Did you ever receive a reward? Perhaps your father promised you something that you wanted very much, if your report card were especially good. The good thing that he promised you was not pay—for your father didn't have to give it to you, as an employer has to pay the man who works for him. It was just something extra, given because you did well and deserved it.
Sometimes small boys and girls are very much afraid of the dark. They do not even like to go to bed in the dark. Of course when they are older they become free from that fear. But even older people are afraid of some things. Yet if we belong to the Lord Jesus we need not be afraid of anything, for He has made us free from fear. Read Romans 8:15. There you find that we are not in bondage or slavery, so that we need to be afraid. And in 1 John 4:18 we find that God’s perfect love to us casts out our fear.
Would a man who escaped and ran away from prison be free? He would no longer be behind the bars, and so he would be free in a certain sense, but all the police in the country would be looking for him, and waiting to put him back in prison again. That is not the kind of freedom that we have. Christ has made us free, and our old master, Satan, has no right to try to take us back into his slavery again. In our first lesson we said that we were in slavery to three masters—Satan, sin, and self. These no longer have any power over us, because Christ is our Saviour.
Slavery, and especially slavery to sin, self and Satan, is a very unhappy state. But I am not unhappy today, and I do not feel like a slave. I believe I am free. But you might ask me, “How do you know you are free” If a man came to you and said he felt like a policeman, you would not believe him unless you saw his badge. I have a proof that I am free, though, and I am going to show it to you. When a slave was freed in the old days, he was given “emancipation papers.” I have an emancipation paper which you may see. It has a black cover. Do you know what it is? Yes, the Bible. There I find that I am no longer a slave, but free, because I have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Men do not like to be in bondage. At the time of the Civil War America took her stand against slavery. We do not believe in the principle of one man's being owned by another. You have never seen a slave, for they were freed before you were born.
