What is Christian freedom?

Had it been possible to take away Christ's moral liberty - which was not possible - it would have been by preventing Him from obeying the will of the Father. This was the food He ate (John 4). As a perfect Man, He lived by every word which came forth out of the mouth of God. He chose to die, to drink the bitter cup which the Father had given Him, rather than not obey Him, and glorify Him in drinking it. Christianity is the liberty of a new nature that loves to obey, and to do the will of God. It is true that the flesh, if not kept in subjection, can use this liberty to satisfy its own desires, just as it used the law, which had been given to convict of sin, to work out righteousness. But the true liberty of the new man - Christ our life - is the liberty of a holy will, acquired through the deliverance of the heart from the power of sin, liberty to serve others in love. All the law is fulfilled in one word - "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." The Christian can do still more, he can give himself for others; or, at the least, following the direction of the Spirit, he fulfils the law in love. But if they devoured one another in selfishness, contending about circumcision and the law, "take heed," says the apostle, "that ye be not consumed one of another."

As born from above we are children of pure grace that "reigns through righteousness unto eternal life," which has freed us from all our guilt and brought us before God clothed in all the merits and eternal worth of the atoning work of Christ. This alone sets the heart free and gives true liberty: not liberty to sin or do as one pleases, for "whosoever commits sin is the servant of sin" (John 8:34), but deliverance from sin's galling yoke so that we can walk in liberty freed from its power.

We are under grace, not law; but what a profound error that we as Christians are left to our own will or wisdom! We are bought with an infinite price, and are in no wise our own. Undoubtedly all things are ours, life or death, things present or things to come. But we are Christ's by the same title which makes all to be ours; so that the bondman if called in the Lord is His freedman; and the free man if called is Christ's bondman. Such is Christian liberty. Humbled at our sins, we rejoice in His grace which has set us free to be all the more His servants, as He was the lowliest of all and the only efficacious One in love without measure to God's glory.

Christian liberty lies in our having the freedom to carry out the desire of our new, divine nature (and also that of the Lord).

"Christ is the end of the law for righteousness TO EVERY ONE THAT BELIEVETH." The law has nothing to say to, it has no jurisdiction over, the one who believes in Jesus. No matter how great the terror or bitter the bondage in which it held him anterior to his faith. Christ is the end of it, in Christ he is beyond its reach for ever. There toils a slave for a hard master on a West African shore, but in his misery he has heard of a way by which he can be free, and in eager hope he scans the sea. At last there greets his longing eyes the sight for which he looked — a ship flying the Union Jack. He plunges into the water, and with strong and rapid strokes he cleaves the waves until he stands at last where no slave breathes — upon the deck of a British ship, a bit of British possession. So the one who is in Christ is free; once, "in the flesh," he quailed and groaned beneath the terrible demands of a holy law, but now in Christ there is no condemnation; and all who are in Him are free men; and it is here that grace puts all who believe, so that Christ becomes the end of all the toiling and wretchedness and despair into which the law plunged the awakened soul who found that his whole nature as in the flesh was contrary to it. "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death."

Freedom comes into the soul here. Let it not be shut out by not believing the flesh to be what the cross of Christ really proves that it is. Beware of that ally with the enemies of freedom which is within! Beware of self! Look not to self for good and remain in deserved bondage. Christian liberty comes through Christ's death; by His death the fetters of sin, and law, and the religion of the world, are broken asunder. To fight in our own strength against sin, or in ourselves to try to keep the law, or to subject ourselves afresh to ordinances, is to go back in spirit to the time before Christ died. Having passed through death, and being risen from among the dead, the Lord is our life. His people are in Him, where neither sin nor the power of the law, nor the effect of "weak and beggarly elements" can ever reach. Faith in Christ risen, makes these facts a reality to the soul experimentally. "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." (Gal. 5:1.)

Let us now look into the nature of the liberty the apostle here refers to, when he exhorts the Galatian saints to "stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free." And I think we shall find that Christ has procured liberty from the slavery of Satan, from the guilt and dominion of sin, from the bondage and curse of the law, from the fear of death, and given us liberty in God's presence, the liberty of sonship, and liberty to serve.

"Christ has set us free in freedom." (New Trans.) This is not the liberty of the flesh, for Christ has done it. The freedom which the Christian enjoys is His freedom. The believer has not to attain it, but to stand fast in it. To be entangled in a yoke of bondage is to give up Christ's liberty. To circumcise the flesh is to admit that one is in the flesh and not in Christ, for we cannot mingle the two. To be circumcised was to bring upon themselves the whole claim of the law, and to be deprived of profit from Christ, for they were then seeking for justification by law. It was giving up grace. It is well to be clear as to this, for nothing is more specious than the doctrine that we are indeed pardoned through the work of Christ, but that the flesh is to be kept in order by legal effort. This is only to give a place to the flesh, and to gratify it by being occupied with it, but by the same sacrifice of Christ wherein atonement for our guilt was made, God condemned sin in the flesh, and now justification and liberty are in Christ raised from the dead. "Christ has set us free in freedom."

The liberty into which we are brought, then, is the complete emancipation which has reached us as being made the sons of God. It is the freedom of which the Lord Jesus spoke when He said, "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed" (John 8:36). We are no longer like servants of the household, who rightly have their conduct regulated by the rules suitable to the servants' hall; and to put ourselves in our thoughts and behaviour back into that position is to sadly entangle ourselves. It is indeed to fall from grace, as verse 4 has it.

And this leads us to the second of the privileges alluded to, as connected with the "Son of God." He gives liberty as well as life. "If the Son, therefore, shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." (John 8:36.) These are the two great aspects of blessing which characterise Jesus as the Son of God. He imparts not only life but liberty too. Not that they have always or necessarily gone together. For a man might have spiritual life and yet be in grievous bondage, as one observes too often. This is also what we read of in Rom. 7. A person who is converted has life, but may be withal the most miserable of men as regards his own experience. "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" In Rom. 8 we have the answer of grace. "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free [or delivered me] from the law of sin and death." Liberty now goes with the life of the Son of God, for He is the risen Lord who died for me and discharged me from all the claims of law, and of every other thing or one which might else arrest my blessing. The servant does not abide ever in the house, he might have notice to quit; but there is no such thing as the son's leaving the house. And it is thus as sons God puts us in His house, in the place of full and holy liberty.