The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me,
for the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted
and to proclaim that captives will be released
and prisoners will be freed.
He has sent me to tell those who mourn
that the time of the Lord’s favour has come,
(Isaiah 61:1-2 NLT)
They can’t help themselves. No sooner do they have a good day or a few good days, than one incident sends them spiralling down again. They cannot help themselves. They see themselves doing the very thing they swore they would never do again just because they are in a stronghold. They cannot help themselves. In the moment, at that time, it feels so exhilarating, it feeds something they’ve told themselves they cannot do without, even as it leaves them even more of a hollow shell afterwards.
With Christ’s declaration, liberty is not simply relief from material chains, but release from guilt, oppression, sin, and even death. It is because they cannot help themselves that Jesus came to help.
Our Lord’s ministry is replete with examples of such liberation. He delivers those bound by spiritual forces: the Gerasene demoniac is set free from a legion of demons and restored to community and sanity (Mark 5:1–20, ESV). He releases men and women shackled by shame—the woman caught in adultery is liberated to live without condemnation (John 8:1–11, ESV). Doubt, fear, disease, deformity, and spiritual blindness—each finds its answer in Christ, who proclaims, “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36, ESV).
This commitment continues in the apostolic age. Paul and Silas, imprisoned for gospel witness, sing hymns and are miraculously freed (Acts 16:25–26, ESV)—a literal and symbolic sign that God’s power shatters human bonds. More ambitiously, the fledgling church’s social radicalism undermines the barriers of status, ethnicity, and even slavery: “there is neither slave nor free…for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28, ESV). The story of Onesimus, the runaway slave, received as “no longer a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother” (Philemon 16, ESV), testifies to a new kind of liberty born among believers.
Early Christian tradition witnessed believers ransoming captives using church funds, even at considerable cost. Records from the second and fifth centuries recount how bishops and congregations purchased the freedom of those enslaved—sometimes risking bankruptcy for the sake of liberation. The church’s burial customs, which never labelled Christian dead as slaves, and its willingness to elevate former slaves to leadership, further embodied this ethos.
To proclaim liberty to captives is to declare the gospel in its fullness: spiritual, social, and personal freedom made manifest in Christ. Jesus not only brings release; He embodies liberty and sends His followers into the world as heralds of this good news. Each time the church visits the prisoner, welcomes the former outcast, or shares the message of forgiveness and new life, it witnesses afresh the enduring power of Christ—the Liberator—whose ministry is echoed wherever captives are set free (see Matthew 25:36, ESV).
In light of Jesus’ service to proclaim liberty to the captive, the challenge for those who follow Jesus is to reflect this in our own actions. How do we seek to understand the captives today? How do we follow the leading of the Spirit to reach the captives and see them liberated from addictions?
For His Name’s Sake
C. L. J. Dryden
Shalom
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