Set free

DEVOTION

EXODUS

SET FREE

Ex 21:1-6

21:1 "These are the laws you are to set before them:

2 "If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. 3 If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. 4 If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free. 5 "But if the servant declares, 'I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,' 6 then his master must take him before the judges. He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life.

NIV

We have arrived at the Law. It is going to be somewhat arduous to make our way through each and every law set out by God for the people. The idea that Jesus fulfilled all the law so that, in effect, we are not actually subject to the law, per say, as it is impossible for any man to fulfill it perfectly. In fact, this is the reason God is giving the law, to show them they will need a Savior. Yet at the same time any society needs to have a governing set of rules to live by, if it is going to be a civil organization of mutual respect among all the people. In addition, because all the scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, we have to expect there is something which we can glean from these laws for our lives as well. Since we live in a civil society of mutual respect for all people, perhaps some of this would be good for us to adhere to. Just because we are in Christ, does it mean we can simply ignore all this section of the law? That would also mean we would have to ignore all of Deuteronomy as well as Leviticus because they repeat much of these same commands. So what is this six year limit on slavery? First we would know from looking ahead, there are many ways in which a man would become a slave to his neighbor. In addition the original word here actually means servant, and is used many times as a bondservant. This is the case when one willingly or unwillingly serves because of various reasons that are laid out later for us. One example would be if a man became poor and could not pay his debt to another. A person would also become a servant, if he commited the crime of robbing his neighbor and was catch. The point here is that it was possible for a free man to become a servant of another. However, God put a term limit on how long they could serve. This limit seems to be tied to the year of Jubilee, or the Sabbatical year. But the point is there was a time to forgive, to set the servant free. Now there was a provision about his family and how that happened and that a man could remain in another’s service for his entire life. Because we are not living in this law, we are not subject to waiting for the seventh year to forgive. We actually have a far more reaching forgiveness as it must occur immediately upon being wronged. We cannot hold someone in our service for any reason of wrongdoing against us. Now that of course does not apply to the breaking of our civil or criminal law process. Within our society when a person is convicted of a crime against another, we confine them in jail, or prison. That does not mean all crimes are convicted and thus some who commit crimes against us remain free to commit more crimes. But does that give us believers the right of unforgiveness? This especially applies to the one who wrongs us over and over again, when it isn’t a civil or criminal offense. Jesus taught us that we are to forgive, not seven times, but seventy times seven. Perhaps when Peter was asking that question he was thinking about the seventh year of forgiveness, and Jesus make it clear that had nothing to do with it, but that we are to constantly be in the state of forgiveness. It has been said that this seventy times seven was not to apply to the fact a person would commit the same offense that many times against us, but that every time we remember an offense we need to forgive again, for as with God, forgiveness means never bringing that offense up again. So if we remember an offense, especially when in the presence of that person who offended us, we only cannot bring it up to them, but we need to forgive them again, at least within our own being. Telling them we forgive them again, is in essence, bringing it up to them again, reminding them of their offense. In the context of this law, when we forgive someone, we set them free. Just as when God forgave us of our sin, we were set free from bondage to sin. So as we forgive others, we set them free from any bondage or beholding to us. Forgiveness is to set free.