WHY AM I A CHRISTIAN PART IV

[Randy Darryle Smith]

RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES

The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, because He heth anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captive,and to recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised (LUKE 18:4).
As thou has sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world(ST.JOHN 17:18).


Jesus was not speaking in a prison and trying to comfort men behind stone walls and iron bars. He was speaking to men who had the usual constraints of society on them, as well as the humiliation of being a province of the Roman Empire. They were probably not so free as we are, but in a day when international tensions force our government to interfere with both our public and private affairs, there was no tremendous diffrence between that day and this. At any rate, Jesus was not speaking primarily of political freedom nor was He describing an anarchical society. He was talking about freedom from the prisons we build for ourselves and the chains we forge for our on wearing. There is no captivity so serious and hopeless as the ones we create out of our own ignorance and fear. To these captives, and that means to all men, the Gospel comes to proclaim release and, as a Christian, I ought to be a freeing agent in my community.
Christianity sets men free from their ignorance and prejudices. The whole history of the Church has been a story of the founding of educational institutions to enlarge men's minds. It ought not to be forgotten that Christianity is the Mother of education and that the great universities of the Middle Ages were founded under the guidance of the Medieval Church. There have appeared from time to time men who thought they served God by pronouncing a curse on new knowledge, but such men only betray how easy it is to mistake one's own ignorance for God's will. Christians are to cut straight across the lines and help men to meet as men and not as members of particular vested interests. Men need to be saved from the prisons their societies encourage them to build, and they need to be freed from their narrow thoughts. If Christians are not proclaiming release to such captives as these, let them ask if this is not what their Lord did and commanded His followers to continue doing.
I am a Christian because God in Christ promises me and all men power enough to live freely. There is hardly any experience more wonderful than learning that the wild and fearful evil which runs loose in a man's heart can be controlled and a man be set free from its rule. The need is to get out of ourselves and be released from the narrow boundaries of our own egos. THIS IS WHY WE ARE CHRISTIANS !!!!!