COMPLETE FREEDOM IN CHRIST

Let us not overlook the fact that our bondage may be as great, in, and to, new religious movements, and their shibboleths, as ever was the bondage of men in the Roman Church of the dark ages; and that only the power of Christ can keep us true to Him and our fellows in the new place, and to the newly labeled but often unchanged crowd, transference and transformation not being identical. Complacency with the new order is as disastrous to real freedom as deception in the old system. An enthusiastic zealot, for the changing order, of Zwingli's time, and for the new leaders, said to Zwingle: "'I now, and henceforth, forsake the old teachers for the new." Zwingle nobly answered, "'Nay, man, follow only God's Word as it alone does not err." A Greater than Zwingle said: "Ye do greatly err not knowing the Scriptures."

God speed the day when enchained and stifled Christendom shall be fully emancipated! Snap again our bands and bondage, though masquerading under newer, subtler, more insidious, and unsuspected guises!

Break them in pieces, thou Hammer Word of God! Cut them asunder thou sharp Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God! Thou Word of God likened unto Fire, burn them forever off Thy people! Thresh them to shreds thou sharp Threshing Instrument, having teeth! Thou precious blood of Christ, shed to make us free, purge from us their death touch, until we shall stand forth in all the glorious freedom Thou hast purchased for us! Make us free from all authority except Christ's; and yet save us from the opposite extreme of unsympathy for struggling souls yet under bondage to men and their systems! Give us the true independence which comes alone from submission to the Personal God and faith in His Son!

Teach us to look alone to the One Great Emancipator, Jesus. Amen.

"If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." John 8:36.

This is the Master's great emancipation proclamation of soul freedom. A brief glance at the contextual elements of this freedom, He alone can give, involves:

A merciful construction of the law of Moses as applied to the erring adulteress: "Neither do I condemn thee. Go in peace and sin no more." A freedom which quits throwing stones and extends mercy as our Father in heaven is merciful.

Freedom from a worldly spirit: "Ye are not of this world." A worldly spirit cloaked under the guise of great religious activity. The Lord is grieved when men carry the worldly spirit into the house of God.

Freedom to demonstrate our love for God by loving His Son and the lovers of His Son, "Every one that loveth Him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of Him." "If God were your Father, " Jesus said to the Jews, "ye would love Me for I came forth from Him." If Christ is our Saviour we love all those little ones who believe on Him and are saved by Him -- Freedom in Christ is freedom to love, fellowship, receive, companion and identify ourselves with the unpopular man and cause, and to go to the unpopular place.

Liberty to please God: "I do always those things that please Him." "We make it our ambition," wrote Paul, "to be well pleasing to Him." With this witness, it matters little who is displeased with our course -- "For if I please men I am no longer the servant of Christ." What effort to please men we see on every hand though at the fearful penalty of repudiation by God!

Exemption from a murderous, or persecuting spirit. Mark well, the false religionist must persecute the true.. His very falseness demands it. "Ye seek to kill Me because My Word hath no place in you."

It involves exemption from any alignment whatever with the great antagonist to truth. There is no middle ground -- the soul is either for or against Christ. If not fully with Him there is only one other alternative, one other choice of Masters, Satan! "He was a murderer from the beginning and (one great Satanic characteristic) abode not in the truth." Hence all antagonism to the truth is alignment with Satan, the Father of all truth resisters. "Because I tell you the truth ye (sympathizers with Satan, the truth-hater) believe Me not."

Freedom from all Satanically engendered lust: "Ye are of your father the devil and his lusts ye will do." The Marys and Marthas are perfectly safe with Christ and those who have purified themselves even as He is pure.

Freedom from all sin, outward and inward: "Which of you convinces Me of sin." It was in the foregoing instances Jesus said, "Ye shall be made free."

Humility in freedom implies deliverance from overconfidence in the infallibility of our opinions; Charity in freedom involves power to look on the mis.takes of others in love and kindness, without contempt; It enables us to look on the intellectual, hereditary and other infirmities of our fellows with the same degree of compassion with which we look on their physical or bodily deformities.

We should notice without contempt (considering ourselves, lest we be tempted) the errors of others, at the same time, accept with alacrity whatever they may know and can teach us.

Freedom from despising the poor, negatively, including positively, equity and justice and fairness in all our dealings with them. Some one suggests, "When Christ comes to dwell in the heart, vassal, serf, slave, renter, proletariat, plebian, peasant, laborer, working man, menial toiler and all other words of derision and contempt, are eliminated from our vocabularies."

Said a modern educator, "we do not want that type of factory to come to our town because it will not bring the right type of people to our community." But God is no respecter of persons and the machinists' and the laborers' redemption, cost Him as dearly as the educator's, and is equally precious in His sight.

Emancipation in Christ includes freedom to see the progressiveness of the revelation of truth to us, and from the conceit that our apprehensions of truth are final. Paul did not think he knew anything. He even laid down the condition of becoming a fool to know anything at all. lie confessed his ignorance. He said he was not sufficient of himself to think anything, much less to do anything; and that all of sufficiency was in a resource outside of himself. "Our sufficiency is of God." He confessed that he did not even know how to pray as he ought but must depend on the Spirit to make intercession through him.

While not depreciating any work of God yet there is freedom from magnifying our experiences, gifts, and attainments. "Paul, his experiences, his attainments, what are they? He forgets them all -- calls them things that are past and values them as dross and thinks Christ Jesus only worth while to press forward to -- yea he counts all things loss, for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord."

Indifference to the self-seeking of ecstatic delights, spiritual luxuriousness and the apathy of Quietism. "Paul was strenuous not reposeful" and the Master said oft, "I must go, " "I must do, "I must preach."

Deliverance from erroneous mechanical, stereotyped or conventional interpretations of truth, as substitutes for truth and its vital interpretation; and from the intellectual imperialism of the fathers; from the intolerable bondage of false religious thought of the ages; freedom to go beyond all to Christ; He makes us free from the spiritual arrogance and the subtle assumptions of infallibility of interpretation of the Rabbis, ancient, modern, Papal or Protestant, holiness or Pentecostal, and gives deliverance from the tyranny of tradi.tion old or new; and free us from the lordship of the fathers, many of whom, were astute lawyers, with a precision for exact binding definition; from great theologians and councils from Nice to Trent down to the last World Conference, whenever they speak contrary to the Word of God.

Freedom from the fear of all men; deliverance from looking to the enemies of the cross for tribute; freedom from compromise of truth and convictions; freedom from the soft pedal; unflinching fidelity to truth though men rave, and as Luther said, "all devils burst themselves with rage."

Freedom in Christ, repose of the soul in Him alone, trust in God for sustenance in the path of duty, looking away from faith in systems.

The soul standing forth in this glorious emancipation in Christ has no fear of what man can do unto him. He is fully delivered from the deification of all men. Those who are reputed great preachers, to him who has the Head, are but ministers by whom he believed; God might have used some humbler instrument. He refuses to glory in men, movements or systems. He will not burn incense to man or his achievements, having a worthier Person to Whom He pours out his adoration, yet he reverently esteems all true servants of Christ highly in love for their work's sake. The free man in Christ Jesus burns incense to none but Christ. He refuses indignantly to sing the modern siren song, forerunner to the imminent coming of Anti-Christ. "Glory to man in the highest."

The free man denies that Herod is great or a god. He refuses to fall down and worship the image Nebuchadnezzar sets up. Diana of the Ephesians is not great; to him, only Christ is great. The modern towers of Babel and the wonders of material civilization of the day interest him little, destined as they are to early dissolution. He burns not incense to gods of modern manufacture. He refuses to sacrifice to the gods though the penalty be ostracism, or anonymous communications of warning pass to and fro or the lying tongue of the gossip wag, even though his refusal results in martyrdom.

The free man in Christ Jesus refuses to wave censors of the incenses of fulsome praise to the mirage-golden Era or new-age supposed to have come to the world by that wrath of man which works not the righteousness of God. He will not praise its futile projects and schemes which ignore God and His revelation.

It is freedom to hold fast our integrity and maintain our manhood; to not hold men's persons in admiration for the sake of gain; regulating our conversation without covetousness. "Nothing, " wrote Thomas Hughes, "so tests our manhood as our attitude towards those who have power to assist us in projects which lie nearest our heart." Instance Christ and Nicodemus the man of power, authority, social, religious and financial standing: his recommendation would go far to help the earnest young Jesus; if he is wise he will seek to please Nicodemus by speaking of his religious shibboleths, making much of traditional righteousness, the value of loyalty to the Synagogue and Temple and the merit of tithe payment of mint, rue, anise, cummin and all manner of herbs; He will compliment his alms giving and formal fasting and perfunctory street-corner praying, and long flowing Pharisaical robes, together with his zeal in proselytism. But not one word of fawning servile praise; not one move to win his favor; not the least indication that He sought his patronage; not the use of a single shibboleth, dear to Nicodemus. "Nicodemus, " He said, "all your traditional righteousness, all you have thought acceptable to God is worthless. You must be born again."

A zealous modern convert is called on the carpet and warned not to offend wealthy hearers as "they are giving to the support of our institution." Certainly we should not study to give offense, but if the offense or umbrage is because of fidelity to truth, stand by the offense of the cross which has not ceased for all who live godly in Christ Jesus, though all men and devils rage. God's pure kingdom will never be forwarded by cowardice!

We deny that any modern church has the right to demand tribute from the child of God, right or wrong -- that we and all Christians in Christ Jesus are free from all men in the sense that Scripture means and that we are under no obligation, whatever, to pay a cent of God's sacred money, the tithe being still holy (and offerings too) to the Lord after devoted to Him and subservient to His guidance. With the free man in Christ it is not a matter at all of giving, all being subject to the Father's will but the only problem is where God would have it go. We declare that much modern church machinery and work is in no sense whatever the work of the Lord and that we are commanded to abound in the work of the Lord rather than blindly to accept all church work as equivalent to His work arid that we are under no obligation whatever to pay a cent of tribute to any church, preachers, or religious body that ceases longer to merit our support by a close walk with God, lest we be partakers of their sins. But we will freely, according to our power, stand by the man of God, whoever or wherever or whatever his church affiliation who brings forth fruit unto God.

The free man is under no obligation to heed the injunction to burn incense to the Centenary or New Age or Era financial programs without discrimination. If we read our New Testament aright, all contributions of the Church were given to poor and needy individual saints.

Freedom from the tyranny of tradition in its old and new forms: deliverance from the yoke of bondage to the vain doctrines of mere men, which diverge from the pure doctrines of Christ and of God: exemption from the selfish spirit of proselytism, changing and labeling God's sheep with new labels. Changing troops, by Germany, from the Eastern front in Russia to the Western front in France, did not give Germany more soldiers! Neither is the shifting process constantly going on from one church to another, of the Lord's soldiers, from one sect name to another, a numerical gain to the kingdom. It is harder to labor in travail and bear sheep, than to steal them.

Freedom to appeal our religious difficulties and differences to Jesus Himself as the final arbitrator and the One supreme judge of truth: to build our faith on the words of Jesus rather than on the words or opinions of fallible men like ourselves about the words of Jesus. Since every man must give an account of himself to God, every man has a right to arrive at the will of God for His life through direct teaching from God through His Word. Freedom to go back of all Reformers, martyrs, confessors, fathers and leaders, to Jesus -- and yet not to discard any permanent values in their discoveries of truth, but to supplement them, all discoveries of truth being supplemental and not substitutional.

Freedom from a studied effort to please men and a willingness positively to displease them if need be, in pleasing God; deliverance from the sinful respect of persons. Paul was as plain in speaking his convictions before the king as he was to Peter, the fisherman. Of Peter he said, I withstood him to the face because he was to be blamed." Of the ruler, he said, "Oh king, before whom I speak freely.' To reprove where reproof Is needed. To condone sin for the sake of favor, to ease those whom God is troubling for the sake of a return call, or to get a larger offering, is, in a holiness evangelist or Protestant preacher, the same reprehensible spirit of blind conformity as that shown by the priests to the Roman machine of Luther's time.

It matters little if the soul be in the bondage of the dark ages, prior to the Reformation, or in bondage to our own Protestant system, or its allied offshoots. Bondage is shifted, transferred and not broken -- old or new it is the same; bondage is bondage. How adroitly, in numerous instances, has Satan worked his game down through the ages, of shifting, transferring, relabeling, camouflaging, redressing the old thing Christ would utterly break.

Christ makes us free from a mere churchy spirit, high or low, regular or independent, which is destitute of the Holy Spirit. The freedom promised is in the Son. Though He ministered in the synagogues of His day, he did not confine His love and operations to them. It can never be like Him to limit our service to a little charmed circle.

He frees from drifting into mere ascetic contemplations and abstemious hermitage with its supposed merit. He came in the way, not of asceticism, but eating and drinking so freely that men said He was a glutton and a wine bibber -- a tippler; He liberates the soul from undue attachment to mystical visions and places the premium on rugged righteousness; He likewise delivers from the errors of those who magnify the Spirit's manifestations above the Word of God. The Spirit's manifestations may more easily be counterfeited than that Word which liveth and abideth ever. The Spirit's dispensation does not supplant the Word of God as the standard of faith and conduct. He is limited to the Word; the Word of God is His Sword the prince instrument through which He operates. All of His supposed manifestation should be subjected to the rigid test of accurate agreement with the Word of God.

Christ our Emancipator, sets us free from all positive, authoritative, arrogant, dogmatical assertion of infallible authority over us, of men like ourselves.

He frees the soul from the inactivity of a false Quietism, which is indolent, and lifeless: and still He gives us a glorious soul rest, a positive Quietism, which enhances and accelerates all our work for God -- The paradox of abounding immovability and active rest.

The Lion of the tribe of Judah frees His children from the pretensions of ancient and all modern Hierarchies (priestly government) of men. We are loathe to admit that we may have as strongly hierarchial tendencies under our assumption of a superior interpretation of truth and presumption of greater fitness to guide the Lord's sheep, as the old Hierarchy.

Free in Christ the soul has no need of recourse to the torturous labyrinths of dry scholasticism, ever void of the Spirit. Nothing worthwhile is looked for from the pedantic parading of learning by the so-called scholars of Higher Criticism -- there is liberty from the bondage to the subtleties of the opinions of the school-men. Still He instills a profound reverence for the discoveries of devout and reverent consecrated scholarship -- and but for the Renaissance of Literature there would have been no examination of Manuscripts of the Bible and no translation and no Reformation and no Protestantism and we should be perchance still groping in the ignorance and superstition of the dark ages. We owe a debt to those earnest, devout men like Luther, which we shall never be able to pay, for their devout learning. We speak of an irreverent rationalism which fixes salvation in reason and the resources of men.

Salvation from deification and dependence on the modern so called infallible Consciousness, which, like the old Antinomianism in exalting itself, sets aside the Word of God, making it of none effect, unaided by the Spirit and not harmonizing in its decisions with the Bible.

A deliverance complete from all prejudice and respect of persons which gives its possessor joy because of all God's people everywhere, North, South, East, and West. When Jesus commended the faith of the Centurion, who was without the regular fold of Israel, He assured His disciples that many would come from all directions, from every point of the Compass and set down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of God. And from those, who from special election to privilege, with special responsibility, who, from God's choice, were chosen people, and were original children of the kingdom, who in exclusive narrowness loved and saluted only their own would come the wail of the rejected.

Freedom in Christ from every merely human ordinance or form. Having Him whom they faintly typify at best, we do not depend on them, and yet as Mr. Wesley wrote: we neither neglect nor trust the means of grace.

The deeper freedom in Christ includes deliverance from dependence on the interior inspirations of mysticism which often run amuck. God's plain Word far transcends in authority the most powerful interior impressions. One, "Thus saith the Lord" is more authoritative to the free soul than all feelings, emotions, thrills, burnings, shakings, ecstasies,, visions, revelations dreams, heavenly choirs, supernatural manifestations whatever.

A Pittsburgh judge, at the trial of the Army Captain, who shot the bell boy, in Hotel Henry, said as the emotional element, with stage effect was introduced into the trial: "I won't have the issue involved by any stage stuff or scenes for effect. Keep to the Law!" Ah, that is the way to test all our manifestations! If they speak or demonstrate not according to the law of God's Word, it is because there is no light in them.

An old man told the writer that he had been highly favored of God by an Angel visiting him and flapping him in the face with his downy wings. Very well, let us test this Angelic visit. Did he flap sin and selfishness and stinginess and avarice and covetousness out of the old miser's heart? else he was an angel of darkness transforming himself into an angel of light. All false angelic visitations and manifestations involve in obscurity the great issue of salvation from sin and its inseparable concomitants, righteousness of life, cloud this issue, confuse and bewilder the soul, and leave it in deception.

Hence the deeper freedom in Christ is not gained nor sustained by dreams and visions nor chimerical apparitions lodged in our self-hypnotized and groundless fancies, spiritism will give us these in abundance and it is a terrible reflection on the discernment of Christendom that the spiritists more readily discern satanic presence and influence than many a professor of Christianity. Weird ecstasy too, Satan will furnish, if the soul values this more than the sufficient word of God. Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, not seek after signs.

Deliverance from a Monotonous, Needless Routine: In a large business concern employing eight hundred clerks, all of whom were dependent on the morning's mail and telegrams for the work of the day, the question was asked the manager, "How many of these clerks would have sufficient resourcefulness to do or plan something else for the company's interest if the day's mail were lost and the telegraph lines were out of order?" The amazing response was: "Less than one man to every two hundred." Such slaves are we to routine that we know not how to work outside of its well worn grooves. As the poet wrote:

but they are the exceptional souls. Deprive the ministry of the well known form of the theology of their sect and how many would know how to branch out in independent, original, constructive work?

Finally this uninvolved freedom in Christ is not seasonal or spurty, sporadic or occasional, or limited in its manifestation to special occasions, as Paul wrote sharply to the Galatians, "When I am with you only," but it zealously affects its possessor always, inspiring good deeds. Christ is its only source and sustainer; it is found nowhere but in the Son, and its perpetuity and permanence are thereby assured -- "The Son abideth ever."