Christian Liberty
by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam
Christian
liberty is a priceless possession. It can be abused, of course, but
legitimately used it is an overflowing source of spiritual joy and
power.
God’s
purpose with regard to the liberty of the believer in Christ is aptly
summed up for us in one short verse in the Galatian letter:
“For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another” (Gal. 5:13).
As
the cause of spiritual decline in Israel was always their departure
from God’s Word to them through Moses, so the cause of spiritual decline
among believers today is always their departure from God’s Word to us
through Paul, and if anything is made unmistakably clear in the Epistles
of Paul, it is the fact that believers in this present dispensation of
grace have been delivered from the Law and, as God’s full-grown sons in
Christ, have been “called unto liberty.” The failure of God’s people to
appropriate and enjoy this liberty today results in spiritual decline as
surely as did the failure of the people of Israel to observe the law of
Moses in their day.
Could anything be plainer than those passages in this same Galatian epistle, where the Apostle says by the Spirit:
“CHRIST HATH REDEEMED US FROM THE CURSE OF THE LAW, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree” (Gal. 3:13).“But when the fulness of the time was come, GOD SENT FORTH HIS SON, made of a woman, made under the law,“TO REDEEM THEM THAT WERE UNDER THE LAW, THAT WE MIGHT RECEIVE THE ADOPTION OF SONS” (Gal. 4:4,5).
Thus,
to reject our blood-bought liberty and go back to the servitude of the
Law is to repudiate not only the Word of God, but the Word of God to us,
and this must necessarily result in spiritual decline.
i Kow Whom I Have Believed
King James Bible
The Preserved and Living Word of God
Posted By Cecil and Connie Spivey
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