Plan of Salvation

Exchanging our Slavery for Freedom

The title of this Drawer of Gems is “Exchanging our Slavery for Freedom”.  The Holy Spirit has placed in Scripture powerful imagery to help us understand Heavenly Father’s Plan of Salvation.  Freedom from slavery is one of these word pictures:

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;  Isaiah 61:1

This proclamation is also recorded by Luke in his Gospel account of Jesus testifying in the Nazareth synagogue that he is the Christ:  And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.  Luke 4:21  It is the Mission of the Christ to set us free of our bondage.  Christ fulfilled this Mission two millennia ago.

Liberty is a synonym for freedom and bondage is a synonym for slavery:

And that because of false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage: Galatians 2:4

The image created is of a person being held in bondage by some malicious force.  This person’s freedom has been taken away by this force.  Captivity, slavery, imprisonment, and bondage all convey this concept.  While this may not be the most familiar allegory (symbolic illustration) used in Scripture, it is a particularly dramatic one.  It contains an emotional before and after picture: (Before: a person held captive by a malicious force; After: the hold of the malicious force over the person broken, the person set free).  This image emphasizes the despair of the captive and the extreme joy that accompanies being set free.

All the Gems in this Drawer are colored gold.  This is to suggest 'high cost'; to bring into mind buying a slave’s freedom.  After all, freedom does not come without a price; a price that as Isaiah reveals was paid by the one “the LORD hath anointed”; that is, the one the LORD sent specifically for the task.

This particular coin might have been used in the time of the Apostles.  It was minted in 70AD in Judea just after the destruction of the Jewish Temple by the Roman Legions.  This act climaxed the bloody suppression of the Jewish revolt.   This coin may even have been made of gold melted down from artifacts looted from the Temple.  On the front is a portrait of the Roman Emperor Vespasian.  On the back is an image of Justice.  The image of Justice was chosen to make a grievous statement to the rest of the Roman Empire, to millions of effectual Roman 'slaves'.  This coin said to the world “Rome will not hesitate to mete out bloody justice to any rebelling territory”.  One irony here is that while Rome may have destroyed the Jewish Temple in the name of Justice;  Jesus had already rendered the Temple useless.  He did this by paying the blood price due Justice for the sins of the whole world – including the Romans.  There was no longer any need to offer the daily animal sacrifices which were the primary purpose of the Temple.  Jesus fulfilled the Mosaic Law which prescribed all the ordinances performed in the Temple.  The Temple no longer had a function!  A second irony is that while this coin reminded most of the world of its bondage to Rome; it is used here to represent the world's freedom purchased by Jesus.

The Holy Spirit uses the imagery of freedom from slavery to illustrate the effect of Christ’s Atonement.  Christ’s Atonement enacts the Great Exchange of a person's Slavery for Freedom.  In order to understand fully this message of the Holy Spirit one must accurately answer the question:  “What is the force that holds the person in bondage?”.  In understanding this answer one may then understand the crucial, definitive aspects of the “freedom” a person is granted through the Atonement.