(Washington Stand) When I was a little girl, my mom and grandma would volunteer to go into prisons and cook meals for the incarcerated. They would tell me and my brother stories of these experiences. I remember my grandma saying, “I was never afraid. They are just people. God loves them, and they need Jesus.”
The heart of the gospel is freedom. We all were captives until Jesus released us from the darkness of sin and its penalty of death. Our own freedom from darkness should stir us to compassion for the criminal who faces physical captivity as well as spiritual captivity.
Isaiah 61:1b says, “He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives, and release from darkness for the prisoners.”
Isaiah is prophesying about Jesus’s work on the cross that releases from the darkness of sin’s bondage every person who puts their faith in Him. The physical release of a person from prison means little without the spiritual release of that person from sin.
America’s criminal justice system massively fails in rehabilitating criminals in a way that equips them to stay out of jail after release. (Read More)
