What are we freed from? The people back then [in the time of Ezra], they were freed…by the word of the Lord's anointed. Do you remember that? In Isaiah, God says to Cyrus, you are my messiah. You are my anointed one. You are my
Michael Voytekchrist,as he calls him by name and says, you are my anointed: I have anointed you to do my bidding. And his bidding was to speak these words which we find in Ezra 1:1–11, to free the captives. By simply speaking the word, their soul was healed in a sense; they were free to go back to their inheritance. Is it the same for us, that by the Word of Christ, the Word of God, we are freed? It is by the work of Christ, yes. But the application of the work of Christ, by the Holy Spirit, through the Word of God, we are freed from sin. We are justified by faith. We are at peace with God. We have access unto that grace. We are identified with him. We are no longer slaves to sin, but slaves to righteousness.1
1 In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing: