What is spiritual bondage?

A wave of conviction passes over the multitude, and on hearing these words many, we are told, believed on Him; but the expression is no stronger than with regard to those who "believed on His Name" when at the feast-day they saw the miracles that He did; and of whom it is said that "Jesus did not commit Himself to them" (John 2:23-25). Of these also the Lord speaks doubtfully, and presently they resent His words and lapse into unbelief the fiercer for their disappointment in Him. Perhaps they had caught at the lifting up of which He had spoken, as exaltation by the people, followed as He had said it would be by the manifestation of Himself. The Lord's words to them are certainly words well suited to turn them from any thought of mere political liberty to be gained, and to test them as to their need of a real salvation. Abiding in His word, He tells them, would prove them to be really His disciples. They would know the truth, and the truth would make them free. But at once they resist and resent this. They, the seed of Abraham, in bondage, needing to be made free? they cry: how can He speak of that? they were never in bondage to any! Spite of its notorious contradiction to the truth, their protest shows of what bondage they were thinking. But the Lord will not raise a question here, but goes deeper. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Every one that practiseth sin is the bondman of sin;'" and this, though men often count it freedom, is the bitterest bondage. Hence, as this is the condition of man in general, the first thing that he needs is to be set free. There is no such thing in the spiritual realm as self-attained freedom: salvation from sin must be of God.

But what then must be the relationship to God of those who are the slaves of sin? Freemen towards God they cannot be, and yet, though rebels in heart and will, cannot escape from service. But unwilling service is again but bondage: the slaves of sin are therefore the slaves of God.

Thus men of conscience felt when they lay under conquerors milder far than the Romans who now ruled. It was not that the Jews to-day were lightened, but that they had grown so used to the yoke as to forget and deny it altogether. And if it were because of God's righteous government externally, much less did they estimate aright their true state before God, as the Lord Jesus was bringing it out now. Their haughty spirit was nettled at His word, which lay bare their thraldom to the enemy. "We are Abraham's seed, and have never been in bondage to anyone: how sayest Thou, Ye shall become free?" Jesus in His answer brought in the light of God, for eternity indeed, but also for the present. "Verily, verily, I say to you, Every one that practiseth sin is a bondman of sin." How true, solemn, and humiliating! No bondage so real, none so degrading, as that of sin: could they seriously deny it to be theirs? Truly unbelief blinds to moral state, and even to plain facts. Only grace delivers, and through the truth believed.

But the Lord intimates more. None under sin is entitled to speak of permanence. Such a one exists only on sufferance till judgment. Bondage there was none when God created and made according to His mind; nor will there be when He shall make all things new. The bondman, in every sense, belongs only to the transitory reign of sin and sorrow. So says the Lord: "Now the bondman abideth not in the house for ever." Another and contrasted relationship suits God's will; "the son abideth for ever." But there is infinitely more in Christ. He is not merely Son, but "the Son." He is the Son in His own right and title, as God and when man, in time and in eternity. He is therefore not "free" only, as all sons are, but such is His glory that He can and does make free in virtue of the grace which pertains to Him alone. Thus it is not only the truth which sets free, where law could only condemn, but the Son also gives and confirms the same character of liberty according to His own fulness. It is a question of what suits not them merely, but Him. He could make free those who hear Him and abide in His word, and nothing else but free. It is worthy of Him to deliver from sin and Satan; and "if the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." He frees after a Divine sort. He brings into His own character of relationship out of the bondage to sin, which the first man made our sad inheritance. The last Adam is a quickening spirit and a Deliverer. Let us stand fast in His liberty, and be not entangled again with any yoke of bondage, as the Apostle exhorts the Galatians against that misuse of the law, whatever its shape. (Gal. 5:1.)

To persons in bondage the word redemption should be a very welcome sound. In lands where slavery is still practised it would doubtless be so; but in spiritual things it is frequently otherwise. It is a humiliating truth, and one which men find it hard to accept, that sin has reduced the whole human family to a condition of servitude. The proud Jews of our Lord's day were offended when He said, "The truth shall make you free." They answered Him, "We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man; how sayest Thou, then, ye shall be made free?" In their case the boast of liberty was doubly false. Politically, they had been in bondage to at least a dozen different powers in the course of their national history; while spiritually they were where all are by nature, in bondage to sin. Hence our Lord's further words to them: "Verily, verily, I say to you, whosoever commits sin is the servant (or slave) of sin" (John 8:32-34).

Slavery to sin is a terrible thing. In various gross ways the reality of it meets our gaze every day, some of our fellow-men manifestly "yielding their members servants to uncleanness, and to iniquity to iniquity" (Rom. 6:19); but even where its most hideous forms are not seen, the slavery is just as real. And from this terrible condition no man has power to extricate himself; Satan, working through the natural evil of the heart, having forged the fetters securely and well.

Internally, the wreck is no less complete. The sources of life have been poisoned; the mainspring of man's will and affection has broken. Chaos reigns supreme in the mind and heart of every sinner. Instead of his being joyous and free, moving with intelligent subjection in the sunlight of God's favour, he is in bondage. Instead of being master of himself, sin is his master. Instead of his spirit being in control of mind and body, it has become like a captain of a vessel, overpowered and battened down beneath hatches, at the mercy of a whole crew of evil passions and lusts.

Thus is it in every case. "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." (Acts 4:12) The sinner is in the hands of one who rules him with despotic power. He is "sold under sin" "led captive by Satan at his will" — fast bound in the fetters of lust, passion, and temper, "without strength" — "without hope" — "without God." Such is the sinner's condition. How, then, can he help himself? What can he do? He is the slave of another, and everything he does is done in the capacity of a slave. His thoughts, his words, his acts, are the thoughts, words, and acts of a slave. Yea, though he should weep and sigh for emancipation, his very tears and sighs are the melancholy proofs of his slavery. He may struggle for freedom; but his very struggle, though it evinces a desire for liberty, is the positive declaration of his bondage.

244 As to the bondage of Satan, I shall also say a few words. The word "Satan" often frightens persons, but the diligent reader of the Bible will not have failed to perceive that the word of God continually speaks of his influence, and attributes all evil to him, not to cover the lusts which open the door to him, but to shew the true source of that evil. All those who make a profession of Christianity, and who deny "the power thereof," are called by the apostle children of the devil. And as to the evil which has been wrought, where the word was sown, it is especially called his work "an enemy hath done this." The apostle calls its instruments the apostles of Satan, as the tares are the seed of the wicked one. Now this evil has been principally done by a judaizing doctrine, and all those who undergo the influence of that doctrine undergo the influence of the enemy. The apostle calls this continually a bondage, as in Galatians 2:4; ch. 4:9; ch. 5:1; so that the idea of bondage, and of bondage under Satan, in reference to Christians deceived by the enemy, is quite a scriptural idea. Moreover, Romans 6:16 fully warrants the use of the expression with respect to all that in which we obey the enemy, and with respect to all error and darkness in which we live, though we are Christians. I do not quote 2 Timothy 2:26, because it can be applied to the unconverted. Let the reader remember that if he obeys Satan, he is in bondage to him. Doubtless this cannot be, in an absolute way, the state of a child of God, but (the flesh being always evil) he will be a slave wherever the flesh is at work, whether in doctrine or in practice. When a whole system, founded on the bases pointed out in the Epistle to the Galatians, rules over children of God, as it often happens (for instance, the papal system), it is, according to the Epistle to the Galatians, a bondage; and in that case, one is certainly the slave of Satan, who rules there.

To illustrate this condition, the Apostle likens them to a child who is the heir of a great inheritance, but while yet a child is under guardians and stewards, and has to obey. In this respect he is like a servant under bondage, even though he be lord of all. Even so, believers under law were held in a spirit of bondage under principles which mark the world. Every natural man can understand a law which tells us what we are to do, and not to do, and that our blessing depends upon obedience to the law. It is a principle on which the world seeks to regulate all its affairs. It is, however, bondage to the believer; for while binding us down to obey in order to obtain blessing, it gives us no strength to carry out the demands of law. Moreover it gives no knowledge of the heart of the Father, nor access to the Father — the source of all blessing.

But while enabled thus to detach himself, as alive to God, from the sin which dwells in him, and while fully conscious of desires of good, of a will quite opposite to the lusts of nature, yet the soul of the godly man, so long as he remains in ignorance of the liberty of redemption, is in bondage still. He finds himself utterly powerless of escape from that which he loathes. "It is no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me" (verse 20). This he may truly say. He may, moreover, "consent to the Law that it is good" (verse 16). Nay, he may "delight in the Law of God after the inward man" (verse 22). All this may be, and will be, in the case of a soul alive to God and practised in the ways of holiness. But the very presence of these convictions and desires only renders him more acutely sensible of the pressure of that other thing — that opposing and ever-dominant principle of sin in his members. He sees (verse 23) another law in his members, not only warring against the law of his mind, but bringing him into captivity to the law of sin which is in his members. He is a poor slave still. The glimpses of liberty which open on him in his meditations on the Law, do but enhance the bitterness of that hopeless bondage in which he lies. This is the perfection of human misery — the being endued with desires of holiness and life, but experimentally proving the mastery in the members of sin (whose only fruit is death) as a dominant, compelling principle, a Law with strength to enforce its rule. The very Law of God in which the inward man delights, becomes thus the weapon of utter destruction against the self-judged, yet self-acquitted sinner — sinning not willingly, yet sinning unto death! "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (verse 24). Such is, at once, the heart-broken confession of human extremity when brought, by means of the spiritual Law of God, into the full appreciation of the weakness and wretchedness of the flesh; and, at the same time, the utterance of the cry of distress which fails not to reach the ears of Him whose end is not Law, but grace. Everything is now given up. The conflict is at an end; and the cry of the captive is gone up to the heaven which seems to be closed against him by the sentence of the Law. Sin's victory is complete. The lawful captive may mourn, but his captivity is lawful still.

This involves deliverance then for those who were "all their lifetime subject to bondage," that is, the bondage of sin, by which Satan had wielded his power over mankind. "The sting of death is sin," and so long as this question remained unsettled, "the fear of death" held souls in bondage. He is speaking here of believers of course, for unbelievers know nothing of present deliverance from this fear and bondage, as do all whose trust is in the precious blood of Christ. Observe too that this bondage is during "lifetime," not after death. Even the unsaved are not in such bondage after death. Satan can exert no more authority over them: they are rather imprisoned in bondage to the exclusive authority of God.

But previous to the death of Christ even believers were held in a distinct measure of bondage through fear of death. There are some brightly shining exceptions, in cases where various saints exercised a faith that carried them far beyond the limits of the partial revelation they had received; and Jacob for instance shows thorough tranquillity in the face of death. This was not the common state, nevertheless, of which the godly Hezekiah is an example, weeping in bitterness when told to put his house in order in view of his death (Isaiah 38:1-3; 17).

The positive privileges and blessings of the Christian, as delivered from the world and brought in spirit to the Father's house, are next stated. But first, the characteristic name and operation of the Spirit which dwells in the believer, are declared and explained (verse 15). This is an important point. "Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the spirit of adoption (of sonship pneuma huiothesias), whereby we cry, Abba, Father." We have already seen in chapter 7 what were the effects of the full realization in a renewed mind of the Law as spiritual. The Holy Ghost acting as the Spirit of truth upon an awakened conscience through the Law, can produce no other effect than bondage and fear. The standing of a believer while under Law was that of a servant, not of a son. The Holy Ghost, therefore, as the Spirit of adoption could never rest upon such. Moreover, although the Spirit filled and used holy men of old, making them thus the fitting witnesses and messengers of Divine truth; yet was this a wholly different thing from what is now the portion of a saint. They were moved (pheromenoi) by the Holy Ghost, who fell on them at His will, and bore them often far beyond the feeble scope of their spiritual understanding. He could and did reveal to them in part the mystery of the ways of God, making them cognizant in a measure of the dispensational sequences in the order of the Divine mercy (1 Peter 1:11-12). But as to themselves, their standing actually was that of servants, not sons; though faith might and did anticipate in hope the good things of promise, which were laid up with God for them that feared Him.

The spirit of bondage unto fear, then, had had its sphere of operation, and had wrought its work. And now, as made free by the Son, they had received another Spirit. Reception into the house, with the abiding title of sonship, is now the effect of grace received. The Spirit of the Son of God is sent into the heart of the believer, not to make him a son, but because he is already such (Gal 4:6). As thus sent forth He is received by us; unawares it may be at first, until His blessed presence is disclosed by the utterance which He alone can truly bring forth from the heart. The cry, Abba, Father, is our own; but it is by the Spirit of the Son that it is produced. We cry Abba, because we know Him thus; but the power of that knowledge is the indwelling presence of the Son. "The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God." There is a concurrent testimony of the Spirit of the Son, and of the quickened spirit of the new-born child of God, whose heart that Spirit fills, Both speak, and speak to God. The Spirit cries Abba, because it is the Spirit of the Son — our hearts repeat that cry because we know, by the same Spirit, that the living Christ is our life to God.