One of the most asked questions in Christianity by those who don’t know how it works is How does believing in Jesus Christ lighten my burden?

This comes from the scripture:

Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light” (Matthew 11:28–30).

In a recent Christian family show an author was talking about this very subject. He met a girl that was a Christian that once was very into it but gave it up because she thought it was too hard to do. And she said that it felt like a great burden was lifted off of her when she stopped being a Christian.

This world follows the same type of mentality. That just living carefree and not trying to be better, let alone in the sight of God is the easier way to go. You can do all you want, when you want, to anyone you want. That is how a world without God and without an adherence to even man’s laws function.

While you have rejected the way of God and not taken on Christ’s burden as being yours in life you feel like you are free and can even deceive yourself into thinking you are free but really you are just trading one yoke for another.

Instead of serving God through Jesus Christ you are now serving sin and all that comes with it. Even when there is pleasure in the sinful acts they all have consequences, either immediately or eventually you suffer the consequences of your choice.

Some people have truly lived a life of pleasure throughout their entire existence away from God. The reality the bible points out is that they had their comfort in this life. If they follow God in the next they will have used up what was to be the same in the Kingdom.

Those who live a pleasurable life in Christ often will have trials of some kind. The pleasure is knowing those trials produce righteousness and in a smaller way you partake in Christ’s Suffering like he did for us to pay for our sins. If you love Christ this becomes a pleasure to do so.

Everyone has trials no matter how their life appears. It’s who helps you through them and you recognize that being that matters. If you think you are the single source of strength in your life you still have an outlook of heavy burdens as even yourself can be much crueler than a loving God.

There is even a scripture for that very thing:

1 John 3:20 20 For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.

Meaning that God’s love and forgiveness overrules what we do to ourselves through guilt and self-condemnation!

His yoke is one of submitting to his love. Yes he chastens, or corrects those he loves but he does it in love to make you into what your destiny in him is. It is that he is loving too.

As for that young lady that left the faith and felt her burdens were lifted. It turns out she was part of a very legalistic church. They placed more burdens on her than what Christ does. This is not the light burden he describes. It was control and submission to that church not to Him.

The burden that is light is to submit to Him in our hearts. Rejecting sin and repenting may seem hard when all we see is the pleasure it brings to stay in sin but we also need to see that it brings penalty and hardships to follow. It comes in many forms. Some people may sin their entire lives but the penalty paid does not occur until judgement with Christ.

Romans 2:5-8

5 But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed.

6 God “will repay each person according to what they have done.”

7 To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life.

8 But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger.

So to understand it, you will either serve Jesus Christ or you will serve sin. His yoke is easy and the burden is light and he forgives you. Anything outside that will be punished.

God hates sin but it’s not the sin that is punished but the one who does it.