Jesus came to set us free from the blinding effect sin has over mankind. One outcome of sin was the loss of the true knowledge of God. This can be seen in Adam immediately after he sinned. When Adam heard the voice of the Lord in the garden, he hid himself. Get a hold of this picture. Sin clouded Adam’s thinking and he no longer retained a true knowledge of who God is. How can anyone who really knows God believe that they can hide from Him? (Know any believers like that?)
Now, in the darkness of the mind without God, man created his own view of the world and its meaning. Man now decides for himself the purpose of his existence. Claiming to live from his own wisdom, he actually is under the influence of his moral blindness and lives “… blindfold in a world of illusion” Ephesians 4:18 (Phillips). Man, without Christ, lives within the limits of his unenlightened intellect. The spiritual light needed to see things in the proper perspective is absent. The ability to discern between right and wrong is deficient.
This blindness comes naturally when one is alienated from the life of God. Jesus came to offer that life. (John 10:10) Jesus died to deliver “us from the power of darkness”. (Colossians 1:13) Jesus came to enter into the place of Satan’s control over us. The word “power” here means authority, jurisdiction, liberty, power, right, strength. That says it all. The Apostle Paul in a sense is saying Jesus solved our entire problem concerning the devil. The word “power” also can mean delegated influence. Jesus came to bind the one who had us bound then set us free and give us the opportunity to change the influence we are under.
Whether or not we take advantage of the liberty that Christ won for us, it is nevertheless available. We can walk according to the revelation of who we are in Christ if we believe it and choose to. In Ephesians 4:17 Paul instructs us not to imitate the lifestyle of the unsaved. We are not live as the unsaved, in the emptiness of their mind. The difference between the saved and the unsaved should be evident in the way that we think. The Everlasting Gospel calls it “worthless thinking” and the Living Bible says ““…Live no longer as the unsaved do… they are blinded and confused”. Jesus came to take away the confusion by bringing us the truth. He came to enlighten us so that we make the choice of living with a God influenced mind.
