It was a heart-stopping moment. The One who created the universe wept at the grave of His friend. And He, the Resurrection and the Life, raised him to life again. The words of Jesus in John 11:44 throb with majestic grandeur:

“Loose him, and let him go.”

“Free him, and let him go.”

“Unbind him, and let him go.”

What is this? It’s freedom from bondage.

I want to blow this story up so you can see it. Let’s go back to the stirring drama and watch the scene unfold.

Look at the lifeless body of Lazarus. He’s not just dead; he is rotting.

Jesus is looking straight at a sealed tomb. Perhaps the Father said to Him, “My Son, You too will be placed in a sealed tomb just like this one. And I will raise You up with the sound of My voice.”

Surrounded by death, sorrow, wailing, mourning, and grief, Jesus doesn’t get flustered. He is the unshakeable Rock, immovable and confident in His God. He faces His greatest enemy without fear.

The Lord stands before the great maw of death. He approaches Lazarus’s tomb prepared for battle, squaring off with death, the child of sin.

Jesus shouts. By His word, He dispenses His resurrection life and disarms the grip of death that held His friend for four long days.

Wielding only three words—“Lazarus, come forth”—Jesus turns the evening of mourning into the sunshine of joy. Lazarus is made alive—a new creature—free from the bondage of graveclothes.

The facets of death are many: spiritual blindness, spiritual deafness, darkness, inactivity, limitation, condemnation, etc. And death always brings bondage.

Lazarus is tied hand and foot with burial clothes, and his face is wrapped in a cloth. He cannot see, hear, speak, or walk. He is in bondage.

But the Christ of God meets and overcomes death in all of its forms with life. He is death’s Destroyer. And after bringing His friend back to the living, He thunders to the crowd, “Unbind him, and let him go!”

I see two things here.

First, Bethany is the place where God’s people are set free from bondage. Bondage to dead religion, bondage to legalism, bondage to sin, bondage to the world, bondage to guilt and shame, bondage to the flesh, bondage to the curse of the Law, and every other kind of bondage.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

The creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.