OUT OF BONDAGE INTO LIBERTY“Theydo not care a snap of their fingers whether Abraham was justified by faith or works,” writes a leading American preacher in a recent article that seeks to interpret the heart-cry of men to-day for a prophet who can give them “a spiritual interpretation of the world-rending and home-smashing events that are taking place.”Yet that very same question which was the all-important thing for Abraham, to-day, nearly four thousand years later, is still the question that goes to the root of the world’s spiritual problem.There is nothing more important for the Christian to understand than the distinction between law and grace. For to understand that is to have in one’s heart the Gospel message. It is not too much to say that the chief cause of powerlessness in the Christian church to-day, a powerlessness that is made the more acutely evident by the world’s sore travail, is that so many thousands of Christians are still living under law.They have not found the emancipation of grace.They do not walk at liberty, which was purchased for us by Christ.They do not stand fast in the freedom wherewith Christ has set us free.They are not “free indeed” with the freedom which the Son of God won for us.This is not an academic question. It is not a discussion of points of law, nor the making of fine distinctions in the deeper spiritual mysteries.It is a question of sin.When our Lord was telling the Jews that if they believed him and followed him they would know thetruth, and the truth would set them free, they threw back their shoulders in their pride of ancestry and boasted that they were Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man. The Son of God did not stop to discuss questions of race, or of political liberty, but went to the heart of the matter with one of his tremendous verilies: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Every one that committeth sin is the bondservant of sin” (John 8:34).Christians Who Are BondslavesThat Word of the King of kings is the word that needs to be thundered to-day, or, what is more effective, whispered to-day into the souls of men. There is no bondslavery comparable to this. A man may be on the side of righteousness so far as the conflict of nations is concerned to-day, but what avails that for the solving of his individual problem if he is the bondservant of sin?If, then, the question of law and grace is a question of sin, it is the most vital matter that can concern men to-day. Always alongside of sin is another word beginning with S—“Salvation,”—that is, this word is always alongside of sin inthis age of Grace. When our Lord told the Jews of this bondslavery, he did not leave them there, but added that wondrous word: “If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”There is needed to-day a great challenge to be thrown at an unbelieving world, a testimony that cannot be answered,—Christians walking at liberty, men and women living in the midst of these awful days of stress with the “freedom indeed” which belongs only to sons of God. But instead of that an unbelieving world is constantly face to face with the puzzling spectacle of professing Christians who are bondservants of sin, who do not know the meaning of liberty.For let us remember the word of the Master, and not nullify it with theological explanations to make it fit into the experiences of Christians: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Every one that committeth sin is the bondservant of sin.” And Christians are bondservants of sin because they are living under law and not under grace. They are not using, not enjoying, the freedom that Jesus Christ purchased for us.Have We Nothing to Do with Law?So fundamental is the correct understanding of the Christian’s relation to the law, that if Satan is not able to beguile Christians into staying in bondage under the law he will seek to drive them into an opposite error that is just as deadly to true liberty. This is the notion that a Christian has nothing to do with the law, and is under no obligation to have his life conform to it. Young Christians who have seen something of the wonder of their deliverance from the law have jumped to the conclusion that the Old Testament books that deal with the dispensation of law have such an indirect bearing upon their lives that they can neglect them. Portions of the New Testament are also divided in this fashion from the rest of the Word, and even Christians with a deep spiritual vision have argued that the Sermon on the Mount had little in it for them because it was on legal ground, and we are under grace. Their teachers may not have intended this application of their instruction about freedom from the law, but it illustrates the danger, and shows the need of clear light from the Word to avoid the pitfalls on each side.So the Word of God urges on the one hand, “For freedom did Christ set us free: stand fast therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage” (Gal.5:1), and cautions on the other, “For so is the will of God, that by well-doing ye should put to silence theignorance of foolish men: as free, and not using your freedom for a cloak of wickedness, but as bondservants of God” (1 Peter 2:16).And Paul puts the two messages together in Galatians 5:13 and 14: “For ye, brethren, were called for freedom; only use not your freedom for an occasion to the flesh, but through love be servants one to another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”Law in the New TestamentBut in what sense are we freed from the law, if we are still to keep the law? The New Testament takes hold of the law of God as revealed in the Old, and makes it infinitely higher in its requirements.Some men say that their Gospel is the Sermon on the Mount.It is the most hopeless Gospel a sinner ever struggled with.For in this sermon our Lord pours the spiritual meanings into the law of God. It may have been possible for a man to abstain from the outward act of murder, but our Lord takes that command and shows that the inward fact of murder is in a man’s heart if he is angry with his brother. So does the Master lift the command against impurity into a place where the strong moral man, who does not have the secret of victory, is convicted of impurity.Not only is there this spiritual interpretation of the law, which makes it the more impossible to keep it, but there is the new commandment the Lord gave his disciples, to love one anotheras he loved them. And as though this were not enough, the New Testament epistles, after the death and resurrection, when the dispensation of law was fully over, show us that to break the law of God at one point makes us guilty ofall: “Howbeit if ye fulfil the royal law, according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, ye do well: but if ye have respect of persons, ye commit sin, being convicted by the law as transgressors. For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is become guilty of all. For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou dost not commit adultery, but killest, thou art become a transgressor of the law” (James 2:8-11).This startling passage says that if Christians have respect ofpersons—andhas not the Spirit here put his finger upon one of the most pathetic and abominable sins of Christian churches of our day?—these Christians are convicted as transgressors of the law, and are guilty of all. Then the Apostle goes on to speak of the sins of murder and adultery as samples of the kind of thing that a Christian is guilty of when he shows respect of persons,—the awful sin of unlove.Law Never AbrogatedThis leads us into the truth that the law of God is pure and holy and spiritual, and has never been abrogated. The New Covenant does not take away the law: it provides a way of fulfilling the law. There are many senses in which the word “law” is used in the Scriptures, but we are looking now at the righteous law of God which must be fulfilled, and the breaking of which is sin, for sin is lawlessness, or the breaking of the law. James tells us that to stumble in one point is to break the whole law, for the law is a unity.The law is a unity because it is an expression of the character of God, and God is one.To break it in one point is to sin against God. It is a true revelation of the Scriptures that “God is law,”though these words do not occur. The words “God is love” do occur, and love is the fulfilling of the law.When God gave the perfect law to men God knew that men could not keep it apart from the secret of Grace.But men did not know it.And God cannot do anything for a man by grace until man learns that he is a transgressor of the law of God, and that it isimpossible for him to keep it. Israel said, “All that Jehovah hath spoken we will do.” They indeed needed a tutor unto Christ.The law, then, was added to show man what sin is, to make sin exceeding sinful, to prove to man that he is a sinner. This work the law did all through the old dispensation. But this work the law must continue to do for every individual before he can enter into the meaning of grace.That Seventh of Romans StruggleThat is what the struggle of the seventh chapter of Romans means. That is a struggle under law, the picture of a man who has been brought under condemnation by the law. The law is a great mirror let down from heaven in which a man may see himself as he is. That is why the law brings condemnation and death. It is a curse,—not because the law is not holy, but because it convicts the man of his unholiness. Law does this in the New Testament as well as the Old, and with infinitely more searching terribleness because of the high spiritual interpretation of the inner meaning of the outward commands. The law of God has done its work in a Christian when he has seen that it is impossible for him to be good according to God’s standard.Not all have seen this. Dr. Scofield tells of a gentleman who came to him at the close of a talk on how a Christian might get out of the struggle of the seventhchapter of Romans into the victory of the eighth chapter, and asked him this: “Doctor, what was the trouble with Paul anyway? Why did he find it so hard to be good? I don’t find it very hard to be good.”“What do you mean by being good?” the preacher asked.“What every onemeans—livinga clean life, being honest, paying your debts, treating people right, and if your neighbor gets in trouble put your hand in your pocket and help him out.”“Oh,” Dr. Scofield responded, “Paul did those things all his life. Anygentlemanwould do those things. Paul was not talking of that when he said it was a struggle to be good.”“Well, what did he mean?” the business man asked, somewhat taken aback.“Not Built That Way!”“Did you ever try to be meek?” was the preacher’s next question.“What’s that?”“Did you ever try to be meek?”“No, sir! I don’t admire a meek man.”“Don’t you? Well, God does. His Son was meek and lowly. But now suppose you started off some morning and determined to be meek all that day, to love everybody, no matter what mean things another man might say. Would you find it easy?”“I couldn’t do it. That’s not in my line. I’m not built that way.”Just so, we are not built that way. We need to be built over. A new life needs to come in. And when the law has brought us to that point, and we cry out with Paul, “Wretched man that I am!” then the law has done its proper work. The tragic thing is thatmost Christians stop right there in their reading of the seventh chapter of Romans. They do not go on to the glorious word of deliverance. There is a way out. Paul has been in bondage under the law of sin. But a new law enters, and he exclaims, “The law of the Spirit ... made me free from the law of sin and of death.” What is the new power of that law of the Spirit? “Life in Christ Jesus.” What happens when the law of the Spirit is working, when we are enjoying the freedom indeed wherewith Christ hath set us free?The requirement of the law is fulfilled in us.This law of the Spirit, of the new Life in Christ Jesus, hath set us free from the law of sin and death, in order that we might keep the law of God. And it is kept in us just as long as we walk in the Spirit. God’s plan is that we should walk in the Spirit all the time; that is “abiding in Christ.” The struggle of the seventh of Romans is a struggleunder the law, it is human effort apart from grace. It is not given as the normal Christian experience, but a parenthesis between two passages of glorious liberty, placed there to show what bearing the keeping of the law has upon the Christian’s experience. The normal Christian experience is freedom from the dominion of sin.What Grace Says“Sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under law but under grace.” The secret of victory, therefore, is to keep under grace, which is walking in the Spirit. How is this to be done? All Christians who have real assurance of salvation see clearly that we are saved by grace. Law has condemned them. Law says “Do,” and we cannot do.Grace says, “Jesus Christ has done it for me.”“How much in the matter of my salvation has he done?”“All of it.”“How much is there left for me to do?”Nothing.“Faith does nothing”; faith believes that Jesus has done it all.Now this is exactly the case with Christian living, and the keeping of the law of God. Whenever a Christian sins, sin is having dominion over him, and that means that he is living under law where he does not belong, and needs to get under grace. Here, just as in salvation from the penalty of sin, grace means that Jesus Christ is doing it all. What is left for me then in the matter of winning victory over sin?Nothing.Faith believes that Jesus is doing it all. That is grace, and nothing else is. For if my effort enters, it is not of grace, but partly by the work of the law. That is making void the grace of God, “for if righteousness is through the law, then Christ died for nought” (Gal.2:21).Christian liberty is changing the bondslavery of sin for the bondslavery of Christ; it is freedom from the law in order that the law may be kept in us by Another; it is changing the law that “made nothing perfect” for “the perfect law, the law of liberty.” “So speak ye, and so do, as men that are to be judged by a law of liberty” (James 2:12).
“Theydo not care a snap of their fingers whether Abraham was justified by faith or works,” writes a leading American preacher in a recent article that seeks to interpret the heart-cry of men to-day for a prophet who can give them “a spiritual interpretation of the world-rending and home-smashing events that are taking place.”
Yet that very same question which was the all-important thing for Abraham, to-day, nearly four thousand years later, is still the question that goes to the root of the world’s spiritual problem.
There is nothing more important for the Christian to understand than the distinction between law and grace. For to understand that is to have in one’s heart the Gospel message. It is not too much to say that the chief cause of powerlessness in the Christian church to-day, a powerlessness that is made the more acutely evident by the world’s sore travail, is that so many thousands of Christians are still living under law.
They have not found the emancipation of grace.
They do not walk at liberty, which was purchased for us by Christ.
They do not stand fast in the freedom wherewith Christ has set us free.
They are not “free indeed” with the freedom which the Son of God won for us.
This is not an academic question. It is not a discussion of points of law, nor the making of fine distinctions in the deeper spiritual mysteries.It is a question of sin.
When our Lord was telling the Jews that if they believed him and followed him they would know thetruth, and the truth would set them free, they threw back their shoulders in their pride of ancestry and boasted that they were Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man. The Son of God did not stop to discuss questions of race, or of political liberty, but went to the heart of the matter with one of his tremendous verilies: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Every one that committeth sin is the bondservant of sin” (John 8:34).
That Word of the King of kings is the word that needs to be thundered to-day, or, what is more effective, whispered to-day into the souls of men. There is no bondslavery comparable to this. A man may be on the side of righteousness so far as the conflict of nations is concerned to-day, but what avails that for the solving of his individual problem if he is the bondservant of sin?
If, then, the question of law and grace is a question of sin, it is the most vital matter that can concern men to-day. Always alongside of sin is another word beginning with S—“Salvation,”—that is, this word is always alongside of sin inthis age of Grace. When our Lord told the Jews of this bondslavery, he did not leave them there, but added that wondrous word: “If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”
There is needed to-day a great challenge to be thrown at an unbelieving world, a testimony that cannot be answered,—Christians walking at liberty, men and women living in the midst of these awful days of stress with the “freedom indeed” which belongs only to sons of God. But instead of that an unbelieving world is constantly face to face with the puzzling spectacle of professing Christians who are bondservants of sin, who do not know the meaning of liberty.
For let us remember the word of the Master, and not nullify it with theological explanations to make it fit into the experiences of Christians: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Every one that committeth sin is the bondservant of sin.” And Christians are bondservants of sin because they are living under law and not under grace. They are not using, not enjoying, the freedom that Jesus Christ purchased for us.
So fundamental is the correct understanding of the Christian’s relation to the law, that if Satan is not able to beguile Christians into staying in bondage under the law he will seek to drive them into an opposite error that is just as deadly to true liberty. This is the notion that a Christian has nothing to do with the law, and is under no obligation to have his life conform to it. Young Christians who have seen something of the wonder of their deliverance from the law have jumped to the conclusion that the Old Testament books that deal with the dispensation of law have such an indirect bearing upon their lives that they can neglect them. Portions of the New Testament are also divided in this fashion from the rest of the Word, and even Christians with a deep spiritual vision have argued that the Sermon on the Mount had little in it for them because it was on legal ground, and we are under grace. Their teachers may not have intended this application of their instruction about freedom from the law, but it illustrates the danger, and shows the need of clear light from the Word to avoid the pitfalls on each side.
So the Word of God urges on the one hand, “For freedom did Christ set us free: stand fast therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage” (Gal.5:1), and cautions on the other, “For so is the will of God, that by well-doing ye should put to silence theignorance of foolish men: as free, and not using your freedom for a cloak of wickedness, but as bondservants of God” (1 Peter 2:16).
And Paul puts the two messages together in Galatians 5:13 and 14: “For ye, brethren, were called for freedom; only use not your freedom for an occasion to the flesh, but through love be servants one to another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
But in what sense are we freed from the law, if we are still to keep the law? The New Testament takes hold of the law of God as revealed in the Old, and makes it infinitely higher in its requirements.
Some men say that their Gospel is the Sermon on the Mount.
It is the most hopeless Gospel a sinner ever struggled with.
For in this sermon our Lord pours the spiritual meanings into the law of God. It may have been possible for a man to abstain from the outward act of murder, but our Lord takes that command and shows that the inward fact of murder is in a man’s heart if he is angry with his brother. So does the Master lift the command against impurity into a place where the strong moral man, who does not have the secret of victory, is convicted of impurity.
Not only is there this spiritual interpretation of the law, which makes it the more impossible to keep it, but there is the new commandment the Lord gave his disciples, to love one anotheras he loved them. And as though this were not enough, the New Testament epistles, after the death and resurrection, when the dispensation of law was fully over, show us that to break the law of God at one point makes us guilty ofall: “Howbeit if ye fulfil the royal law, according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, ye do well: but if ye have respect of persons, ye commit sin, being convicted by the law as transgressors. For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is become guilty of all. For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou dost not commit adultery, but killest, thou art become a transgressor of the law” (James 2:8-11).
This startling passage says that if Christians have respect ofpersons—andhas not the Spirit here put his finger upon one of the most pathetic and abominable sins of Christian churches of our day?—these Christians are convicted as transgressors of the law, and are guilty of all. Then the Apostle goes on to speak of the sins of murder and adultery as samples of the kind of thing that a Christian is guilty of when he shows respect of persons,—the awful sin of unlove.
This leads us into the truth that the law of God is pure and holy and spiritual, and has never been abrogated. The New Covenant does not take away the law: it provides a way of fulfilling the law. There are many senses in which the word “law” is used in the Scriptures, but we are looking now at the righteous law of God which must be fulfilled, and the breaking of which is sin, for sin is lawlessness, or the breaking of the law. James tells us that to stumble in one point is to break the whole law, for the law is a unity.
The law is a unity because it is an expression of the character of God, and God is one.
To break it in one point is to sin against God. It is a true revelation of the Scriptures that “God is law,”though these words do not occur. The words “God is love” do occur, and love is the fulfilling of the law.
When God gave the perfect law to men God knew that men could not keep it apart from the secret of Grace.But men did not know it.And God cannot do anything for a man by grace until man learns that he is a transgressor of the law of God, and that it isimpossible for him to keep it. Israel said, “All that Jehovah hath spoken we will do.” They indeed needed a tutor unto Christ.
The law, then, was added to show man what sin is, to make sin exceeding sinful, to prove to man that he is a sinner. This work the law did all through the old dispensation. But this work the law must continue to do for every individual before he can enter into the meaning of grace.
That is what the struggle of the seventh chapter of Romans means. That is a struggle under law, the picture of a man who has been brought under condemnation by the law. The law is a great mirror let down from heaven in which a man may see himself as he is. That is why the law brings condemnation and death. It is a curse,—not because the law is not holy, but because it convicts the man of his unholiness. Law does this in the New Testament as well as the Old, and with infinitely more searching terribleness because of the high spiritual interpretation of the inner meaning of the outward commands. The law of God has done its work in a Christian when he has seen that it is impossible for him to be good according to God’s standard.
Not all have seen this. Dr. Scofield tells of a gentleman who came to him at the close of a talk on how a Christian might get out of the struggle of the seventhchapter of Romans into the victory of the eighth chapter, and asked him this: “Doctor, what was the trouble with Paul anyway? Why did he find it so hard to be good? I don’t find it very hard to be good.”
“What do you mean by being good?” the preacher asked.
“What every onemeans—livinga clean life, being honest, paying your debts, treating people right, and if your neighbor gets in trouble put your hand in your pocket and help him out.”
“Oh,” Dr. Scofield responded, “Paul did those things all his life. Anygentlemanwould do those things. Paul was not talking of that when he said it was a struggle to be good.”
“Well, what did he mean?” the business man asked, somewhat taken aback.
“Did you ever try to be meek?” was the preacher’s next question.
“What’s that?”
“Did you ever try to be meek?”
“No, sir! I don’t admire a meek man.”
“Don’t you? Well, God does. His Son was meek and lowly. But now suppose you started off some morning and determined to be meek all that day, to love everybody, no matter what mean things another man might say. Would you find it easy?”
“I couldn’t do it. That’s not in my line. I’m not built that way.”
Just so, we are not built that way. We need to be built over. A new life needs to come in. And when the law has brought us to that point, and we cry out with Paul, “Wretched man that I am!” then the law has done its proper work. The tragic thing is thatmost Christians stop right there in their reading of the seventh chapter of Romans. They do not go on to the glorious word of deliverance. There is a way out. Paul has been in bondage under the law of sin. But a new law enters, and he exclaims, “The law of the Spirit ... made me free from the law of sin and of death.” What is the new power of that law of the Spirit? “Life in Christ Jesus.” What happens when the law of the Spirit is working, when we are enjoying the freedom indeed wherewith Christ hath set us free?The requirement of the law is fulfilled in us.This law of the Spirit, of the new Life in Christ Jesus, hath set us free from the law of sin and death, in order that we might keep the law of God. And it is kept in us just as long as we walk in the Spirit. God’s plan is that we should walk in the Spirit all the time; that is “abiding in Christ.” The struggle of the seventh of Romans is a struggleunder the law, it is human effort apart from grace. It is not given as the normal Christian experience, but a parenthesis between two passages of glorious liberty, placed there to show what bearing the keeping of the law has upon the Christian’s experience. The normal Christian experience is freedom from the dominion of sin.
“Sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under law but under grace.” The secret of victory, therefore, is to keep under grace, which is walking in the Spirit. How is this to be done? All Christians who have real assurance of salvation see clearly that we are saved by grace. Law has condemned them. Law says “Do,” and we cannot do.
Grace says, “Jesus Christ has done it for me.”
“How much in the matter of my salvation has he done?”
“All of it.”
“How much is there left for me to do?”
Nothing.“Faith does nothing”; faith believes that Jesus has done it all.
Now this is exactly the case with Christian living, and the keeping of the law of God. Whenever a Christian sins, sin is having dominion over him, and that means that he is living under law where he does not belong, and needs to get under grace. Here, just as in salvation from the penalty of sin, grace means that Jesus Christ is doing it all. What is left for me then in the matter of winning victory over sin?Nothing.Faith believes that Jesus is doing it all. That is grace, and nothing else is. For if my effort enters, it is not of grace, but partly by the work of the law. That is making void the grace of God, “for if righteousness is through the law, then Christ died for nought” (Gal.2:21).
Christian liberty is changing the bondslavery of sin for the bondslavery of Christ; it is freedom from the law in order that the law may be kept in us by Another; it is changing the law that “made nothing perfect” for “the perfect law, the law of liberty.” “So speak ye, and so do, as men that are to be judged by a law of liberty” (James 2:12).