An Emancipated Soul

The glorious liberty of the children of God.”” — Rom. viii. 21.

THERE is a precious bell in Philadelphia which is guarded with most jealous custody. It is the bell of Liberty. It is gloriously linked with the birthday of a national life. It tolled the glad and momentous tidings when a nation achieved its independence and breathed the air of freedom. If anyone will turn to the life and letters of the Apostle

— — E s Paul, and read and listen with diligent care, he will hear another bell of liberty ringing out the glad tidings that a man has been born again, and that he has breathed the wonderful air of spiritual freedom. I don’t think you will travel very far in his life, or in his letters, without hearing the great bell of liberty sounding forth the blessed news of emancipation. Here are a few samples of what I call the bell-music in the Apostle’s witness: ‘‘ Our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus;” ‘The liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free;” ‘‘ Ye have been called unto liberty;” ‘‘ The Lord’s freeman;” “Free from the law;” “Free from sin;” ‘This liberty of yours.” In this way does the music keep breaking out in Paul’s speech and letters, the great bell-note which signalises the attainment of spiritual freedom and independence, “the glorious liberty of the children of God.”

Now this sense of joy in a new-found freedom breathes in all his utterance. Paul is like a man who has strangely emerged from constraints and limitations of which svt eas apis ee 28 An Emancipated Soul

he was scarcely conscious — certainly not fully conscious until he has passed beyond them. I have a friend who has never been rapturously appreciative of natural scenery. When others have been revelling on some marvellous panorama of colour, or tracing some luring horizon-line, he has remained strangely quiet and unmoved. But now the rapture has come to him, and he thrills to nature’s glory. What has happened? By an apparent chance, and to his staggering surprise, he learned that his eyes were defective, and that he was not seeing the world at all as it was seen by his friends. He thought he had perfect sight, and he was partially blind! The oculist gave him new sight, and he discovered a new world.

“Thou knowest not that thou art blind!” That had been Paul’s condition as he journeyed to Damascus. Blind indeed! He boasted of his sight! And then Somebody came and touched him, and he found new eyes, and new sight, and a new world. And his consequent joy and freedom of movement es were almost like a dream. But there were deeper elements in his liberty even than these. He passed from blindness to sight, but there was a second transition which really explains the first. He passed from law to grace, which is like a child going from the school-house to his home. Watch a child when school is out and home is in sight! And Paul was like that. And now I think of it, that was his own illustration of the transition. ‘‘ The law,” he says, “‘ was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.” He passed from the sphere of statute, and curb, and restraint, and ferrule, and prison, into the warm, sunny, genial intimacies of home. And oh, the freedom of it! He had been a pupil in a hard school, and now he revelled in the glory of the liberty of the children of God. He had lived in the repressive compound of law; now he roamed in the open country of grace. His soul became “sportive as the fawn which, wild with glee, across the lawn and up the mountain springs.”

But there was another transition, and in which order it comes — whether before or after, or with the others, it does not really matter — but the Apostle passed from sin to holiness. Sin had held him as if it were a corpse which he was forced to carry upon his back. ‘‘ Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’ He could not shake it off. And then, by the wonderful grace of God, the corpse was removed, and it was buried in some unfathomable sea known only to the heart and wisdom of God. And then Paul discovered that he was no longer wedded to death, but to life, and to life that was sweet, and pure, and radiant as a bride. “Where sin abounded grace did much more abound.” And oh, the freedom of it! Guilt gone, sin gone, and in their place a holy life as lovely as a summer’s morn, Paul’s sense of freedom was the secret of his terrific vitality. In all these wonderful transitions an energy was released, which drove the torpor out of his powers, and all his faculties became like wide-awake sentinels standing at their posts. Kverything about Paul pulses with life. He challenges grim difficulties with the happy air of a man going to a wedding. He undertakes vast enterprises which leave other men gasping for breath. Paul was tremendous in his vitality, and he was vital because he was free.

And because he was so vital he was gloriously vitalising. We can go to him for refreshment, and we can always find it. His thought is like wine. His word is filled with the life which he borrowed from the Lord. He is gloriously free and vital, and communion with him is an inspiration.