Freedom In Christ
Frank Allnutt

Complete text, with illustrations
(Note: Illustrations in the booklet are black & white)

Satan learned from being banished from heaven to earth that he could never be
come self-sufficient and supplant God as Lord of heaven and all creation. We can only imagine how embittered he was by his fate and how much he must have wanted to retaliate against God. Of course, he was no match against Almighty Father. But his evil, scheming mind came up with a vindictive payback. He did the worst thing possible: He lured Adam and Eve away from God. Consequently, they suffered critically sin-damaged spiritual hearts, and were made spiritually dead and separated from God. They would live out their mortal lives enslaved to their flesh, to Satan, to sin, to the world order, and to the death-curse of God’s law (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Adam made the wrong choice.
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We can only imagine the sadness it brought to God’s heart. Oh, how He loved Adam and Eve! But there was more sadness to come: All of Adam and Eve’s descendants—all of future mankind—would go the fallen way of their first two ancestors (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Adamic man is naturally born in bondage to spiritual masters.
Adam-Hearted Man, because of his inherited sin-nature and sinfulness, is “dead to” (separated from) God, God’s Love, God’s Kingdom, and God’s Grace, and is alive to (enslaved to) Satan, sin, the world, and the death curse of God’s judicial law.
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As following generations came and went, there were always a few who worshiped God. Satan perhaps thought he had little cause for concern; after all, he was successful in keeping most people from God. As for those who were rescued from him, he could make their lives on earth miserable. So he mounted tremendous persecution against generations of the children of Adam.

God then chose Abraham and his people to be His own, and promised them a land of “milk and honey.” Generations passed, and they were taken into captivity in Egypt. God raised up Moses to lead them out of Egypt, and they eventually entered the Promised Land. They became lawless, as they had been before and would be again. They were repeatedly conquered and taken captive. But a remnant always returned. Their Temple of God in Jerusalem was destroyed, rebuilt, then destroyed again.

Yet there was always a remnant of true believers that Satan could not eliminate.

“A Savior Is Born”
One night in the city of Bethlehem, an extraordinary baby was born. An angel of the Lord proclaimed to the world: “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which shall be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10, 11).

“A Savior, who is Christ the Lord”! The words must have struck terror in the heart of Satan. He could not stand by and allow mankind to be rescued from his grasp and reconciled to God by this newborn Savior.

Satan became obsessed with one thought: The Christ must not succeed. His first counteract was to have the Christ-child killed. He enticed King Herod to kill all firstborn males, but the baby Jesus was whisked away to safety.

Satan’s next plan unfolded three decades later when he sought to tempt Jesus away from His earthly mission and Lordship. But, we know from Luke chapter four that Jesus would not yield to him.

Then came Christ’s death on the cross. Imagine the victory celebration that must have taken place in Satan’s domain! But, of course, when Christ rose from the grave and saved all who believed in Him, Satan’s apparent victory turned into defeat. Christ was raised from the tomb in victory over death, Satan, the world, and sin. The old man—with Adam’s heart, life and nature—died with Christ, and the new man—with a new heart, Christ’s life and nature and indwelling Spirit—was resurrected in victory and freedom with Him and in Him!

Satan was no match against Jesus the Christ. So he directed all his authority and power toward waging spiritual war against God’s beloved creation, man. Even so, a remnant of every generation has been rescued from his enslavement and placed into freedom and victory in Christ. The spiritual war will rage on until Christ returns for His own and to bring judgment on all that is ungodly.

You Were Redeemed
It was through Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection that believers are redeemed. This is a technical word in Scripture that means “to buy for a price and to set free.” We were held in bondage to the realm of darkness, to being of the old humanity in Adam; and, to the flesh, Satan, sin, the world, and the death curse of God’s law. They were our “spiritual masters,” and we were their slaves. However, God, out of His love for us, offered us redemption—bought us for the highest price ever paid for anything: the life of His Son:

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the richness of His grace (Ephesians 1:7).

Through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained [our] eternal redemption (Hebrews 9:12).

You were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ (1 Peter 1:18, 19).

For your have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body (1 Corinthians 6:20).

Redemption did not deliver us from the captive old heart so that we might be set free in an independent, self-sufficient life. That was never God’s plan for mankind. Redemption is a two-part process: First, through salvational faith and grace, we were crucified with Christ and delivered from slavery in Adam, and then we were resurrected with Christ, with new hearts, and placed into freedom in Him. God’s way is for us to be free in Christ. Freedom can only be found in Christ; outside of Him, there is no true freedom.

Christ came to set us free
Before you became a Christian, you were a captive, and you needed to be set free. And that’s why God sent us His Son: “It was for freedom that Christ set us free” (Galatians 5:1).

Jesus said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). The “truth” is the spoken Word of God, but also the expression of God Himself in the person of His Son (John 1:1). Jesus bore witness of this when He said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me” (John 14:6); and “I am the true vine” (John 15:1; see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Redemption! Christ came to make us new creatures and to set us free in Him!
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Jesus not only shows us the way to God, He is the way! He is the only way to the Father; He is the Truth, He is the Word, and He is eternal life; and only in Him and through Him can man experience freedom and reconciliation with God.

The crucifixion with Christ of the old man and the resurrection with Christ of the new man brought about several radical changes in our relationships. In this booklet we will use some new illustrations based on God’s Model of the Heart to visualize that, when you were crucified with Christ, you “died” to—were released and removed from—old-man relationships with Satan, sin and death, the world order, and the authority and condemnation of God’s law. Through your resurrection with Christ you were made “alive” to—placed into—new-man relationships with God, God’s love, God’s kingdom, and God’s grace (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Spiritual relationships, old and new.
At the time you became a Christian, God took you out of old spiritual relationships and placed you into new ones.
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Spiritual Warfare
While we believers have been rescued from old, captive relationships, the spiritual war continues between Satan’s domain of darkness and God’s kingdom of light, and we are very much caught up in the battles and conflicts. Figure 5 contains a chart that shows the opposing sides in this spiritual war. In scholarly terms, this is called “dualism” or “diametric dualism.” Teaching on dualism can be found throughout the Bible. In the New Testament it is prominent in the teachings of Jesus and in the writings of His disciples.

Dualism can be seen in Satan as the adversary of God. Then, there is the dualism of dark and light, the flesh and the Spirit, death and life, sin and love, the world order and God’s kingdom, the law system and God’s grace system.

False Masters
In modern times, spiritual warfare has been featured in many motion pictures. Among them are “Rosemary’s Baby,” the “Star Wars,” saga, “The Exorcist,” “The Omen,” “The Matrix,” and others. Though these films and other of their genre portray open hostility between the “forces of good and evil,” spiritual warfare also takes on more subtlety, such as deception, temptation, intimidation, and so on. It is this more subtle side of spiritual warfare that will be addressed throughout the remainder of this study. Our premise is that, while we have been removed from relationship with our adversaries, the fleshly and often times unwary among us walk or live in the ways of old spiritual masters and, in effect, establish them as false or illegitimate masters. In doing so, our true Master, the Lord Jesus Christ, is often forsaken, as are His love, His kingdom, and His grace.

Our One, True Master
Our new hearts are forever bound to Christ, and that can never change. Paul assures us: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38, 39).

Paul makes it very clear that the Christian has but one true Master: The Lord Jesus Christ. But some believers serve false masters. The Half-Hearted Christian lives as if he were still enslaved to the darkness, the flesh, Satan, sin, the world, and God’s law. Paul explains that whomever or whatever we depend upon becomes our master and we become its slaves (Romans 6:16). Is he contradicting himself? Not at all. Since Christ is the believer’s one and only true Master, any other “master” is really a false or illegitimate master.

Whether knowingly or unwittingly, we can place ourselves under the temporary and conditional control of former spiritual masters by responding to them as we did before salvation, as slaves to masters. Obviously, we should not do this. Scripture tells us that we do not have authority to submit ourselves to other masters because “you are not your own.... For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19, 20). Jesus taught that, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24).

The term “mammon” means “riches” in a fleshly or worldly sense. When we place someone or something ahead of Christ, our soulical functions turn from being centered in Christ to being centered in self or someone or something else. And that creates a false master and idol. We cannot serve Christ and, at the same time, submit to other masters—not even to our own will over God’s will.

The Half-Hearted Christian, whether he knows it or not, serves many false masters and worships many idols, and is therefore enslaved to them—not positionally or relationally, but temporarily, conditionally and functionally.

Spiritual Adultery
Ezekiel wrote of “adulterous hearts” (Ezekiel 33:3). The context is in regard to believers who turn from God and, in effect, engage in spiritual adultery with false gods, Satan, sin, the world, and perverted concepts of God’s law and their relationship to it. In the book of James, false masters and false idols are seen as illicit lovers, and those who cavort with them are called “adulteresses” (James 4:4).

As with sexual adultery, spiritual adultery is acted upon out of the divided condition of the heart. Jesus said, “everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart” (Matthew 5:28b). In the same way, the person who lusts after old spiritual masters commits spiritual adultery in his heart, whether or not that lust is acted out.

The unfaithful bride
On a recent television talk show, the guest was an attractive young woman with a pleasing personality. Newly married, she told how, after one week of marriage, she resumed an adulterous relationship with a former boyfriend. And she saw no moral problem with it. Apparently, neither did half of the studio audience, because they applauded her.

Such immorality runs against the grain of Christian sensibilities, and so we wonder how a person could be so unfaithful, so immoral, and not have it bother their conscience. But before castigating such a person for not living righteously, we should recognize that every one of us has a history of spiritual adultery. Who among us dares to cast a stone?

Before we were saved, most of us did not know of the spiritual relationships through which we were enslaved. Unwittingly, we had become conditioned to living as slaves—as “spiritual mistresses” you might say. And those ways to which we were consciously or unconsciously conditioned carried over into our Christian walk.

No doubt your life-style changed to some extent after you were saved. Perhaps you joined a church, attended a Bible study, began praying —even gave up some old bad habits. But many Christians are so conditioned by their former life that they continue to behave as spiritual mistresses and to walk in the ways of their former spiritual masters (Figure 6).

Figure 6
The Half-Hearted Christian is out of fellowship with God because he consistently walks “according to the flesh.” He engages in spiritually adulterous affairs with Satan, sin, and the world order, and wrongly responds to God’s law.
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If we are honest with ourselves, we don’t have to remember very far back in time to “affairs” with false masters. We had those affairs when we walked in their ways. If we told a lie, for example, we walked in the way of Satan, the “Father of lies.” And by walking in his ways, we had a spiritually adulterous affair with him.

When we became Christians we were made the bride of Christ (Revelation 19:7-9). But all of us are not always faithful brides. There are patterns of spiritual adultery in the lives of Half-Hearted Christians and occasional episodes in the lives of Whole-Hearted Christians.

The Half-Hearted Christian may not be aware of what he is doing, or he may know perfectly well what he is doing and is undisturbed by it. On the other hand, he may be convicted of his sinfulness and try in vain to repent out of his own strength. This concept of self-atonement, which is practised by some cults and most non-Christian religions, is neither biblical nor attainable, nor recognized by God. For if the self-atoner’s fleshly mind is set on what he is repenting of, rather than who he should be yielding to, he will likely fail.

The Whole-Hearted Christian does not demonstrate consistent patterns of spiritual adultery, but he is not impervious to lapses in his faithfulness to Christ. Unlike the Half-Hearted Christian, he deals with such episodes by truly repenting, reuniting his heart out of love, and resuming his walk in Christ; and with all of this comes the experience of his forgiveness, and the cleansing and renewal of his mind.

As we move on in this brief study, we will examine scriptures that teach you were released from your enslaving relationship with Satan in exchange for a liberating new relationship with God through Jesus Christ. We will also discuss the “exchange” of other spiritual relationships.

You Were Ransomed From Satan
Enslavement to Satan came to us by birth in Adam, and deliverance from Satan came to us through Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection and our crucifixion and resurrection with Him. You were separated—released and removed—from your unholy, sinful relationship with Satan. You were rescued from his bondage. You are no longer his captive, no longer his slave.

As a sinner you were dead to God. But when you received Christ Jesus as your Savior and Lord, you were spiritually baptized into Him, and this made you alive to God. You were bought with a price—the sacrifice of His life. You then belonged to Him (Galatians 5:24).

Jesus, speaking to Paul on the road to Damascus, appointed him to be a “minister and a witness” to both Jews and gentiles—“to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, in order that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me” (Acts 26:18).

The writer of Hebrews pointedly tells us that we have been delivered from slavery under Satan as well as his “works”: “Through death He [Jesus] might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil; and might deliver those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives” (Hebrews 2:14b, 15). And, in John’s first letter we read that, “The Son of God appeared for this purpose, that He might destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8).

All of Satan’s evil, enslaving works were destroyed by Jesus through the cross. For with His crucifixion came our rescue from Satan’s domain of darkness, and through His resurrection came our deliverance into God’s realm of light. We were reconciled with God, forgiven and saved, redeemed, justified, and sanctified. And now, we can experience freedom and victory in Christ Jesus, who is our Savior, Lord, and life.

The Believer’s Victory In Christ
Nothing could keep Jesus in the grave—not Satan, not sin, not the word order, not death itself. Christ rose from the grave in living victory over them all. And every one who places their faith in Him is united with Him through spiritual baptism, and therefore shares in His victory.

And yet Satan will remain the “god of this world” until Christ returns to remove him and to take His rightful place on the throne of David, from which He will rule the world throughout the millennium.

Satan can do nothing to harm our new spiritual hearts or to separate us from God. He can, of course, tempt us to sin, and he can bring harm to our mortal bodies. He can persecute us and even cause our physical death (but only with God’s permission, as indicated in the book of Job). But even this work of Satan has been destroyed in the sense that Jesus rose from the grave, victorious over death, which defeated the purpose and goal of Satan’s works. And the day is coming when our bodies will be transformed unto glory, which will consummate our victory in Christ over death.

You, In Christ, Overcame Satan
John writes that those who belong to Christ “have overcome the evil one [Satan]” (1 John 2:13). This is a historical reality, not future. The book of Revelation speaks of our victory over Satan and the consummation of that victory, at the time following Christ’s triumphant return:

Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses them before our God day and night. And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even to death (Revelation 12:10b, 11).

The Half-Hearted Christian Walks In The Ways Of Satan
Not all Christians experience their victory over Satan. In fact, many walk in Satan’s enslaving ways and do not always realize it. They unwittingly set him up to be their false master and actually carry on spiritually adulterous affairs with him in their hearts and in their behavioral patterns and life-styles. The symptoms are Satanic pride—Satanic thoughts, Satanic feelings, and Satanic desires and intentions, and Satanic behavior.

There are countless ways in which a believer can walk, live, or behave in Satan’s ways. Name any sin and it is a way of Satan! But the one way of Satan that is followed by all who live a self-centered life is that they want to become self-sufficient. The heart that is set on self-sufficiency is a prideful heart that is tempted to eat forbidden fruit; a heart that eats forbidden fruit is a heart controlled by Satan; and a heart that is controlled by Satan is a heart whose soul is filled with the things of Satan and is thereby functionally separated from the spirit of the heart and from fellowship with the indwelling Spirit of Christ (Figure 7).

Figure 7:
The Half-Hearted Christian may live out of a heart that is functionally divided by Satan.
This deceived believer knowingly and consistently devises lies and dishonest schemes to deceive others. In doing so, he imitates Satan and carries on a spiritually adulterous affair with the Devil. This “Satanizing” functionally divides the soul from the spirit, interrupts fellowship with Christ, and grieves and quenches the indwelling Holy Spirit. (Satan is not actually in the heart.)
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When a Christian is prideful or lies, he imitates Satan, and to imitate him is to give glory to him. And when this happens, the believer is out of fellowship with, and grieves, the Holy Spirit.
There are many ways of emulating Satan’s prideful ways—rebelliousness, deceiving and manipulating or controlling others, tempting others, intimidating others...and on and on. All are forms of spiritual adultery with the Devil.

Every illicit affair with Satan begins in the soul of the heart, and is then manifested through behavior. Such sinful behavior develops into patterns. And those patterns can become a life-style. The Half-Hearted Christian walks in Satan’s ways because, in his state of conditional fleshliness, he is vulnerable to the Devil’s schemes and deceptions (Figure 8).

Figure 8: The Half-Hearted Christian may walk in the ways of Satan.
This deceived believer may consistently lie, deceive, intimidate, control, manipulate, and in other outwardly observable ways imitate the Devil. Such behavior stems from a divided heart, grieves and quenches the Spirit, and temporarily interrupts the believer’s fellowship with God.
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Scripture tells us that “the Devil prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Satan has absolutely no power over who we are in Christ, but he and his demons can play mind games with us and make our lives miserable. Lions do not seek out the strongest and swiftest prey; they single out and attack lame and weak pray, and those foolish ones that stray from the shepherd. The Half-Hearted Christian is a lamb who wanders away from the Shepherd and becomes alone, lame, and weak. Satan is prowling about, on the lookout for such wayward and unsuspecting lambs.

I can imagine that Satan gloated over luring Adam and Eve away from God. And it surely must give him devilish glee to look upon Half-Hearted Christians and see them out of fellowship with the Holy Spirit and striving in life to manage their lives out of their limited, fleshly resources and conditional spiritual impotency.

The Whole-Hearted Christian has learned it is best for the lamb to walk with his Shepherd. Jesus is our Good Shepherd, and He has never lost a single lamb! We must keep our focus on Him, for as soon as the eyes of our heart wander, we will stray. And if we stray, we will fall prey to Satan and his demons.

You Were Made AliveTo God
The whole point of Christianity is that the believer has been made alive to God— taken out of bondage to Satan and other spiritual masters, and brought into a personal relationship with Him through unity with Christ. “Now if [since] we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him...consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:8, 11; see Figure 9).

Figure 9: The Christian is “dead to” (separated from) Satan and is “alive to” (reconciled to and related with) God.
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You were made positionally, relationally, and ontologically alive to God and His kingdom of light when you were resurrected with Christ. God resurrected your personhood with Christ and gave you a new spiritual heart, the indwelling of His Spirit, and His eternal life. Without your new spiritual heart you would not be a Christian, you could not have a relationship with God, and you could not enter His kingdom.

God has brought you into the closest of all relationships: a heart-to-heart relationship with Himself, in which your heart is united with His heart. He put His Spirit within the spirit of your heart (Ezekiel 36:27), which is also to place the Spirit of Christ in the spirit of your heart (Colossians 1:27). And, in bringing you into unity with Christ, God placed you in Christ (Romans 6:3; 1 Corinthians 1:30).

Because we have unity with Christ, we have unity with one another. Jesus said: “And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth. I do not ask in behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as Thou, Father art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us; that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me” (John 17:19-21).

You Are A Slave Of God
The Bible tells us that God is our “Master” (Colossians 4:1) and that we are “enslaved to God” (Romans 6:22). And yet Jesus said He came to set us free (John 8:22). Is there a contradiction here? How can we be both enslaved and free?

The word “slave” conjures up all sorts of negative thoughts because the term refers to a person who is the actual or ostensible property of and wholly subject to someone or some thing outside of self; a bond servant. Thus an individual can be enslaved to another person, an ideology, a chemical substance, or even certain habitual behavior.

But if that were not enough, Scripture also tells us we were made servants of Christ (1 Timothy 4:6). Slave? Servant? What do those terms mean in this context? At first thought, servanthood might not seem much better than enslavement. How can we be servants and still be free? Slaves and servants must do the work of their master. We could rationalize the apparent contradiction that doing God’s work is freedom by comparison with doing the work of the Devil. But there is more truth to it than that.

Slaves and servants must do the work of their master. We could rationalize the apparent contradiction that doing God’s work is freedom by comparison with doing the work of the Devil. But there is more truth to it than that.

I think Paul’s point is that serving God is thankfulness, an honor, a blessing, a duty, a privilege, and worship and praise of Him. But it would be a tragic misunderstanding to think that we must serve God in order to maintain good standing with Him in order to avoid “losing salvation” or to be punished.

The biblical terms “master” and “slave” refer to the authority of one over the other. But there are other aspects of this which must not be overlooked. The first has to do with the identity we have in Christ. Masters own their slaves. And slaves are identified by who owns them. I have read that in early America it was not uncommon for African slaves to take the surname of their master. So a slave’s identity was found both in their ownership by their master as well as in the acquired surname of their master.

A contemporary analogy
Another aspect of our identity has to do with our likeness to our Master. I will use a contemporary analogy to illustrate this.

Among the variety of things I do, I produce Christian videos. The original recorded video tapes are digitized into a computer and edited. The finished version is called a “master.” It is used for duplicating copies on to video cassettes or DVDs. The master is placed into a playback deck, and blank tapes or discs are placed in recording decks called “slaves.” The machines are started simultaneously, and the contents of the master are duplicated onto the blank tapes or discs on the slaves. In the end, the slave tapes or discs are no longer blank, but are identical copies of the master.

So when the Bible says we are enslaved to God, it might be helpful to think that the Master transferred the life, nature, and glory of His Son into the spirit of your new spiritual heart. At the same time, He gave you a new soul and placed in it the Christlike faculties of mind, emotion, and will. (But He did not transfer His unique personhood to you; your personhood was resurrected with Him.) As a slave of God, then, you derive your life and spiritual nature from your Master, and your identity is in Him, just as the identity of a slave or duplicate video is in its master.

Now, let’s read Romans 6:22 in it entirety to get a direct biblical perspective of what it means to be enslaved to God: “But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life.”

Conditional slavery
The Half-Hearted Christian does not fully experience his sanctification, new life, and freedom in Christ. He walks or lives in conditional enslavement, according to the flesh and old spiritual masters. By walking in their ways, he is obedient to them and not to the Lord Jesus Christ. And, as Paul writes, “when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey...” (Romans 6:15a).

Paul goes on in Romans 6 to explain that to present ourselves for obedience to someone or something other than Christ is a sin that results in a type of “death” that means separation from fellowship with Him (not dissolution of our relationship). However, if we present ourselves as slaves of obedience to God, we experience the wonderful blessings, among them, sanctification and eternal life (Romans 6:22).

We experience eternal life now and forever; now, by virtue of sharing Christ’s life, and forever, because it extends beyond our mortal existence.

Now let’s consider what it means for God to sanctify us. The dictionary gives these definitions of sanctify: “1. to make holy; set apart as sacred; consecrate. 2. to purify or free from sin: sanctify your hearts. 3. to impart religious sanction to; render legitimate or binding: sanctify a vow. 4. to entitle to reverence or spiritual blessing.”

Did you notice that the dictionary echoes the Bible’s teaching that we are sanctified in our hearts? God gave you a sanctified new heart when He made you a new Creature in Christ. It is absolutely and irreversibly holy, pure, and free from bondage to sin and other old spiritual masters. And it made you a legitimate child of God, which entitles you to an inheritance of abundant blessings.
So, there is no contradiction between Christ’s proclamation that He came to set us free of our old humanity and old spiritual masters, and Paul’s teaching that we are enslaved to God.

While our spiritual baptism into Christ resulted in our ontological sanctification, we can continue to be sanctified conditionally and functionally when our heart is right with God—is “whole.” This opens the door of our soul to the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And when our heart is right with God and we are led by His Spirit, we walk in His ways. This process of progressive sanctification will be completed or perfected in us at the instant Christ returns.

The Roman Christians, like all believers, received ontological sanctification and eternal life at the time of their salvation. But Paul, writing in Romans 6, moved beyond the salvational issues to address sanctification and eternal life from the conditional/functional/behavioral perspectives. He tells the Romans that, through loving “obedience from the heart” (Romans 6:17), they present themselves as slaves for obedience to God, and that through such loving obedience, they can experience the benefits of sanctification and eternal life in their present daily lives (Romans 6:22). And the same good news applies to all of us who are “enslaved” to God.

God Is Your New Father
All of us are born with Satan as our spiritual father; however, at the time a person becomes a Christian, his relationship with Satan ends and a new relationship begins with a new Father: God. John writes, “By this the children of God and the children of the Devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God...” (1 John 3:10).

Jesus indicated that Satan is the spiritual father of all natural people (John 8:44). You were crucified with Christ to that horribly dysfunctional relationship and resurrected into a blessed new relationship with God as your Father. When speaking of God we often refer to Him as “Father.” When praying to Him, we address Him as “Father.” The Bible is full of references to God being our Father. Among those in the New Testament are: Matthew 5:16, 6:1, 4, 6, 9, 18; Philippians 2:11; Hebrews 1:5; 1 Peter 1:3; 2 Peter 1:17; and Jude 1.

Since God is our Father, we also find numerous references to Christians being the children of God, among them:

But as many as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were not born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God (John 1:12, 13).

All who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God...it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants (Romans 8:14-16, 9:8).

We think of an adoption as the legal process of obtaining a child through an adoption agency. However, that child is not, and will never become, a biological offspring of his new parents. But your adoption by God goes beyond that kind of adoption: it makes you a spiritual offspring of God. This is because His spiritual seed gave you spiritual rebirth in Christ (Galatians 3:16; 1 John 3:9). When you died to Satan, you died as his “child.” And when you were reborn and made alive in Christ, you became a child of God.

You Are An Heir Of God
As a child of God, you are His heir. Paul wrote to the Romans that “we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:16, 17). And to the Galatians he wrote: “Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God” (Galatians 4:7).

We are members of God’s family; we are His heirs, along with His firstborn Son. What does it mean to be an heir of the Father and a fellow heir with Christ? It means that, because we are God’s children, we inherit all that is His—“all things” (Hebrews 1:2).

I don’t know how it works in your family, but in most traditional families there is a general understanding of joint ownership of family possessions—not fatherly ownership at the exclusion of mother and children. The house is “our house.” The family car is “our car.” It’s the same in God’s family: All that is His is ours.

You Are A Brother Of Jesus
Since God is your Father as well as the Father of Jesus, then Jesus is your brother: “For both He [Jesus] who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one Father; for which reason He [Jesus] is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying ‘I will proclaim Thy name to My brethren, in the midst of the congregation I will sing Thy praise’” (Hebrews 2:11, 12).

This sibling relationship with Christ does not take away from His being God and Lord of all, and it does not make us gods. He is our brother, and He is also our Lord—the Lord of all (Acts 10:36; Romans 10:12), even Lord of lords and King of kings (1 Timothy 6:15).

You Are The Bride Of Christ
You are also the bride of Christ (Revelation 19:7-9). There is nothing incestuous here. We are the brethren of Christ because of our common Father. We are the bride of Christ, made one with Him, which is reflected in the institution of marriage, when a husband and wife become one in spirit. The focus here is on spiritual unity and headship. We are one in Christ, yet He has headship authority and responsibility in our relationship with Him. He is the head of His body, which is the Church (Ephesians 5:23). He is the head of every person (1 Corinthians 11:3). He is the head over all things (Ephesians 1:22). Headship also indicates that Jesus is the source of our life and all our needs, somewhat like the head of a river is the source of the river’s water. Jesus is our source of “living water” (John 4:10)—life, love, peace, and joy. Indeed, He is love, joy, and peace. He is our very life. He is our everything!

You Are A Friend Of Jesus
If you have been blessed with a close friend in your life, then you can appreciate more fully what it means to be called a friend of Jesus. He said, “you are my friends.... You did not choose Me, but I chose you...” (John 15:14, 16). And how prophetic it was when He said, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

Your Body Belongs To God
You have a physical relationship as well as a spiritual relationship with God: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a harlot is one body with her? For He says, ‘The two will become one flesh.’ But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him” (1 Corinthians 6:15-17).
Before you were crucified and resurrected with Christ, you were in a body-and-heart relationship with Adam and Satan. But now your entire being, including your mortal body, is related to God. In fact, He owns your body, as well as your heart, having bought them for the highest price ever paid for anything: the precious life of His Son. And having bought your body, He has given it the greatest of honors: He sanctified it and made it His Temple (1 Corinthians 3:16, 6:19, 20), in which His Spirit dwells.

There is no relationship closer than the relationship you have with God. He is your Father and you are His child. You are the brother of Christ and a joint heir with Him. You are the bride of Christ. You are a friend of Christ. God gave His heart to you, and you share His eternal life and holy and righteous nature. Your very identity is in Him. His Spirit dwells within you; your body is His sacred Temple.

Yielding To God
In our relationship with God, we are united with Him, His Son, His Spirit, His love, His kingdom, and His grace. Those are positional, relational, and ontological absolutes in that they are irrevocable and unchangeable. But there are also the conditional, functional, and behavioral aspects of our lives which are quite changeable, and it is in this arena that all believers experience some degree of falling short of God’s perfection.

The Half-Hearted Christian, who functions mostly out of a soul that is conditionally divided from the spirit, consistently walks in some if not all of these ways:

• as a prideful, self-centered person, or

• as if a victim, unloved and unaccepted by God;

• as if he were, or could become, self-sufficient;

• as if he were an old-hearted, old man in Adam;

• as if he were still in the darkness and the flesh;

• as if he were still enslaved to Satan, sin, the world, and the law.

The Whole-Hearted Christian, by contrast, experiences the abundant life (Christ as life) on a more consistent basis. And it begins with a change of heart. Through brokenness, he experiences the insufficiency of self apart from God. Out of a broken and contrite heart he is motivated by his love for God to repent of his self-centered, fleshly manner of living, and to set his heart on walking in the Spirit. Through walking in the Spirit, he enjoys fellowship with the indwelling Spirit of Christ, experiences the dynamics of Christ’s Spirit in every aspect of his being and behavior, and is blessed through Christ’s sufficiency in satisfying all of his legitimate needs and desires.

Ontologically, the Whole-Hearted Christian, like all believers, is holy and righteous in the nature of his shared life with Christ, but he is not conditionally and functionally perfect, and will not attain such perfection in mortal life. Once in a while he may experience a moment of fleshliness and commit a sin, but he has repented of his old ways and is unlikely to revert to any consistent patterns of fleshly, worldly living; most of the time he walks in the Spirit.
Walking in the Spirit takes place in the heart and through behavior:

With The Whole-Hearted Christian, The Inner Man Functions In The Spirit
This believer’s uncompromising love for God has functionally united his soul with his spirit, so that the inner man functions in harmony with the indwelling Holy Spirit (Figure 10).

Figure 10: An “inner man” functional view of the Whole-Hearted Christian.
This believer’s soul and spirit are functionally united in love, and operate in harmony with the indwelling Holy Spirit. This is referred to in Scripture as “walking in the Spirit,” “Walking in Christ,” and “abiding with God.”
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In this wholehearted condition, the believer’s mind, emotion, and will are totally yielded in loving submission to God, and therefore function in His Spirit. To function in the Spirit is also to function in Christ, and to abide with God, rest in God, and to wait on God.

With The Whole-Hearted Christian, The Outer Man Functions In The Spirit.
This believer’s behavior and life-style are consistent with being a new-hearted, new creature in Christ. He is wholeheartedly yielded to and centered in Christ—has consecrated his entire person and life in this world to God alone (Romans 12:1), and is totally dependent on Christ’s sufficiency.
As a result of walking in the Spirit, the Whole-Hearted Christian is “led by the Spirit” (Galatians 5:18a), his soul is “filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18) and with the “fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22). His life reflects Christlikeness and the glory of God, and this magnifies the glory of the Father and the Son (Figure 11).

Figure 11: The “outer man” functional viewof the Whole-Hearted Christian.
The wholeheartedness of this believer is expressed through his body. This is evident in his behavior and life-style as abiding with God, walking in the Spirit, and walking in Christ.

All Christians have been blessed with freedom in Christ. However, the manifestation of that freedom is realized only when we walk in freedom. Paul cautions us: “For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another” (Galatians 5:13).