Standing on centuries-old soil of a former slave plantation in the deep south, I found myself filled with many senses. As part of one of our recent trips as a church to South Carolina, we had stopped to visit this historical site, not as a vacation, but as an experience to deepen our understanding of where we have come from as believers.
This plantation was just one of a few places we visited during this trip that presented a narrative of a specific aspect of human history on American soil. The day before, we had visited the state capitol and had heard a brief and tidy overview of the history of the state and state building. But now, walking under the large southern oak trees draped with strands of moss, I listened to another telling of the past from a local man about life on the plantation. As I listened to the timeline spanning across many generations of both slave and free man, I heard the faint traces of a larger narrative — the history of mankind and its solution.
Although on the surface, the plantation was a symbol of a slavery, it actually is not unfamiliar to me. Inside, I deeply feel my own bondage from my history. This bondage goes beyond the physical — aren’t we all under the human bondage of sin, flesh and self — an inescapable bondage no matter what our race, background or status. Oftentimes, the bondage we experience is more subtle, rising up from our own morality, opinions, or human righteousness. How often have I been caught by my own definition of justice or what I think is spiritual? Where is the answer, the true freedom?
This visitation to the plantation suddenly gave me a new clarity on human history and my own. At that moment, I recalled my own past, how the gospel came to me as a young child in the midst of my own family tragedy and how the Lord has brought me out of my own sin and bondage, reconciling me into His body. As believers, we are not merely looking at history with a moral or social justice view; today we have a deeper understanding and answer found in Christ. Through the cross of Christ, all of the enmity, the barrier between us and God has been dealt with:
But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have become near in the blood of Christ. / For He Himself is our peace, He who has made both one and has broken down the middle wall of partition, the enmity (Eph. 2:13-14)
Through the effective work of the cross, all the hatred, opinions, morality, religion, race — anything that divides us from the oneness in Him has been crucified and a new way opened to us through the Spirit to be truly reconciled and one with our God and one another (v. 16). We are no longer isolated and bound in ourselves. We are brought near. We can be truly set free from all of the high and low human entanglements to claim a new identity in Christ: “…there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free man, but Christ is all and in all” (Col. 3:11).
As I looked around me at the property, I saw the brothers and sisters with me in the Lord. What can overcome the hatred and divisions of generations? There is nothing higher to claim than Christ — there is no physical or religious status that can grant true freedom like this. Only the cross of Christ and the new life in the Spirit can make us, each person, truly one. Where else could we have tasted the Lord’s mercy and freedom so keenly than in this timing and environment to not only bring clarity to human history to also build us up together more in reality of His words? We have all come a long way to be here today, to be on this trip, to be in this church life sharing these experiences that confirm and deepen our faith together for His testimony as His body.
— TW