The Jubilee

What touched me most and what I enjoyed most in the recent summer training on the book of Leviticus is on "the jubilee." The truth concerning the jubilee is profound and truly unfathomable. The experience of the jubilee has begun from the day of one's salvation and has been going on and on. 

This time too, I need to design an official calendar for 2019. I had been waiting and praying for the perfect theme until one day in my time with the Lord, the Lord impressed me with the jubilee and the need to experience the jubilee all the days of our Christian lives in all the churches in India. I begin to study and revisit the messages on the jubilee.

After revisiting the truth on the jubilee with the Bible references and ministry materials, the following verses with footnotes were chosen from the Holy Bible, Recovery Version.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to announce the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to send away in release those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, the year of jubilee.” Luke 4:18-19 

Note on “acceptable year”: The New Testament age, typified by the year of jubilee (Lev. 25:8-17). The New Testament age would be the time when God would accept the returned captives of sin (Isa. 49:8; 2 Cor. 6:2) and when those oppressed under the bondage of sin would enjoy the release of God's salvation and keep the New Testament jubilee.

And you shall sanctify the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; and each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family. Leviticus  25:10 

Notes on “the fiftieth year”: That the jubilee was in the fiftieth year (vv. 10-11) signifies that the full responsibility (typified by the number fifty) to meet all the requirements of God has been fulfilled so that man does not need to bear any responsibility. Fifty years also signifies the entire course of fallen human life. Thus, the year of jubilee, the fiftieth year, signifies the conclusion of our fallen human life.

 

The year of jubilee is the acceptable year of the Lord prophesied in Isa. 61:1-2 and fulfilled by the Lord’s coming in Luke 4:16-22. In the Old Testament type the jubilee lasted for one year, but in the fulfillment it refers to the entire New Testament age, the age of grace, as the time when God accepts the returned captives of sin (Isa. 49:8; Luke 15:17-24; 2 Cor. 6:2) and when those oppressed under the bondage of sin enjoy the release of God’s salvation (Rom. 7:14—8:2). The believers’ enjoyment of the jubilee in the age of grace, i.e., their enjoyment of Christ as God’s grace to them, will issue in the full enjoyment of the jubilee in the millennium and in the fullest enjoyment in the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and new earth.

Then you shall sound aloud the ram’s horn in the seventh month on the tenth day of the month; on the Day of Expiation you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land. Leviticus 25 :9 

Note on "Day of Expiation": The sounding of the ram’s horn in the forty-ninth year on the Day of Expiation signifies that the jubilee is based on the expiation for sin, that the full liberty might be proclaimed to all the people (v. 10). This type was fulfilled by the full redemption of Christ as the basis for the proclamation of the full freedom to all the human race (cf. Mark 16:15; Luke 24:47).

Note on “jubilee” in 10: Perhaps related to the word ram; meaning a time of shouting, or a time of the trumpeting of the ram’s horn. The trumpeting of the ram’s horn signifies the preaching of the gospel as the proclaiming of liberty in the New Testament jubilee to all the sinners sold under sin (Luke 4:18-19; Acts 26:17b-18) that they may return to God and God’s family and may rejoice with shouting in the enjoyment of God’s salvation.

The fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; you shall not sow nor reap its aftergrowth nor gather from its unpruned vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you. You shall eat its produce out of the field. In this year of jubilee each one of you shall return to his possession. Leviticus  25:11-13 

Note on "possession": In the year of jubilee everyone who had sold his possession, his allotted portion of the good land, was returned to it without paying anything to redeem it (vv. 10, 13, 28), and everyone who had sold himself into slavery regained his freedom and returned to his family (vv. 39-41). Returning to one’s possession and being freed and returning to one’s family signify that in the New Testament jubilee the believers have returned to God as their lost divine possession, have been released from all bondage, and have returned to the church as their divine family.

To open their eyes, to turn them from darkness to light and from the authority of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me. Acts 26:18 

Note on "open theri eyes": This was to carry out the fulfillment of God's jubilee, the acceptable year of the Lord, proclaimed by the Lord Jesus in Luke 4:18-21 (see note 19¹ in Luke 4) according to God's New Testament economy. The first item of the spiritual and divine blessings of the New Testament jubilee, which are the blessings of the gospel of God, is to open the eyes of those who are fallen and turn them from darkness to light, that they may see the divine things in the spiritual realm. To see these things requires spiritual sight and divine light.

Note on "inheritance":  Lit., a portion; referring to a portion of an inheritance. This inheritance is the Triune God Himself with all He has, all He has done, and all He will do for His redeemed people. The Triune God is embodied in the all-inclusive Christ (Col. 2:9), who is the portion allotted to the saints as their inheritance (Col. 1:12). The Holy Spirit, who has been given to the saints, is the foretaste, the pledge, and the guarantee of this divine inheritance (Rom. 8:23; Eph. 1:14), which we are sharing and enjoying today as a foretaste in God's New Testament jubilee, and which we will enjoy in full in the coming age and for eternity (1 Pet. 1:4). In the type of the jubilee in Lev. 25:8-13, the main blessings are the liberty proclaimed and the returning of every man to his own possession. In the fulfillment of the jubilee here, liberation from the authority of darkness and the receiving of the divine inheritance are the primary blessings (cf. note 32³ in ch. 20).

For the law of the Spirit of life has freed me in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and of death. Romans 8:2   

Note on "the law of the Spirit of life": The law of the Spirit of life is the subject of this chapter. The Spirit and life are mentioned in this verse, but only in connection with the working of this law. Life is the content and issue of the Spirit, and the Spirit is the ultimate and consummate manifestation of the Triune God after His being processed through incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection and becoming the indwelling, life-giving Spirit, who is life to all the believers in Christ. The law that has freed us from the law of sin, which is of Satan, who dwells in the members of our fallen body (Rom. 7:23, 17), is of this Spirit of life. It is this law, not God nor the Spirit, that works in us to deliver us from the working of the law of sin in our flesh and to enable us to know God and gain God and thereby live Him out. This law of the Spirit of life is the spontaneous power of the Spirit of life. Such a spontaneous law works automatically under the condition that fulfills its requirements (see note 4²). 

Both Satan and God, after entering into our being and dwelling in us, work within us not by outward, objective activities but by an inward, subjective law. The working of the law of the Spirit of life is the working of the processed Triune God in our spirit; this is also the working of the Triune God in us in His life.

The spiritual life revealed in this chapter is fourfold. First, it was the divine life in the Spirit (v. 2). Second, it became life in our spirit through regeneration (v. 10). Then from our spirit it saturates our mind for the transformation of our soul, to which our mind belongs, and becomes the life in our soul (v. 6). Eventually, it will permeate our body and become the life in our body (v. 11), ultimately issuing in the transfiguration of our body (Phil. 3:21), that is, the redemption of our body (v. 23).

The major function of the processed Triune God in indwelling our spirit as the law of the Spirit of life is to free us completely from Satan, who dwells in our fallen nature as the law of sin and of death (7:23-25). This freeing is not only for our subjective justification but even more for our dispositional sanctification.

The calendar was designed with these Bible verses and notes and was thus approved by the brothers as well. Later, it came to my notice that the burden these days is on the experience of jubilee in our Christian life and church-life. The young working saints just had their training on "the jubilee". And the saints in India will be displaying on their walls as a reminder to be in the jubilee. The year 2019 will indeed be a year of jubilee; the return of the captives of sin (Isa. 49:8; 2 Cor. 6:2) to God, and those oppressed under the bondage of sin would enjoy the release of God's salvation and keep the New Testament jubilee.