Bondage and Liberty

Bondage and Liberty

A few years ago it was common practice to place heavy burdens on those who sought God. To be saved was considered a difficult matter. First, you had to make improvements in every area, and then walk around with your head hanging down, looking sad. Precept was added to precept and commandment to commandment, until people finally collapsed under the burden.

Now things have gone in the complete opposite direction. Anything that even points in the direction of godliness is called bondage. Now people only talk about liberty. They promise liberty: “Come to us! Here you will find liberty.” In the midst of a wretchedly sinful life, people claim to possess the liberty of Christ. When sin becomes too obvious, people drift into the understanding that everyone is saved. “Others don’t commit any worse sins than I do, and if I am saved, then the others must be saved too, if only they could see it.” This is how people reason and speak.

There’s nothing to do salvation to receive;
No, just hear the Word, rest in it and believe.
The pain of regret that you’re feeling
Cannot give your heart healing.
But God’s Word says
We’re healed by Jesus’ stripes.

We can’t do anything to be saved, for salvation is imparted on Calvary. But once we are saved, there is a lot to do; for God works in us both to will and to do. We must walk in the works God has prepared for us. Obviously, we do things all day long, either good things or bad, either walking in the Spirit or in the flesh. To walk in the Spirit means to go in the opposite direction of walking in the flesh. The requirement of the law must be fulfilled.

When one of these “liberated” Christians compares his life to a life of walking in the Spirit, then to him a walk in the Spirit seems like bondage, and, without further ado, he calls every person who strives to live a godly life a “slave to the law.”

What he regards as liberty is an unlawful liberty in the flesh, a liberty he will have to be saved from on the day he wakes up from his spiritual drunkenness. I know many such “liberated” people who, with all their liberty, have ended up in the flesh.

A tree is known by its fruits. Test those who call you “a slave to the law.” I think you will find that almost one hundred percent of them are transgressors of the law, in the midst of boasting of their freedom.

No one on earth can liberate his flesh, and thereby gain God’s good pleasure. Those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. We must keep our body in bondage if we want to be His freedmen. Every Christian must—if he wants to follow his Master—suffer death according to the flesh so he can be made alive by the Spirit. Unfortunately, not everyone has received this knowledge, and yet this is where you find true, divine liberty.