Jesus displayed the greatest act of self-control, the greatest revelation of freedom, when He laid His life down for us.

The enemy didn’t kill Jesus. Jesus couldn’t be killed. He had never sinned (see 2 Cor 5:21). In Romans 6:23 we read, “the wages of sin is death.” Jesus had never sinned and therefore He would have never died, nor could His life be taken from Him. He freely gave it on our behalf.

He laid His life down and revealed the power of freedom. He revealed the wonder of all authority; He revealed the sovereignty of perfect love.

The freest person in the room is the most powerful person in the room. A free person never operates in the context of control; a free person operates in the context of trusting surrender to sovereign love.

In every room Jesus walked into, He was the person with the most authority. He was the person with the most power. Why? Because He was also the person with the most freedom.

Jesus was the freest person because He gave His life even unto death. And not even death could control Him; death couldn’t make Him bend the knee nor cause Him to surrender His freedom. He rose. He is alive.

When He laid down His life, when He let himself be murdered, it was the greatest example of self-control that’s ever been. It revealed the power of Jesus freedom, the authority of sovereign love. And it purchased for us access to freedom from the controlling narrative of hell. It gave us the roadmap to intimacy and trust.

When He rose, He gave us access to know sovereign love like He did and to walk in the authority of sovereign love like He did.

When we live from the narrative of sovereign love, we are becoming one with him and because of His spirit in us and the gift of self-control, we are the freest people in the room, the freest people on the planet. Free to love in the same trusting powerful way Jesus loved. In the same resurrection life Jesus purchased.

Jason Clark is a writer, speaker and lead communicator at A Family Story ministries. His mission is to encourage sons and daughters to grow sure in the love of an always-good heavenly Father. He and his wife, Karen, live in North Carolina with their three children.

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