Christian Liberty

Description

People in this day and age do a lot of talking about Christian Liberty, but most of them wouldn’t know liberty if they fell over it. There is a crowd that makes a big issue of spiritual freedom, yet there is nothing Christian or Christ-like about their liberty.  In those circles, Christian liberty is either a very misunderstood subject or purposefully misrepresented.  They use the term Christian Liberty quite often to justify lasciviousness and loose living, but that’s not what real spiritual liberty is.  They are pretty well described in II Peter 2:19.  While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.  I’m talking about this, come as you are, leave as you were crowd where there is no conviction, no Bible preaching, no holy standard.  They’re not free and can’t give you what they don’t have.  This crowd turns the grace of God into lasciviousness, liberty into lawlessness, and holiness into legalism.

They call anybody that has any holy standards a legalist.  I wonder if these folks ever read their Bibles?  James 1:25 says, But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. The perfect law of bondage?  Oh, I thought you said that any law or set of rules was equal to bondage.  The very premise of liberty is law.  Where there is no law, there is no liberty.

Someone who would call a person a legalist because they have separation standards doesn’t have a clue about what legalism really is.  If you say you have to receive Christ and be baptized or join a church, or do good works to be saved, then you’re a legalist.  To add anything to the plan of salvation by grace through faith is legalism.  But standards of holy living have nothing at all to do with legalism.  God gives us the standard of right and wrong.  He gave us commands as His children, and He expects us to obey.  Paul, whom God used to teach us about salvation by grace is the exact same fellow that penned II Corinthians 6:17 where it says, Come out from among them and be ye separate.

The progressive movement creeping into our churches wants to change everything.  Folks, God is not progressive.  For I am the Lord, I change not… (Malachi 3:6)  He’s eternally the same.  The Bible is not progressive, either.  Psalm 119:89 says, For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven.  It is not subject to change.  Christianity is not progressive.  It doesn’t matter what age or year you live in.

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hat made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.  (Galatians 5:1)