Third Benefit Purchased by Christ: The Liberty of Believers
“If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” Joun 8: 36.
From the thirtieth verse of this chapter to my text you have an account of the different effects which the words of Christ had upon the hearts of his hearers. Some believed; these he encourages to continue in his word, giving them this assurance, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” At this the unbelieving Jews take offence, and commence a contention with him: ‘‘ We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man.” We are of no slavish extraction; the blood of Abraham runs in our veins. This scornful boast of the proud Jews Christ confutes, and discourses on a twofold bondage — one to men, another to sin: ‘“‘ Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.” He then tells them, ‘‘The servant abideth not in the house for ever, but the Son abideth ever;” wherein he intimates two great truths: 1, that the slaves of sin may for a time enjoy the external privileges of the house or church of God; but it would not be long before the Master of the house would reject them. But, 2, if they were once the adopted children of God, then they should abide in the house for ever; and this privilege is only to be had by their believing in and union with the Son of God, Jesus Christ; which brings us to the text, “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” In which words we have
A supposition: “If the Son therefore shall make you free.” As if he should say, The womb of nature cast you forth into the world in a state of bondage: in that state you have lived all your days, servants to sin, slaves to your lusts; yet freedom is to be obtained, and this freedom it is the prerogative of the Son of God to bestow: “If the Son shall make you free.” And also
Christ’s concession upon this supposition: ‘ Ye shall be free indeed;” that is, you shall have a real, an excellent, and everlasting freedom; no mere fancy, as that which you now boast of is. If therefore you would be freemen indeed, believe in me. Hence, learn that
An interest in Chrost sets the soul at liberty from the bondage to which it was subject in its natural state.
Believers are the children of the new covenant, the denizens of Jerusalem which is above, which is free, and the mother of them all. Gal. 4:26. The glorious liberty, that which is spiritual and eternal, is the liberty of the children of God, Rom.°8: 21; Christ, and none but Christ, delivers his people out of the hand of their enemies. Luke 1:74. I must show what believers are not freed from by Jesus Christ in this world; what that bondage is from which every believer is freed by Christ; what kind of freedom it is which commences upon believing; and the excellence of spiritual freedom.
I. Wat BELIEVERS ARE NOT FREED FROM IN THIS WORLD. We must not think that our spiritual liberty by Christ presently brings us into an absolute liberty in all respects; for,
1. Christ does not free believers from obedience to the moral law. It is true, we are no more under it as a covenant for our justification; but we are and must still be under it as a rule for our direction. The matter of the moral law is unchangeable, as the nature of good and evil is, and cannot be abolished except that distinction be destroyed. Matt. 5:17, 18. The precepts of the law are still urged under the gospel. Eph. 6:2. It is therefore a vain distinction, invented by libertines, to say it binds us as creatures, not as Christians; or that it binds the unregenerate part, but not the regenerate. It is a sure truth, that they who are freed from its penalties are still under its precepts. Though believers are no more under its curse, yet they are still under its government. The law sends us to Christ to be justified, and Christ sends us to the law to be regulated. Let the heart of every Christian join, therefore, with David in the holy wish, ‘Thou hast commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently; O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes.” Psalm 119: 4, 5. It is excellent when Christians begin to obey the law from life which others obey for life — because they are justified, not that they may be justified. It is also excellent when duties are done in the strength and for the honor of Christ, which is evangelical; and not in our own strength and for our own ends, which is servile obedience. Had Christ freed us from obedience, such a liberty had been to our loss.
2. Christ has not freed believers in this world from the temptations and assaults of Satan; even those that are freed from his dominion are not free from his molestation. It is said indeed, God shall shortly bruise Satan under your feet, Rom. 16:20; but in the meantime he has power to bruise and buffet us by his injections. 2 Cor. 12:7. He now bruises Christ’s heel, Gen. 3:15; that is, bruises him in his tempted and afflicted members. Though he cannot kill them, yet he can and does afflict and terrify them by shooting his fiery darts of temptation among them. Eph. 6:16. It is true, when the saints get safe into heaven there will be perfect freedom from all temptation; a believer may then say, O thou enemy, temptations are come to a perpetual end; I am now arrived where none of thy fiery darts can reach me. But this freedom is not yet
3. Christ has not yet freed believers in this world from ine motions of indwelling sin; these are continually acting and distressing the holiest men. Rom. 7:21, 23, 24. Corruptions, like the Canaanites, are still left in the land to be thorns in our eyes and goads in our sides. Those that boast most of freedom from the motions of sin have most cause to suspect themselves still under its dominion. All Christ’s freemen are troubled with the same complaint: who among them does not complain, as the apostle did, “OQ wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Rom. 7: 24.
4. Jesus Christ does not free believers in this world from wnward troubles of sow on account of sin. God may let loose Satan, and conscience too, in the way of terrible accusations, which may greatly distress a believer, wofully eclipse the light of God’s countenance, and break the peace of the soul. Job, Heman, and David were all made free by Christ, yet each of them has left upon record his bitter complaint upon this account. Job 7:19, 20; Psa. 88: 14-16; 38: 1-11.
5. Christ has not freed believers in this world from affliction. God in giving us our liberty does not abridge his own. Psalm 89:32. All the children of God are made free, yet what son is there whom the father chasteneth not? Heb. 12:7. Exemption from affliction is so far from being the mark of a free man, that the apostle makes it.the mark of a slave. Bastards, not sons, want the discipline and blessing of the rod: to be free from affliction would be no benefit to believers, who receive so many benefits by it.
6. No believer is freed by Christ from death, though they are all freed from the stzng of death. Rom. 8: 10. The bodies of believers are under the same law of mortality as other men. Heb. 9:27, We must come to the grave as well as others, through the same agonies that other men do. Believers, indeed, are distinguished by mercy from others, but the distinguishing mercy lies not here. Thus you see what believess are not freed from in this world. If you shall now say, What advantage then hath a believer, or what profit is there in regeneration? I answer that,
II. Benievers aRE FREED FROM MANY GREAT EVILS BY ° Jusus Curist.
1. All believers are freed from the rigor and curse of the law. The yoke of the law is broken off from their necks, and the easy yoke of Jesus Christ put on. Matt. 11:28. The law required perfect obedience, under the pain of a curse. Gal. 3:10. It accepted of no short endeavors, admitted no repentance, gave no strength. Under the gospel, proportionable strength is given. Phil. 4:13. Transgression brings not under condemnation. Rom. 8:1. O blessed freedom! Duty becomes light, and imperfections hinder not acceptance. This is one part of the blessed freedom of believers.
2. All believers are freed from the condemwation of sin; it may trouble, but it cannot condemn them. Rom. 8: 33. The handwriting which was against us is cancelled by Christ, nailed to his cross. Col. 2:14. When the seal and handwriting are torn off from the bond, the debtor is free. Believers are freed, “justified from all things,” Acts 13:39; and finally freed, “they shall not come into condemnation.” John 5:24. O blessed freedom!
3. Jesus Christ frees all believers from the dominion as well as the condemnation of sin. “Sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under the law, but under grace.” Rom. 6:14. ‘The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” Rom. 8:2. Who can estimate such a liberty as this? What an intolerable drudgery is the service of divers lusts, from all which believers are freed by Christ; not from the residence, but from the reign of sin. It is with sin in believers as it was with those beasts mentioned Dan. 7: 12, ‘They had their dominion taken away; yet their lives were prolonged for a season and a time.”
4. Jesus Christ sets all believers free from the power of Satan, in whose dominion they were by nature: they are translated from the power of darkness into the kingdom of Christ. Col. 1:18. Satan had the possession of them, as a man of his own goods; but Christ dispossesses that strong man armed, and recovers them out of his hand. Luke 11:21, 22. There are two ways by which Christ frees believers out of Satan’s power and possession.
By price. The blood of Christ purchases believers out of the hands of justice by satisfying the law for them, which being done, Satan’s authority over them falls. as the power of a jailer over the prisoner when he has a legal discharge. ‘‘Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.” The cruel tyrant burdens the poor captive no more after the ransom is once paid, and he is actually freed. Heb. 2:14.
Christ also delivers his people by power. Satan is exceedingly unwilling to let go his prey. He is a strong and malicious enemy; every deliverance out of his hand is a glorious effect of the almighty power of Christ. Acts 26:18; 2 Cor. 10:5. How did our Lord Jesus Christ grapple with Satan at his death and triumph over him. Col. 2:15. O glorious salvation! blessed liberty of the children of God!
5. Christ frees believers from the steng of death. Kill us it can, but hurt us it cannot. ‘O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 Cor. 15: 55-57. It is guilt that arms death with its terrifying power: to die in our sins, John 8:24; to have our bones full of the sins of our youth, which shall lie down with us in the dust, Job 20:11; to have death, like a dragon, seizing a poor guilty creature as its prey, Psalm 49:14; in this lies the danger and horror of death. But from death as a curse, and from the grave as a prison, Christ has set believers at liberty, by submitting to death in their stead; and by his vietorious resurrection from the grave, as the first-born of the dead, death is disarmed of its hurting power. The death of believers is but a sleep in Jesus.
III. THe NaTuURE OF THE FREEDOM purchased by Christ for believers.
Believers in their civdl capacity are not freed from the duties they owe to their superiors; servants, though believers, are still to be subject to their masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling. Eph. 6:5. Nor are we delivered from obedience to lawful magistrates, whom we are to obey in the Lord. Rom. 13:1, 4. Religion dissolves not the band of civil relations; nor is it to be used as a cloak of maliciousness. 1 Pet.2:16. It is not a carnal, but a spiritual freedom Christ has purchased for us. And the spiritual liberty believers have at pressent is but the beginning; they are freed but in part from their spiritual enemies; but it is growing every day, and will be complete at last. By this liberty they are also not only freed from many miseries, burdens, and dangers, but invested by Jesus Christ with many royal privileges and invaluable immunities.
IV. Tue EexcetLence of this blessed freedom which the saints enjoy by Jesus Christ. It is,
1. A wonderful liberty, never enough to be admired. For those who owed God more than they could pay by their eternal sufferings; those that were under the dreadful condemnation of the law, in the power of Satan, the strong man armed; those that were bound with so many chains in their spiritual prison — their understanding bound with ignorance, their wills with obstinacy, their hearts with impenetrable hardness, their affections with a thousand bewitching vanities, and who slighted their state of slavery so much as industriously to oppose all means of deliverance — for such persons to be set at liberty is the wonder of wonders, and will be marvellous in the eyes of believers for ever.
2. The freedom of believers is a peculzar freedom, which few obtain; the mass of men abiding still in bondage to Satan, who, from the number of his subjects, is styled “the god of this world.” 2 Cor. 4:4. Believers in Scripture are often called a remnant, a small part of the whole. The more cause have the people of God to admire distinguishing mercy. How many nobles and great ones of the world are but royal slaves to Satan and their own lusts!
3. The liberty of believers is a liberty dearly purchased by the blood of Christ. ‘What that captain said, Acts 22:28, “With a great sum obtained I this freedom,” may much more be said of the believers’ freedom: it was not silver or gold, but the precious blood of Christ that purchased it. 1 Pet. 1:18.
4. The freedom of believers is an zcreaseng liberty; they get more out of the power of sin and nearer to their complete salvation every day. Rom.138:11. The body of sin dies daily in them; they are said to be crucified with Christ; the strength of sin abates continually in them, after the manner of crucified persons, who die a slow but certain death; and in the same degree in which the power of sin abates, their spiritual liberty increases.
5. The freedom of believers is a comfortable freedom. The apostle comforts Christians of the lowest rank, poor servants, with this consideration, ““He that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord’s freeman.” 1 Cor. 7:22. As if he had said, Let not the meanness of your outward condition, which is a state of subjection and dependence, of poverty and contempt, at all trouble you: you are the Lord’s freemen, of precious account in his eyes. O, it is a comfortable liberty!
6. It is a perpetwal and final freedom. They that are freed by Christ have their manumission and final discharge from the state of bondage they were in before. Sin shall never have dominion over them any more; it may tempt and trouble them, but shall never more govern them. Acts 26:18..
Inrerence 1. How rational is the joy of Christians above the joy of all others. Shall not the captive rejoice in his recovered liberty? The very birds of the air had rather be at liberty in the woods, though hungry, than in a golden cage with the richest fare: every creature naturally prizes it; none more than believers, who have felt the burden and bondage of corruption, and who in the days of their first illumination poured out many groans and tears for this mercy. What was said of the captive people of God in Babylon excellently shadows forth the state of God’s people under spiritual bondage, with the way of their deliverance from it. ‘By the blood of thy covenant I have sent forth thy prisoners out of the pit wherein is no water.” Zech. 9:11. Believers are delivered by the blood of Christ out of a worse pit than that of Babylon; and how were the tribes in their return from thence overwhelmed with joy and astonishment: ‘““When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing.” Psalm 126: 1, 2.
They were overwhelmed with a sense of the mercy; so should it be with the people of God. It is said, when the prodigal son was returned again to his father’s house, that there was heard music and dancing, mirth and feasting, in that house. Luke 15:24. The angels in heaven rejoice when a soul is recovered out of the power of Satan. And shall not the souls immediately concerned in the mercy greatly rejoice? Yea, let them rejoice in the Lord, and let no earthly trouble ever have power to interrupt their joy after such a deliverance.
2. How wnreasonable and inexcusable is the sin of apostasy from Jesus Christ. What is it but for a delivered captive to put his feet again into the shackles; his hands into the manacles; his neck into the iron yoke from which he has been delivered? It is said, Matt. 12: 43-45, ““When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, T will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first” — even as a prisoner, that has escaped and is again taken, is loaded with double irons. Let the people of God be willing to endure any difficulties in the way of religion, rather than return again into their former bondage to sin and Satan. O, Christian, if ever God gave thee a sense of the misery and danger of thy natural state, if ever thou hast felt the pangs of a distressed conscience, and after all this tasted the unspeakable sweetness of peace in Christ, thou wilt rather choose to die ten thousand deaths, than to forsake him and go back again into that sad condition.
3. How suitable is a free sprrit in believers to their state of freedom. Christ has made your condition free, O let the temper and frame of your hearts be free also; do all that you do for God not by constraint, but willingly. Methinks, Christians, the new nature that is in you should be as a command, and instead of all arguments addressed to the hopes and fears of other men. See how all crea-. tures act according to their natures. You need not command a mother to draw forth her breasts to a sucking child; nature itself teaches and prompts to that. You need not bid the sea ebb and flow at the stated hours. O, Christian, why should thy heart need any other argument than its own spiritual inclination to keep its stated seasons of communion with God? Let none of God’s commandments be grievous to you: let not thy heart need forcing to its own benefit and advantage. Whatever you do for God, do it cheerfully; and whatever you suffer for God, suffer it cheerfully. It was this spirit which actuated Paul: “I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” Acts 21:13.
4, Let no man wonder at the opposition of Satan to the preaching of the gospel. It is by the gospel that souls are recovered out of his power. Acts 26:18. It is the work of ministers to turn men from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God. Satan is a great and jealous prince: he will never endure to have liberty proclaimed by the ministers of Christ within his dominions. And indeed, what is it less, when the gospel is preached in power, but as it were by sound of trumpet to proclaim spiritual, sweet, and everlasting liberty to every soul sensible of the bondage of corruption and the cruel servitude of Satan, and who will now come over to Jesus Christ? And O, what numbers of prisoners have broken loose from Satan at one proclamation of Christ! Acts 2:41. But Satan owes the servants of Christ a spite for this, and will be sure to pay them, if ever they come within his reach. Persecution is the evil genius of the gospel, and follows it as the shadow does the body.
5. How careful should Christians be to maintain their spiritual liberty in every pont. ‘Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not again entangled with the yoke of bondage.” Gal. 5:1. “Ye are bought with a price,” “be not ye the servants of men.” It is Christ’s prerogative to prescribe the rules of his own house; he has given no man dominion over your faith. 2Cor.1:24. One man is no rule to another, but the word of Christ is a rule to all: follow not the holiest of men one step farther than they follow Christ. 1 Cor. 11:1. Man is ambitious, affecting dominion; and that over the mind rather than the body. To give law to others feeds pride in himself: so far as any man brings the word of Christ to warrant his injunctions, so far we are to obey, and no farther, Christ is your Lord and Lawgiver.
6. Let this perswade sinners to come to Christ; for with him is liberty for poor captives. Oh that you did but know what a blessed state Jesus Christ would bring you into! ‘Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden:” and what encouragement doth he give? “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” The devil persuades you that the ways of godliness are a bondage; but if ever God regenerate you, you will find his ways ways of pleasantness, and all his paths peace: you will rejoice in the way of his commandments as much as in all riches. You will find the work to which Christ calls you, even suffering work, sweeter than all the pleasures you found in sin. O open your hearts at the call of the gospel; come unto Christ: then shall you be free indeed,