How the gospel can be seen in the move Frozen: We are powerless to change

These will probably be my last posts about the movie Frozen although I can’t guarantee it. I talked about why Frozen was so compelling and how fairy tails point to a much grander much greater story. *Spoilers* (Please don’t read on if you don’t want to know some of the details from the movie.)

Frozen didn’t follow the typical Disney fairy tale model of Girl happy, Girl meets boy, Witch angry, Girl taken, Boy saves girl with magic kiss. Frozen tells the story of a girl born with a special gift, she can make snow and ice in various forms at will. As a young girl she accidentally freezes her sister’s head. The sister is fixed by the magic of a troll. As a result the eldest girl “Elsa” stays in her room because the older she gets the stronger her gift becomes. She stays away from everyone to hide her secret and to keep from accidentally hurting anyone. At her coronation her younger sister confronts her about shutting everyone out and she gets angry and shoots ice across the hall her secret is exposed and she leaves to live her life alone and free.

1. Our problems (sin) effect others far more than we realize – The lie the enemy wants each believer to buy is that your sin is yours alone. It affects no one. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God sin and sadness entered God’s perfect world. (Genesis 3)  Their sin had reached further than we could ever imagine. (Romans 3:10-25) Frozen does a great job of debunking this lie. Elsa sings a song about being alone and free she builds an ice castle to live in by herself away from anyone unaware she has created perpetual winter. Her younger sister explains to her that it’s winter everywhere and she is devastated but powerless to fix it. We are in that same place due to our sin as revealed by the law. Alone in our sin powerless to change (Romans 7:18-24) But as Romans 7 and 8 says

Romans 7:24-25, 8:1-11
²⁴ Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? ²⁵ Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

8 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.^{[a] 2} For the law of the Spirit of life has set you^[b] free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. ³ For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin,^[c] he condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴ in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. ⁵ For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. ⁶ For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. ⁷ For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. ⁸ Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

⁹ You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. ¹⁰ But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. ¹¹ If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus^[d] from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

Powerful! We are utterly lost utterly alone, in our sin but thanks be to God! We are not our own be we belong body soul and spirit to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.