And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan.
We stopped adhering to Levitical law many years ago. I am not even sure when Hebrews stop celebrating the Year of Jubilee. It was certainly not an option during the Babylonian Exile nor in the time of Jesus’ lifetime, the Roman occupation. In some ways it now makes more sense than ever to look at the practice.
International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia
There are three distinct factors constituting the essential features of the Jubilee Year: personal liberty, restitution of property, and what we might call the simple life.
The associated rules governing restoration of civil society are very complicated because they involve foreign debt, personal property debt, and indentured servitude. The intention was that every fifty years there was an end to generational debts. It was the return to a simpler life.
The world is complicated and with all that is going on in it many of us yearn for a simple life, debt free and having personal liberty. Here in America we are a republic, we have no King. There is no way to restore the simple life. Everyone is a debtor of some sort.
Jesus died to set us free from our debt to sin, we now have eternal life and yet we act as if we are not living in that freedom. We owe Him more than a thank you. We go about each day without giving much consideration to our Lord about how we should navigate our lives in this world.
We cannot restore the Year of Jubilee in this republic, but since we are Kingdom dwellers we can restore the institution of forgiveness. Forgiveness after all is at the core of Jubilee.