Ransom the Captive

I live in the New York area and the idea of a trial of "suspected" terrorists in New York City is about as popular around here as the Boston Red Sox. I read this work of mercy and my mind immediately goes to "the prisoner" and some translations have this as "release the prisoner."

The think the key difference here is the sense of "ransom" and "captive." Someone who can be ransomed is usually not a prisoner, but a person who may have been kidnapped, in a place that they don't want to be. Paying the ransom would release them.

We see this illustrated in Christ on the Cross. The ultimate ransom, paying the ultimate price, for the ultimate prisoner: our own soul as a slave to sin. God wants us to be completely and totally free and too many times we do not allow ourselves to embrace that freedom. We limit the capacity of the grace of Christ to overcome our human weaknesses.

Sure we bring our sin to the Cross. We bring everything that we are. If we really do embrace that ransom, then why do we walk around as if we are still slaves to sin? Why do I still succumb to the stupid temptations in my life such as my temper, my desire to overindulge, my desire to fit in, no matter the cost?

Yet, in the end this is something that we can do for others. Are we allowing others to be freed from sin or are we leading them further into slavery? Are we offering for people the ransom of Christ on the Cross? Are we being a transparent window, a stained glass through which Christ shines and illuminates our own gifts?

There is the spiritual captivity of those that are trapped in sin, thinking that it is the only way to live and never being offered a better way and then there is the very real captivity of those that are imprisoned unjustly. We are taught that our justice system works much of the time but with the fairly recent use of DNA evidence, there are countless court cases that have been discovered to be simply wrong. One project that I think lives this work of mercy out fully is The Innocence Project. By utilizing DNA evidence they have overturned the judgements on 250 cases where prisoners were convicted. That is a lot of prisoners that we are just finding out about.

There have been times when I have felt that someone was being "unjust" to me but to be the subject of injustice to such a degree that decades of your life are spent paying for a crime you didn't commit baffles my mind.

How many people in our world are living as prisoners when they don't have to?

Prisoners to sin?

Prisoners to addiction?

Prisoners in a very real sense?

Christ has come to set us free and he has paid the ransom. How great a work of mercy to share that news, to help when we can, and to pray every day for those who are captives!