True freedom via the power of knowledge

By Allen Mandishona

Allow me, through your beloved site, to share what I have found out concerning freedom and the power of knowledge in my Christian walk. 

I have wondered for a long time, why born again Christians, blood washed and Spirit filled believers, seem to remain under certain bondages even after accepting Christ as Lord and savior.

I have seen people who suffer under generational curses and spirits and many are cursed or have curses pronounced in their lives and suddenly, their life take a different direction in accordance with the word(s) spoken against them.

The curses or misfortunes begin to manifest in their lives so much so that it becomes clear that it is because of the curses or spirits that they suffer. I have also always asked myself ‘ is the blood of Jesus not able to completely set people free? And the answer to that has eluded me for so long.

Until I read John 8 v 32 and 36.

In these two scriptures, thanks to the illuminating work of the Spirit of God, I have discovered that in the process of redeeming mankind and making them free, not only do we need the blood of Jesus. Even though His blood redeemed us from the curse of the law according to Gal 3 v 14, we also need to be knowledgeable with the things of God .

I have heard so many times the saying which goes ‘ ignorance of law has no defence’ and have for long never liked that statement. I then found it also in scripture in Hosea 4 v 6 expressed in another way but having the same meaning.

In Hosea, the word of God says that ‘my people perish because of lack of knowledge’. What that points to is a situation where God provides all that is required for people ‘ not to perish’ but then the reason for them perishing is lack of knowledge.

In John 8v32, the bible says ‘..and THE truth shall MAKE you free’. The fact that Jesus died for the whole world and that because of His blood, the whole world was/is made free from the curse, does not mean that the whole world becomes automatically saved.

It only works for those who KNOW that truth and take an action(of accepting Jesus). Otherwise the world is perishing even though Christ’s death is the source of eternal life. Why? Because people have no knowledge of the word of God.

I have underlined the two words THE and MAKE in the above scripture just to highlight something. The word of God says The truth shall MAKE you free. The word THE is a definite article. In our context, it then means that the truth is invariable, it’s the truth, the unchanging truth.

And then it says it shall MAKE. I like that translation from the king James version. Making free is different from setting free. Setting free can be a temporary arrangement while making free is a permanent set up. Once the truth makes you free, you are free indeed.

Again in John8v36, the word of God tells us ‘.. if the Son therefore makes you free, ye shall be free indeed..’ Again the word tells us another source of our freedom, its when Christ makes us free and not sets us free.

Coming to our issue of curses affecting believers. I believe its only because people lack knowledge. I believe, through scriptures, that it should be difficult, if not impossible, for believers of the new testament to be under any curse.

Why? Because Christ’s atoning and substitutionary death, delivered us from the curse of the law. The word of God says that cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. So Christ had to be hanged so that he takes away ALL our curses.

I have seen and heard some men of the cloth pronouncing curses to their congregants. Why should that happen in the new testament? I believe its lack of knowledge. If Christ took all our infirmities and curses, that should suffice it!!!

No more curses to those who have believed in Jesus!! Even Romans 8 shades more light on some of the privileges of the new testament believer.

Christ came to give us life as shown in John10v10. The abundant life that he came to give us is not just any other kind of life, it is the ZOE or the God kind of life and that life is not able to inherit let alone live with a curse.

Coming back to Romans 8,verse 15 says ‘..for ye have not received the spirit of bandage again to fear, but ye have received the Spirit of adoption…’ if you notice, the first word spirit in this scripture has got a small letter ‘s’ on the word spirit, meaning that the spirit of bondage is not the Holy Spirit.

Then the second ‘s’ on Spirit of adoption is capitalized meaning the Spirit of God. So there should be no more bondage to him who has believed in Jesus, to him who has received the Eternal Spirit who is the seal of our inheritance in God. So all the bondage that comes with curses is not a new testament phenomenon.

Verse 33 says ‘.. who shall lay ANYTHING to the charge of God’s elect?’ so no one can lay ANYTHING, I mean anything , against us. That also includes curses. Someone will say that this waters down and removes the desire for holy and right living when we say that no one can curse us.

Let me try to explain this by giving an example of what happens in our world. When we say a country is independent, we are tacitly or silently saying that that country is now capable of making its own laws and shaping its own destiny.

Let me pause this question; why then do we have prisons and jails when we say we are independent when in actual fact prisons brings bondage which is exactly opposite to freedom??

Freedom is not complete or is not freedom until it empowers people to design laws that then bind themselves and when people who are free, breaks those laws, they are apprehended because of the laws that they freely designed.

In short, freedom is an acceptance that we are now making our own laws and willing to be bound by them and that if we break them, we freely become bound by them as well. So to me, true freedom is not just being free for the sake of it, it is the willingness to be under some authority of some sort.

So the greatest bondage itself is found in freedom!! When we say we are free, it should actually be that we are free from making our own laws or precepts!! We are using what has been proven and are now free from making our own untested laws!.

In a country setup, we are saying as soon as we make our own constitution because we are now free, we are actually saying the citizens are free to live BUT according to the laws of the land. The same applies to Christian living.

We are free under the law of God. But which law exactly, the bible says we are now under the law of the Spirit. That law of the Spirit is actually freedom in Christ!!

Another example to illustrate a is understanding on what freedom is. I have heard someone say I am free because I am not married so I come home anytime I want and I do anything I want. After a while, that same person was now confined to his own home having been diagnosed HIV positive.

So what some people think is freedom is in actual fact bondage in itself. Now he is under bandage of that deadly disease. So his freedom gave birth to his bondage!! In actual fact, freedom should be viewed as the desired end, freedom at the end of it all.

True freedom is not just freedom in isolation; rather, it should be viewed as the voluntary willingness to submit to some authority. If you chose to be independent with no one to be accountable to, your mindset is like your law to yourself. You then become accountable to that.

In essence, there is no freedom without submission. In fact the bible teaches that everyone is under a yoke of some sort although this notion has severally been misinterpreted. Christ said that we should give Him our yokes and then we take His which is lighter.

Which means there is no one who remains without a yoke. This world has no free agents in this regard!! Its either you have the yoke of the devil or your own yoke or Jesus’.

There are those who actually think that they are free and yet that ‘freedom’ is actually bondage by evil spirits!!

You think that the Christian life robs you of your most desired freedom, what you are just not seeing is that when you refuse to submit yourself under the authority of Christ and His word, you are tacitly agreeing to be under the authority of the devil!! No free agents.

Coming back again to the issue of Christians suffering under curses, this, I am convinced, is because of lack of knowledge. If we have the knowledge of scriptures, we will refuse to be cursed. No divination against Christians, no enchantment or sorcery.

So be warned! Maybe your get way to freedom from curses and devilish bondage is acquiring knowledge. That knowledge is found in the word of God, the infallible and inerrant word of God, the inspired or God-breathed word.

When reading this, there is also need to listen to the leading of the Spirit of God. He is the one who is responsible for illuminating(shading light to us as we read) scriptures.