Sep 16
4
Ignorant men like to boast of their free will. Free from what? Free from God? Truth is we are always servants subject to another. We are either the servants of sin, walking “according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.” (Eph 2:2) Or we are the servants of righteousness, under the grace of God, subject to our Lord Jesus, the Prince of peace.
We were born servants of sin. While in our natural born state we could not and would not serve God. Oh, we may have served a god of our imagination. But the “natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Cor 2: 4) While spiritually dead, even if we did things we thought were religious and godly, we were only serving different lusts and pleasures. (Titus 3: 3-6) Our sinful hearts were full of malice and envy against God and men. While refusing to rest in Christ from our works, even those works we called love were really only us being hateful and hating one another.
“But God be thanked.” God sent us the gospel; God gave us a new heart; God granted us faith and repentance; God revealed his Righteousness in us, Christ Jesus. He promised, “As soon as they hear of me, they shall obey me: the strangers shall submit themselves unto me.” (Ps 18: 44) Therefore, by God’s grace, when he delivered to us the good news that his Son has fulfilled the law for us and put away all our sins, we obeyed from the heart the Gospel.
When Christ makes us free then we are free indeed. Free from God? No. True freedom is to be delivered from being the servants of sin. It is to be made the servants of Christ our Righteousness, seeking to walk in every precept he commands—“I will walk at liberty: for I seek thy precepts.” (Ps 119:45) Freedom in Christ is not to use liberty as a disguise to maliciously live in sin against God and men. (1 Pet 2: 16) Liberty is knowing “sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye not under the law, but under grace.” (Rom 6; 14) It is God granting us deliverance out of the hands of our enemies that we “might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him, all our days.” (Lu 1: 74-75)
The yoke that makes the believer obedient to Christ is not the yoke of law but the yoke of Christ’s love who gave himself for us. There was a little boy who had a horse that he loved and cared for greatly. In turn, the horse obeyed the little boy so that he never had to yoke the horse to a hitching post whenever he left his horse unattended. One day, the little boy left the horse untied and walked toward his neighbor’s house to make a delivery for his mother. Thinking the horse was sure to run away, a man asked the little boy, “Son, can your horse run fast?” The little boy answered, “No sir. But he can stand fast.” Believer, “stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” (Ga 5:1) Clay Curtis