We are in the second week of our series, Home Free, where we are looking at the freedom that can be ours in Jesus. Today, we're talking about how to be free from death.

Romans 8:18-22
Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God's curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God's children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

In a practical way, humanity's selfish choices - theft, murder, adultery - bring harm to others. That's not how we were meant to live. So humans have been enslaved to sin (and therefore death), while creation has been enslaved to corruption and decay. It's parallel. They're connected.

Because of Jesus, the hope of this world is that it will one day be free from death and decay once and for all. The ultimate destiny of our broken world is not destruction, but renewal. Our world will finally be healed.

Romans 8:23-24
And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. We were given this hope when we were saved.

In other words, this life is not the end for us. We have a new life - a new body - waiting for us on the other side of death. In our world overcome by anxiety and fear, we must be the kind of people who radiate hope in the face of pain. We must show the world that this brokenness isn't the end of the story.

Our relationships with one another and even to the creation itself can start to look like what's to come. Through the Spirit, we can heal the broken places of our world. We can start to live resurrection lives now.