¹⁰ Set this year apart as holy, a time to proclaim freedom throughout the land for all who live there. It will be a jubilee year for you, when each of you may return to the land that belonged to your ancestors and return to your own clan.

Freedom for Hebrew Slaves

⁸ This message came to Jeremiah from the Lord after King Zedekiah made a covenant with the people, proclaiming freedom for the slaves.

¹⁶ For you are free, yet you are God’s slaves, so don’t use your freedom as an excuse to do evil.

¹³ For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love.

Good News for the Oppressed

¹³ In the Year of Jubilee each of you may return to the land that belonged to your ancestors.

² “I am the Lord your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of your slavery.

²⁵ And now Jerusalem is just like Mount Sinai in Arabia,^[a] because she and her children live in slavery to the law. ²⁶ But the other woman, Sarah, represents the heavenly Jerusalem. She is the free woman, and she is our mother. ²⁷ As Isaiah said,

²⁸ And you, dear brothers and sisters, are children of the promise, just like Isaac. ²⁹ But you are now being persecuted by those who want you to keep the law, just as Ishmael, the child born by human effort, persecuted Isaac, the child born by the power of the Spirit.

³⁰ But what do the Scriptures say about that? “Get rid of the slave and her son, for the son of the slave woman will not share the inheritance with the free woman’s son.”^{[c] 31} So, dear brothers and sisters, we are not children of the slave woman; we are children of the free woman.

Freedom in Christ

5 So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law.

¹⁷ For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.