Answer (in substance) to a letter from a young believer brought up in Dr. Barnardo's Orphanage, now living in Canada.
MY DEAR YOUNG FRIEND,
I am making haste to reply to your letter expressing a desire for a little help on the subject of "Liberty"; or, as you express it, "Who are slaves and who are free men?”
I think the epistles to the Galatians and the Romans show that true liberty is only enjoyed through the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and the grace which marked His mission here below. "Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ" (John 1:17).
It was "by the grace of God" He tasted death for every man (Heb. 2:9). By God's grace we mean that He is now dispensing blessing entirely on the ground of His own goodness, His own righteousness, and not on the ground of ours. That is, it is neither because of proved merit nor promised merit that the blessing becomes ours. This is clear enough when we see that it is the repentant soul that gets it; for genuine repentance is the honest acknowledgment that, instead of having goodness to boast of, we have only badness to confess.
Now let me say that I think you may, in your own history, find an illustration of the subject before us. When you were first received into the "Orphanage," I suppose it was neither for any accomplished good before you came nor for any promised good afterward. Was it not purely on the ground of the kindness of your patron and his willing helpers that you were first brought into the sheltering "Home"? What your subsequent training effected in the way of outward transformation was another matter.
The influence of the Home upon you and your freely given title to enter it were very different things; though doubtless both were bound up together in the mind of the founder. The transforming influence of the Home was the result of your having a title. The result fitted you for coming out, not for going in. It was the title, therefore, that had the first place; and it is so with those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, only in a much higher way. A deep sense of our sinful need brings us to Christ, and our inward, moral transformation thenceforth commences. It is the result of our finding an attraction and delight in Him Who found His attraction and delight in us, marvelous to say (Prov. 8:30, 31). But it will not be until we come out of heaven that the full, blessed result will be displayed (see Rev. 19:8, 11-16; Col. 3:3). It is in Christ Himself that we find our Grace-given title to go in; and faith stakes her all on what He is. But as it is only those who are born of the Spirit that find any real attraction in Christ, the transformation of which I have been speaking can only take place in the soul of the truly converted. Only such know anything of the grace and kindness of the blessed God experimentally.
But, it may be asked, How is a sinner brought to enjoy real liberty in the holy presence of God? Let me try to answer by asking another question. How did a boy taken into the Orphanage enjoy true liberty in the presence of his patron? Was it not in seeking to answer to his known wishes, and those wishes the outcome of kindness and compassion? In like manner every soul brought to God, and having a sincere desire to answer to His love, will ever have happy liberty of heart before Him. He will have full liberty to do for others what each in the Orphanage had liberty to do; that is, to show to his fellows a little of the greater loving-kindness shown to himself. Believers have like liberty; yea, liberty "to keep His commandments and love one another." To this liberty, the liberty of love, every believer is called. Happy liberty indeed!
If slavery and selfishness go together, and he who serves self serves a slave-master who is never satisfied, so love and liberty go together, and the service of love carries its own free delight with it.
In Galatians 5:13, the apostle says: "Ye have been called unto liberty, only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh" (that is, do not turn it to the account of selfish license), "but by love serve one another." That is, serve them as the fruit of God's grace in you, and by a love which looks not for a merit in them. This is surely the way God has served us, and this the liberty we have been called to.
In Galatians 6 we see liberty and bondage contrasted. "Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and be no entangled again with the yoke of bondage.”
But what was this "yoke of bondage"? It was the effect of the claim of law on those who did not know the power of love. There is a vast difference between "Thou shalt love" and "God so loved.”
Liberty is found in the enjoyment of love brought to us, and proved to us in the death of Jesus. It is not found in love demanded, but in love commended. "God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8). This was the love which Christ came down from heaven to express. Instead of claiming man's goodness, He died for man's badness. Instead of claiming love from man as the law did, He proclaimed God's love to man; so that even a lawbreaker breaker in the presence of Jesus was made to feel its warmth and power (John 8:10,11). The knowledge of His Father's love made the full acceptance of His Father's will a yoke of liberty. "My yoke is easy," He said, and "My burden is light." And how tenderly He invited others to take the same yoke (Matt. 11:29, 30).
At His first preaching in the synagogue at Nazareth He proclaims that He is anointed "to preach deliverance to the captives, and to set at liberty them that are bruised"; and then we read, "They wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth" (Luke 4:18-22). And no wonder. But there was more than gracious words, for the grace which He preached was most perfectly expressed in His own blessed Person.
My dear young friend, depend upon it, there is no deliverance from legal bondage except by LOVE, and that love known in the heart by the Spirit. Hence we read, "Sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under law, but under grace" (Rom. 6:14).
Oh! what bondage of heart and mind would have been yours if, when you had become comfortably and happily settled in the "Home," you had been told that your own faultless behavior was henceforth the only ground for remaining there! Would you not, under such conditions, always be feeling that some official eye was upon you, causing a slavish dread of once more being sent adrift into the world?
But it was far otherwise, as you well know. It was your kind benefactor's goodness, not yours, that brought you there; and his loving-kindness, not yours, that kept you there. The grateful remembrance of this kept your heart free to respond to his wishes and rejoice in his good pleasure.
May the still happier liberty resulting from the knowledge of grace as the only ground of blessing for destitute sinners be yours, through the power of His own "Free Spirit.”
In the service of love, ever yours,
GEO. C.