Today begins a new series marking a day in history and connecting that event with God’s story.
May these accounts illuminate God’s providential story in which He “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11) as seen through these day-to-day accounts in history.
To begin the year we have a landmark event.
On January 1, 1863 President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
Lincoln declared by executive decree that: “All persons held as slaves within any State . . . in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” [1]
Lincoln, the wise politician and calculating wartime president, was more strategic in this proclamation that he was benevolent.
Notice how the recipients of this proclamation’s freedom were those held in slavery in rebellious states. Essentially, Lincoln freed slaves in states and counties where he had no authority — the Confederate States. He did so in expectation that the word would spread to people held in bondage, who upon hearing would abandon their masters and migrate to the North. This proclamation declared free nearly three million people who had never known such hope.[2]
And what Lincoln had planned, happened. The Emancipation Proclamation was of strategic importance to the Northern cause as it provided 200,000 African-American men who would serve in the Union Army and Navy. [3] And the mass exodus of newly freed people crippled the Southern economy.
However, there were also a half million people held as slaves in border states (Deleware, Kentucky, Missouri, West Virgina and Maryland) and many southern state counties under control of the Union Amry that were not set free in 1863. The proclamation for those people in bondage in these regions stated that “[Those in slavery in those areas] are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.”[4]
The Emancipation Proclamation signed on January 1, 1863 should be celebrated and remembered for leading to the freedom of millions and it should also be remembered that freedom, as proclaimed and defined by men, is always limited.
Through Christ, however, we can know and enjoy true, complete and eternal freedom.
John Piper describes freedom in Christ this way: “When Jesus makes us free, he makes us free at every single level. He has given us the freedom of opportunity: he died for us. The freedom of ability: he gave us the gift of faith. The freedom of desire: he put a new heart in us and wrote his law on it, causing us to have new desires and new loves.” [5]
The ‘emancipation proclamation’ granted by Christ is complete freedom purchased on the cross matched with the full empowerment of the Spirit to say “no” to sin and “yes” to righteousness as to live in the “free, joyful, satisfying obedience to God.”[6]
On this New Year’s Day is is fitting to celebrate the greatest of procolomations: “‘So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed’” (John 8:36).
Footnotes:
- https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation/transcript.html
- https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2012/09/emancipation-proclamation/
- https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/blacks-civil-war
- https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation/transcript.html
- https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/what-is-christian-freedom
- https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/what-is-christian-freedom