom, believing, as a poet once wrote, that "Death is dead, and I am free, for Christ who died, He died for me!"