How Does the Year of Jubilee Joyfully Point Us Back to Jesus?
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As we just looked at the verses about the release of bondservants, I cannot help but travel over to the books of the New Testament. Romans 6:17-18 says, “But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.”
We were all slaves to sin before Jesus came to take away our sin and purchase our freedom through His death. No matter what we have been enslaved to in our lives, Jesus offers freedom; Jesus is our ultimate jubilee. Instead of just offering us freedom once every 50 years, Christ gave us eternal freedom through His death and resurrection.
Philippians 2:5-6 says, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.”
The year of Jubilee is never mentioned in the New Testament. Christians do not celebrate this year. Jewish people today also no longer recognize this celebration either. According to My Jewish Learning, “But the jubilee year has not been observed for at least two millennia. This is because the verse in Leviticus, which specifically names’“all its inhabitants,’ was understood by the rabbis to mean that the jubilee year only applies when all those who are meant to live in Israel — that is, all 12 tribes of Israel — do in fact live there.”
Jesus is offering jubilee to each one of us today. The truth is that we do not need to be held captive by our sins anymore. We can proclaim and embrace the freedom that we have through Christ. I imagine that we all have our own testimonies of coming to a saving faith in Jesus. One thing that I love about the Year of Jubilee in Scripture is that no matter if a person was a bondservant for one day or forty-nine years, on the 50th year, this person was given the ability to be set free of all debts and all service. In a similar way, whether we accepted Christ as a child, or on the last day of our lives, our debts are paid and forgiven by the grace of Jesus.
May the Year of Jubilee remind us how we were once enslaved to our sins, but we have been made alive and freed through Jesus. We can celebrate the Jubilee of Jesus’ resurrection every moment of every day.
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