CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 13
Bondage or Liberty
There are two kinds of Christian experience, one of which is an experience of bondage and the other an experience of liberty.
In the first case, the soul is controlled by a stern sense of duty and obeys the laws of God, either from fear of punishment or from expectation of wages. In the other case, the controlling power is an inward life principle that works out, by the force of its own motions or instincts, the will of the divine Life Giver without fear of punishment or hope of reward. In the first, the Christian is a servant and works for hire; in the second, he is a son and works for love.
There ought not to be this contrast in the experience of Christians, for to “walk at liberty” is plainly their only right and normal condition. But as we have to deal with what is, rather than with what ought to be, we cannot shut our eyes to the sad condition of bondage in which so many of God’s children pass a large part of their Christian lives. The reason is legality, and the remedy is Christ.
In the epistle to the Galatians, some Jewish brothers had come among the churches in Galatia and, by representing that certain forms and ceremonies were necessary to their salvation, had tried to draw them away from the liberty of the Gospel. And with these teachers Peter had allowed himself to unite. Therefore Paul reproves, not only the Galatians, but also Peter himself.
Neither Peter nor the Galatians had committed any moral sin, but they had committed a spiritual sin. They had gotten into a wrong attitude of soul toward God—a legalistic attitude. They began in the right attitude. But when it came to a question of how they were to live in this life, they had changed their ground. They had sought to substitute works for faith. We are, however, continually tempted to forget that it is not what men do that is the vital matter, but rather what they are. God is a great deal more concerned about our really being “new creatures” than about anything else, because He knows that if we are right as to our inward being, we shall certainly do right as to our outward actions.
Paul was grieved with the Galatian Christians because they seemed to have lost sight of this vital truth—that the inward life, the “new creature,” was the only thing that availed. This passage is the only one in which the expression “fallen from grace” is used in the New Testament, and it means that the Galatians had made the mistake of thinking that something else besides Christ was necessary for their right Christian living. The Jewish brothers who had come among them had taught them that Christ alone was not enough, but that obedience to the ceremonial law must be added.
They added the ceremonial law; we add resolutions, or agonizings, or Christian work, or churchgoing, or religious ceremonies of one sort or another. It does not make much difference what you add; the wrong thing is to add anything at all.
The following contrasts may help some to understand the difference between these two kinds of religion and may also enable them to discover where the secret of their own experience of legal bondage lies:
The law says, This do, and you shall live.
The Gospel says, Live, and then you shall do.
The law says, Pay me what you owe.
The Gospel says, I frankly forgive you all.
The law says, Make you a new heart and a newspirit.
The Gospel says, A new heart will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.
The law says, Thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
The Gospel says, Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
The law says, Cursed is every one who continues not in all things written in the book of the law to do them.
The Gospel says, Blessed is the man whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered.
The law says, The wages of sin is death.
The Gospel says, The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The law demands holiness.
The Gospel gives holiness.
The law says, Do.
The Gospel says, Done.
The law extorts the unwilling service of a bondman.
The Gospel wins the loving service of a son and freeman.
The law makes blessings the result of obedience.
The Gospel makes obedience the result of blessings.
The law places the day of rest at the end of the week’s work.
The Gospel places it at its beginning.
The law says, If.
The Gospel says, Therefore.
The law was given for the restraint of the old man.
The Gospel was given to bring liberty to the new man.
Under the law, salvation was wages.
Under the Gospel, salvation is a gift.
Paul tells us that the law “is our schoolmaster,” not our savior, bringing us to Christ. After faith in Christ is come, he declares, we are no longer to be under a schoolmaster. He uses the contrast between a servant and a son as an illustration of his meaning. “Wherefore,” he says, “thou art no more a servant, but a son.” It is as if a woman had been a servant in a house, paid for her work in weekly wages, and under the law of her master, whom she had tried to please, but toward whom her service had been one of duty only. Finally, however, the master offers her his love and lifts her up from the place of a servant to be his bride and to share his fortunes. At once the whole spirit of her service is changed. She may perhaps continue to do the same things that she did before, but she does them now altogether from a different motive. The old sense of duty is lost in the new sense of love. The cold word master is transformed into the loving word husband. Imagine this bride feeling unworthy of union with her husband and to lose consequently the inward sense of this union. Who can doubt that very soon the old sense of working for wages would drive out the new sense of working for love? What happens to many Christians now? The servitude of duty takes the place of the service of love; and God is looked upon as the stern taskmaster who demands our obedience instead of as the loving Father who wins it.
Nothing so destroys the sweetness of any relation as the creeping in of this legalistic spirit. The moment a husband and wife cease to perform their services to each other out of a heart of love and union and begin to perform them from a sense of duty alone, that moment the sweetness of the union is lost, and the marriage tie becomes a bondage, and things that were a joy before are turned into crosses. Legalistic Christians do not deny Christ, they only seek to add something to Christ. Their idea is, Christ—and something besides. But to add anything to Christ, no matter how good it may be, as the procuring cause of salvation, is to deny His completeness and to exalt self. People will undergo many painful self-sacrifices rather than take the place of utter helplessness and worthlessness. A man will gladly be a Saint Simeon Stylites or even a fakir if only it is self that does it so that self may share the glory. And a religion of bondage always exalts self. It is what I do—my efforts, my wrestlings, my faithfulness. But a religion of liberty leaves self nothing to glory in. It is all Christ, and what He does, and what He is, and how wonderfully He saves.
I once had a friend whose Christian life was a life of bondage. She worked for her salvation harder than any slave ever worked to purchase his freedom. “What would you think,” I asked, “of children who had to wrestle and agonize with their parents every morning for their necessary food and clothing, or of sheep that had to wrestle with their shepherd before they could secure the necessary care?”
“Of course I see that would be all wrong,” she said, “but then why do I have such good times after I have gone through these conflicts?”
This puzzled me for a moment, but then I asked, “What brings about those good times finally?”
“Why, finally,” she replied, “I come to the point of trusting the Lord.”
“Suppose you should come to that point to begin with?” I asked.
“Oh,” she replied, with a sudden illumination, “I never until this minute thought that I might!”
Christ says that except we “become as little children” we cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. But it is impossible to get the child spirit until the servant spirit has disappeared. Notice, I do not say the spirit of service, but the servant spirit. Every good child is filled with the spirit of service but ought not to have anything of the servant spirit. The child serves from love; the servant works for wages.
One servant of whom we read in the Bible thought his lord was a “hard master,” and the spirit of bondage makes us think the same now. Whenever any of the children of God find themselves “walking at liberty,” they at once begin to think there must be something wrong in their experience because they no longer find anything to be a “cross” to them. Sometimes I think that the whole secret of the Christian life that I have been trying to describe is revealed in the child relationship. Nothing more is needed than just to believe that God is as good a Father as the best ideal earthly father. Children do not need to carry about in their own pockets the money for their support. It is not necessary for Christians to have all their spiritual possessions in their own keeping. It is far better that their riches should be stored up for them in Christ, and that when they want anything they should receive it directly from His hands.
Sometimes a great mystery is made out of the life hidden with Christ in God. This contrast between bondage and liberty makes it very plain. It is only to find out that we really are “no more servants, but sons,” and practically to enter into the blessed privileges of this relationship. All can understand what it is to be a little child; there is no mystery about that. They are their Father’s heirs and may enter now into possession of all that is necessary for their present needs.
It is because legalistic Christians do not know the truth of their relationship to God, as children to a father, and do not recognize His fatherly heart toward them, that they are in bondage. When they do recognize it, the spirit of bondage becomes impossible to them.
Our liberty must come, therefore, from an understanding of the mind and thoughts of God toward us.
“Against such there is no law” is the divine sentence concerning all who live and walk in the Spirit; and you shall find it most blessedly true in your own experience if you will but lay aside all self-effort and self-dependence of every kind and will consent to let Christ live in you and work in you and be your indwelling life.
The man who lives by the power of an inward righteous nature fulfills the law in his soul and is therefore free. The other rebels against the law in his soul and is therefore bound.
Abandon yourselves so utterly to the Lord Jesus Christ that He may be able to “work in you all the good pleasure of His will,” and may, by the law of the Spirit of life in Himself, deliver you from every other law that could possibly enslave you.