Juneteenth and the Gospel of Freedom

Every summer growing up in the West Side of San Antonio I looked forward to the month of June. The month of June meant Juneteenth! And Juneteenth meant family, fun, and food. It meant celebration. As a Black man, it wasn’t until years later that I learned what Juneteenth was while sitting under the preaching of Dr. Tony Evans at a gathering of NFL players.

Juneteenth commemorates when Black people in Texas celebrated the ending of slavery in the United States. On June 19, 1865, a Union major general named Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, to let the enslaved Black Americans know they had been set free and the Civil War had come to end. Major General Granger’s information came two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on Jan. 1, 1863. The Black Americans in Texas had continued living enslaved even though they had been set free through a bloody war.

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As Black American, I am grateful the Union won and I am grateful that my great-great-great-great-grandfather, Moses Davis, a Black man, fought for the Union. Can you imagine the joy and celebration of being set free from slavery? Then imagine the heartache of knowing you had been free for two years, yet you were living enslaved.

The story of Juneteenth reminds me of how many followers of Jesus live enslaved to sin and dark powers, even though Jesus has set them free. Many followers of Jesus have a cross that’s just too small. They think Jesus only forgave them, but the glorious God of unmatched mercy has done so much more than forgive us.

Forgiveness of sins is the pathway to freedom. King Jesus in his redemptive achievement—that is, his sinless life, substitutionary, sacrificial death on the cross in our place, and resurrection—is victorious over the power of sin, death, and evil. Those in Christ live in and from his epic victory. Jesus fought a bloody war for us and won. As the Scripture says, “They conquered…by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony” (Revelation 12:11). Those who are incorporated into the life of Jesus are slaves no more. Marinate on this:

You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins. He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. In this way, he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross. Colossians 2:13-15.