The Liberty There Is in Christ Jesus.
JESUS CHRIST came to set men free. "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." He came to set men free from the bondage of sin, the most grievous slavery in the world—that which binds the soul, the mind, the heart, and eventually dooms to eternal death. He not only forgives the sin; He not only pardons the transgressor: He removes the sin. He breaks its power in the flesh. He enthrones by His creative power another mind there. Where the carnal mind ruled, the spiritual mind reigns—the mind of Christ. A new power comes into the erstwhile slave, the power of an endless life. The same mighty Spirit of God which wrought in the reformation of the chaotic earth in the beginning, by which God "garnished the heavens," comes down into the heart of man, giving him new power, because he is given new life. And that is what Christianity is, a new life, the life of God, poured out into this dark, dying world. Yet what limited views men have of this freedom. Says a recent sermon by the Rev. D. S. Phelan, editor the Western Watchman: "Yes, our Saviour is the emancipator of mankind, and from His day to the present time His Gospel has been the key-note of liberty everywhere. There has been no slavery in the world since Christ came; certainly not in that world that knows Christ. CHRIST CAME INTO THIS WORLD ARMED WITH AN IDEA, AND ONLY IDEAS CAN MAKE MEN FREE." Now it is the blessed fact that Christ sets men free, but mere "ideas" do not do it. The Gospel is not a mere code of ethics. The Sermon on the Mount is not merely a splendid statement of Christian principles and ideas. The Gospel is what it is because it is life. "The words that I speak unto you," said Jesus, "they are spirit and they are life." The Jews held "the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law," but they were servants of sin. The form was well, but a dead form will not convert a soul or regenerate the heart. A church may hold what her devotees are pleased to call "the body of faith." It is utterly powerless to save a soul. The soul that is set free in Jesus Christ renounces the sin and receives a personal Christ, Christ within, "the hope of glory." The eternal life of God enters the soul, and the form of the truth is filled with the righteousness and life of God. A form of words is not the truth. That form may express facts, ideas; but these may be as cold and dead as the marble crypt. But truth is throbbing with the life of God; and "ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Law will not free the soul; it condemns. The letter of the Gospel will not emancipate. The creed of the church can impart no freedom. The Spirit of God, the life of Christ in His living word, received by personal faith in the heart alone can impart freedom. But that liberty in Jesus Christ will find all of the blessed requirements and commandments of God, "the law of liberty."