“Out of my bondage, sorrow and night; Jesus, I come; Jesus, I come;
Into Thy freedom, gladness and light, Jesus I come to Thee”.
So reads the first verse of the popular invitational hymn by William Sleeper. It is based on a solid biblical foundation.
In Deuteronomy 6:23 we read “And he brought us out from there, that he might bring us in and give us the land that he swore to give to our fathers”. Out of Egypt and the wilderness, and into the Promised land, a beautiful picture of each of our individual journeys, because “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13). The Message paraphrase says, “God rescued us from dead-end alleys and dark dungeons. He’s set us up in the kingdom of the Son he loves so much.” In both of these verses God is doing the work!
“Out of” [ek] and “into” [eis] are two prepositions that describe movement. They clearly define the movement from one location to another. The preposition “in” speaks of location, “in Christ”, “in the family”, “in the kingdom”. So God takes us out of one location and places us in another. And note that he never leaves us straddling the fence. “Into” is used some 1700 times in the New Testament, and “it is related to Christ in more than 20 passages”, according to one writer.
Acts 14:23, 19:4 and 24:24 are good examples of “into Christ” as well as the verses that speak of being baptized “into His death”. As the Psalmist wrote: “He brought me forth also into a large place; he delivered me, because he delighted in me” (Psalm 18:19). How much we thank God for the greatness of His work of delivering us from captivity into the freedom of the glory of the children of God!
This truth about how we were literally relocated is so amazing! And the ramifications are immense. We live in the earthly realm governed by time and space and form and matter. The heavenly, or spiritual realm is not governed by these same restrictions–it is a higher realm we are told, so when we read that we have been “translated” into the kingdom of His dear son, it paints a clear picture of what God has done for us in physical terms. We can relate to a geographical change along with the concepts that it implies like the geographical borders of laws. We can understand that “when in Rome, do as the Romans do.” and how the former rules that governed out lives have given way to the freedom that governs our lives in Christ Jesus now. What an amazing change has occurred in our lives when we were born again! No longer are we held by the powers of darkness, by the law with its punishments–we live in a whole different place! A place where we can thrill to the unveiling of our true identity–a “geographical” environment entirely conducive to transformation into the image of Christ!