COMPLETE FREEDOM FOUND ONLY IN CHRIST

"He, Luther, had gradually taught himself and his countrymen, who were following his career breathlessly that the man who trusted in God did not need to [ear the censures of the pope or the clergy. He emancipated not merely the learned and cultivated classes, but the common people, from the fear of the Church; and this was the one thing needful for a true Reformation. So long as the people of Europe believed that the priesthood had some mysterious powers, no matter how vague or indefinite, over the spiritual and eternal welfare of men and women, freedom of conscience and a renovation of the public and private moral life was impossible; the greatest achievement of Luther was that by teaching and, above all, by example, he showed the common man that he was in God's hands, AND NOT DEPENDENT ON THE BLESSING OR BAN OF A CLERICAL CASTE. From the moment that the common people, simple men and women, knew and felt this, they were FREED from the mysterious dread of Church and priesthood; they could look the clergy fairly in the face, and could care little for their threats. It was because Luther had freed' himself from this dread because the people, who knew him to be a deeply pious man, saw that he was tree from it, and therefore they need be in no concern about it, that he became the great reformer and popular leader in an age which was compelled to revise its thoughts about spiritual things." -- Lindsey, Reformation in Germany, page 192-193.

"He taught freedom from the fear of priestcraft; redemption was not a secret science practiced by the priests within an institution called the church; that all believers had the privilege of direct access to the very presence of God and that the very thought of a priesthood who ALONE could mediate between God and man was both superfluous and irreconcilable with the truest instincts of the Christian religion!"

When modern leaders seek to intimidate us with their new assumptions of infallibility and the duty of every one following them and when they seek with threats and bans and reflections on our going on with God, because we do not go on with them, let us remember we have nothing to fear. Their bulls and bans and threats and prayers for our judgment and affliction, and threats of the wrath of God, are no more to us than the fear with which the Pope sought to intimidate the dupes of Reformation days. There is NO FEAR in LOVE. Remember this ever. We are free from all fear of all men, all priests and preachers and systems and churches and evangelists, etc.

"The freedom which is ours in Christ Jesus." Weymouth's translation, Gal. 2:5.

Negatively: Does not consist of a mere change of the sphere of our bondage, or in a change of its name. Of all inferior apples, worthless alike for cooking and tasteless for eating, Ben Davis take the lead. The salesman knew this and tried to sell them to us under a new name -- "Gaino" but the new name did not transform them, they were the same old tasteless, pithy, Ben Davis apples! Bolshevism, in Russia, we are told, is Czarism disguised in overalls; all know that we have the same old pre-war world under the new slogan: "Made Safe For Democracy" (the rule of the people); and the same problems in church though claiming to have entered a new, golden Era. A manufacturer whom we knew had three labels for one shovel -- Crusco, Busco and Little Giant all decorating the same inferior grade of shovel. Artistically decorated labels may adorn a can of spoiled corn; and Golden Rule stores may be so in name only; and a great bill-board advertising tires which are supposed to give the longest mileage and the greatest service may be a camouflage for a very inferior tire. The soul, in religious bondage, seeking its freedom, may jump from the frying pan into the fire, looking for the perfect church organization. In the days of Feudalism men were slaves to the land: in the revival or beginning of industrialism they hoped for relief only to find that their bondage had been shifted from the land to the factory. The emancipation of the slaves has been pictured in glowing colors and while not unappreciative of what has been done for them much remains to be done -- they are still, in numerous instances, slaves to the warehouse and wharf; to the hovel and hut and to starvation wages; and there are communities where they are subjected to cursing, hatred, and contingent lynching.

An amusing observation shows the attitude of many: when a clerk in a railroad office, there came to our desk a report of a wreck in the South in which an engineer stated that his locomotive had run over a wagon filled with Negroes, drawn by two mules, and killed two of them, making no discrimination between Negroes and mules.

Subscribing only to the ideas held by one religious movement and rejecting the truth which inheres in others is not the freedom of which Paul writes. Truth, wherever found, is the legitimate heritage of the true child of God. He welcomes it eagerly when heard from unexpected quarters. I once heard a woman who had been trained in the straightest of modern Pharisaism and despised others, tell of her amazement in hearing a minister of the Presbyterian Church preach a most convictive sermon (to her heart) on the subject of restitution. I am more and more convinced that each movement has some phase of truth that the other needs; the error is in over-emphasis of truth and a failure of right perspective of whole truth. Instead of the different phases of truth emphasized by different sects being the basis for separation, each should welcome what the other knows and can teach of truth -- truth, being the instrument of freedom and unity, should unify rather than separate. I recall a zealous devotee of a radical holiness church who said to me that from the tenor of their periodicals she had imbibed the idea that outside her church, few if any, were right with God. She had a struggle to feel that I could be right and belong to another church, so universally condemned by her church. But under the searching truth of God's Word she made the startling discovery that she herself was all wrong -- that she did not have the right feeling towards a single member of her own infallible church, and publicly confessed and asked their forgiveness.

Neither are ironclad, hide-bound, hard-shell views consistent with Gospel Liberty! We are well aware that there are certain unalterable, unchanging, fundamental Gospel truths, but there may be yet, under the inspiration of God, emphasis of certain truth, truth which has been allowed of God to lie dormant through the centuries, with which God may yet mightily shake the world.

The writer was once conducting family worship, reading from Mark's Gospel, the account of the Demoniac of Gadara and called attention to the fact that there were nearly one hundred references to demonology within the brief compass of the sixteen chapters of Mark's Gospel. One present said, "It is a new doctrine; my husband was a smart man and a preacher and he never preached this doctrine, therefore it cannot be true. He forgot more about the Bible than you will ever know." That spirit is just how tradition, with its rejection of the Word of God came into power. Men were exalted above what Christ had written. But the words of Jesus are sufficient -- they outweigh the words of all. If his words, as they so often do run counter to human theories, "We should bend our theories and make them fit our facts."

Limiting our love and labor to one movement is not the disentanglement Paul is considering. It is freedom to exalt Christ and all the worthy things in all movements are quickened. The trouble, one has suggested of much of our activity is that it is not Christian, but sectarian -- it does not make men like Christ but like our sectarian conception of Christ. If a man clearly sees the tenets so peculiar and so dear to us, and if he intellectually assents to them, and shows happiness and zeal in their propagation, we give him the right hand of fellowship. But the Master adopts a more searching test: not by adjustment to doctrine or human party but: "By their fruits ye shall know them."

Mere fleshly enthusiasm, which the Master said profited nothing, a hilarious time in meeting, is far from equivalent to the deep heart and life freedom in Christ. We may teeter up and down and go through all manner of gyrations in abandonment to our emotions while we refuse to gather sticks, like Paul on the Island, doing our part to sustain the fire by which we warmed. We recall once seeing an intelligent deaconess give way to a frenzy of emotionalism, who was smitten witch conviction of its selfishness while no one was being born into the kingdom -- demonstration is easy compared with the pain of travail for souls. It is not said that when Zion demonstrates she shall bring forth her children, but when Zion is in the agony of soul travail! We are not writing of pure demonstration of the Spirit but of the selfish fleshly kind. We shall never forget a reproof given by Professor Shaw when preaching in a large camp-meeting where a sister cried out, interrupting him, "We need more fire here." "True, sister, " was the mild rejoinder, "but it depends on what you mean by fire. There are various kinds: wild-fire; fox fire; phosphorescent fire, which emits a sickly glow without warmth; fanatical fire; spit-fire; hell fire, and holy fire. If you mean we need holy fire, you are right, " He then described pointedly the effects of holy fire as fire which burned up bank-notes for God and humanity; which put farms and businesses and ambitions and talents on the altar for God, burning from the heart all narrowness and selfishness; a fire which gave the soul the liberty to hear all the word of God and walk in all its light rather than to run off on a tangent about one phase of it. We are in desperate need of more holy fire. The sister was speechless! Her conception of fire was limited to noise and demonstration; which runs out in selfish shouting while the world is dying.

How our conception of the extent of the liberty in Christ needs enlarging! We have frequently observed men of wealth, hang around churches and tabernacle meetings, passing the song books with a sanctimoniousness which indicated that they thought they were doing the work of the Lord. And when we shot a bow at a venture, remarking that a man could not expect to get rewards in heaven on passing song-books, while he continued in his miserliness, old Scrooge was highly indignant at the perforation of all his armor wherein he trusted, went up a tree known as miff, and stayed until the meeting was over. We need a revelation of how deep our selfishness is when cloaked under the guise of piety. Like men who wrapped the American flag about them, loudly professing loyalty, during the war, to cover their treachery, men may quote the Bible while utterly ignorant of its demands. A wealthy farmer had in conspicuous letters on his barn: "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." That was the trouble he literally wanted the Lord to be his shepherd but cared little what became of the other fellow. Calling attention one night to the motto and suggesting that there was very little danger of a man with a large farm with war prices prevailing, wanting; and that full deliverance in Christ would legitimately paraphrase the text to read: "The Lord is my shepherd; the other fellow shall not want;" The shock intended was produced; the tight-wad was literally awakened so that he was not able to sleep for two weeks normally. But he hardened his heart, and accused the preacher of adding to the Word of God.

Some are defeated by giving an undue prominence to certain places or environments, as essential to victory; others to special atmospheres in which they expect to find God; He accommodates Himself to this weakness. but it shows that He Himself is secondary, limited in our thought to the place or atmosphere. I once went to a place where the Lord had marvelously manifested Himself to me in hopes that He would repeat the manifestation. But He was not consciously there; having limitless resources He need not repeat Himself. We need David's vision of the transcendent God: "As the hart pants after the water brooks so pants my soul after thee, O, God!" Not after the water brooks the gift of God, but after the Giver Himself. I have somewhere read that, "Atmospheres are helpful and dangerous. They intoxicate us as they did Peter so that we would ever abide in them! Dangerous when we trust them in any sense:

Only when Christ is our life will we be free from the "wiggle and wobble" prevalent everywhere. Without Him, there will be vacillation and lack of stability. The freedom is not found in a special atmosphere but in Christ!

Positively: In Paul's description of the extent of our liberty in Christ, in Galatians, we find:

All absence of sinful respect of persons, -- Paul, himself is an example. He found, when visiting the Jerusalem church that Peter, James and John seemed to be pillars; Paul, having his message direct from Jesus, in comparing notes with th ecclesiastical triumvirate finds they have nothing in their teaching that the Lord had not revealed to Him, though as one born out of due time; they who seemed to be of reputation in the church added nothing to him; yea, he discovered that God had revealed clearly to Him some very vital things which they did not seem to see at all and running the risk of repudiation by the foremost leaders ("whatsoever they were, it maketh no matter to me; God accepteth no man's person"); (thus, parenthetically, wrote free Paul) he resisted Peter, (called the first pope) to his face because he was to be blamed. With Paul, Jesus towered far above the three leading church pillars, Peter, James and John, as the pyramids above the Nile plains of mountains above the Nile hills; and He surely far over-towers all the great church pillars since, is there a more searching test of a man's victory in Christ than exemption from the respect of persons? "If ye have respect of persons ye commit sin. There is no respect of persons with God." We are not now writing of reverent respect and esteem for those whom God has used as the instruments of our salvation, or who are over us in the Lord and watch over our souls, admonishing us for we are told to regard such highly in the Lord; but that sinful respect of persons shown in partiality. The world is full of this, and the church has entirely too much of it. The case James cites is familiar: The man with the gay clothing and the gold ring given the exalted seat, while the poor man in mean attire is despised. Or, to modernize it, the sinful fawning on the man or woman with the custom tailoring and the scorn for the man with the hand-me-down or dressed in the workingman's suit. Waiters, red-caps, bell boys, Pullman porters, dining-car attendants are all guilty of this sin and sometimes preachers and evangelists in refusing calls to the poor fields. In a leading hotel in C., a high officer of the navy was entering the elevator with his little son who was dressed in miniature Admiral's uniform; on observing the neatly attired lady operator of the car, the polite little fellow doffed his jaunty head-gear. His father said, "Never mind, son, there are no ladies in the car: you need not remove your hat." With burning indignation the attendant recited the incident to the author: telling how men will remove their hats when ascending the elevators in company with fallen women, but keep them on when the only woman in the car is the operator.

This spirit is sometimes seen in institutions where the higher life is taught, on revival occasions, when there is a decided deference shown the seeker if he be the son of the president or trustee or wealthy patron or leading evangelist, or a student from the home of affluence, while neglecting the poor boy or girl who sweeps halls or washes dishes to get through. It is seen too, in barring servants from prayer; or in the immediate reply to a letter from the rich and letting remain unopened, the one from the poor; or in being more interested when a member of our church moves to town than the one from some other church.

Paul also enumerates freedom from the legalism of James who with Peter tried to saddle the law of Moses on those who were happily saved by grace through faith, saying "except ye keep the law of Moses and be circumcised ye can not be saved." It was for this that Paul rebuked Peter (and James) withstanding him to the face because he was to be blamed, giving place to their law religion, by subjection, no not for an hour; that the truth of the Gospel might continue. "When I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter, before them all, if thou being a Jew, livest after the manner of the Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews? Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified." Galatians 2:14-16.

These legalists were the certain false brethren (not false because of their inadvertence to the law; not made offenders for a word; but in their legalism, false); of the circumcision party who came in privily to spy out the freedom which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us again into the bondage of the law. They substituted works for faith; having begun in the Spirit they sought perfection by the works of the flesh instead of the hearing of faith.

This glorious release was purchased for us by Christ. What another pays for and gives to me is mine. I add nothing to his purchase price. I use the gift. If I work for a gift I thwart the giver's benevolence. It then becomes a reward for service and is no longer a gift. I once gave our laundress a present of two dollars. Mopping the tears with her red bandanna she said with broken voice: "Tell the Missus I'll come around and work this out." "No no, auntie, the Lord laid it on my heart to give it to you. It is free. You do nothing for it but take it." The only condition for the receiving of gifts is a willing attitude of receptivity. Why struggle for what is ours in Christ who has purchased glorious freedom for us, let us believe Him and accept it. Let us be like Andy Dolbow, who on being taken into a diner for the first time; when the kind friend handed him the bill of fare and asked Andy what he would have, he replied, "I will take the whole of it." It is now within our grasp for the taking. It is present. The freedom which is ours, No longer need we struggle for that which is lawfully ours. I do not struggle to get a typewriter with which I am writing these words. I have one; it is mine; I use it.

It is freedom to serve, Paul finally wrote: "By love serve one another." This will be one of the surest means of heeding the injunction to guard, or stand fast, in, the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free. It includes an accommodating spirit and the helpful hand; it bears one another's burdens and so fulfills the law or rule of Christ. How often there is the profession disassociated from the idea of brotherly kindness seen in helping every one his brother! That profession and worship of God in the Name of His Son which is not followed by service to men is a grief to God, I recall a brokenhearted woman, whose husband was over seas, who tried, in her virtual widowhood, through a whole summer, to get professors of the highest life to give her practical assistance. She was unable to interest a single soul in doing a single practical thing for her for love or money. When she finally found two young men willing to turn from their own interests to assist her she wept convulsively with joy and surprise.

Liberty of soul in Christ involves peace of conscience; liberty of spirit; sweet abandonment of all to God; gracious generosity, proportionate to capacity, and the joy of seeing light always increasing in our hearts; with freedom from the bondage to and the desires of the world: as long as the world is anything to us our freedom is but a word and we are as easily captured as a bird whose leg is fastened by a thread; we only seem to be free; the string is not visible but we can only fly its length and we are prisoners.

Much of our church activity is mechanical, not free with the spontaneity of the Spirit. Our actions are like those of a galvanized corpse. When I was a boy I stood by a faker and pulled for him an invisible string which made two imitation prize fighters fight. They could not go by their own strength. Their motions were artificial; they only went when they were pulled to it. So is the life of many modern churches: they only go when pulled to a seemingness of life by the appeal to the old well worn motives of loyalty to the church. Oh, that God would give the churches the vision to see that the only necessary incentive to spontaneous, continuous service is the Vision of His Son like He gave to Paul on the Damascus Road from which he never swerved until he lay his head on the headman's block.