WHAT is it? There is only one answer—CHRIST. It is not to be found in struggles for reformation. Who is to tell you when you are what you ought to be? A flatterer may tell you that your ways are faultless. But God looks at the heart. Friends may all agree that your manners are charming. But what of your motives, your hidden springs? “Thou desirest truth in the inward parts” (Psa. 51:6). God looks at the intents of the heart. And the God Who searches your ways, hears your words, knows your heart of hearts, and weighs you in His balance, proclaims that you “come short” of His glory. If you never find liberty until you can make yourself what you ought to be in His sight, liberty will never be yours—NEVER! If you are never free until you are free from the presence of indwelling sin, you will die a hopeless slave. But you may be free from all expectation of making better of it, free from its power.
It is Christ that makes free. “Stand fast,” said the Apostle to the Galatians. “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free” (Gal. 5:1). If He has borne my sins and their full weight of judgment, I am free to look at my sins in that “marvelous light” (1 Peter 11:24; 3:18). If the sin I find in my flesh has been judged in His holy Person on the cross, I am free to expect no more good from the flesh, but free to judge it in the same “marvelous light” (Rom. 8:3).
If God has set Christ in glory before me, and tells me that all that He is, is mine (1 Cor. 1:29-31) as God’s unspeakable Gift (2 Cor. 9:15), I am free to look up to heaven and say, “All, all I want is there.” I am free to read my title to glory in the marvelous light of Him Who is there in the midst of that glory already. And He tells us even in the Old Testament the result of so looking. “They looked unto Him, and were lightened: and their faces were not ashamed” (Psa. 34:5). He exhorts them to continue looking. “Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus (or looking of unto Jesus) the Author and Finisher of faith” (Heb. 12:1, 2).
It is said that in the days of slavery in the Southern States of America, when a slave was escaping for his liberty, he had only one mark to guide him. He knew not a single friend in the country through which he was passing. He had studied no geography, and possessed no maps. If he had they would have been of little use, since, for fear of being captured, he had to hide in the day and travel by night. But he had one sure mark to guide him―THE POLE STAR. The North Polar Star was his only mark, but it was fixed and reliable. He knew that liberty was to be found in that direction only, and with his eye upon that Pole Star he hastened forward till he reached what he yearned for.
He regarded not the engrossments of others. “This one thing I do,” he could say. So with the Christian, even after he has been set free here. He looks to Christ. He presses on to the place where Jesus is Who set him free, and to enjoy in His presence “the liberty of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21).
GEO. C.