Liberty Not License
by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam
The fact that we are given perfect liberty in Christ does not mean that
we should spend our lives in gratifying our own fleshly desires. Just
the opposite is the case. Believers have been delivered from the bondage
of childhood and given the liberty of full-grown sons in Christ (Gal.3:24; 4:1-7), and this advance from infancy to maturity in itself implies the acquisition of a sense of responsibility.
The
doctrine of our liberty in Christ does not support, it rather refutes,
the false theory that those who are under grace may do anything they
please. Paul was “slanderously reported” in this connection (Rom.3:8),
but there were carnal believers then, as there are now, who actually did
use their liberty as license to gratify their own desires. To turn from
liberty to license in this way is fully as serious an error as to turn
from liberty to law.
Many
a believer, motivated only by his own fleshly desires and not at all by
love for Christ or others, has indulged in pleasures of the flesh and
of the world, justifying himself on the ground that he is under grace
and has liberty in Christ. Taking others down with him in his spiritual
declension he complains of any who would help him, that, “They are
trying to put me under the law”.
Such are actually guilty of departing from grace, for “the grace of God…hath appeared”:
“Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world;“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;“Who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works” (Tit.2:11-14).
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