CHRISTIAN LIBERTY

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 2, 1880

CHRISTIAN LIBERTY.

THERE can be no liberty without law. A condition of lawlessness is a condition in which every man's liberty is imperilled by the selfishness, cupidity, caprices or enmity of his neighbor. In civil society the highest liberty can only be attained by obedience to wholesome laws. Those who willingly and cheerfully obey such laws find them not a hindrance, but a protection to liberty. Only those who wish to break law feel trammelled by its restraints. So with the rules and duties of the Christian life. To those whose hearts are fully set in them to do evil, and who are unwilling to yield obedience to the requirements of the gospel, such obedience seems to be a compulsory servitude, requiring a constant surveillance and restraint of every thought, word and act, which is exceedingly difficult to maintain, and, if maintained, must render existence unhappy and intolerable.

But this estimate of the Christian life does not take into account the grand motive to obedience which actuates the Christian. That motive is love—love to Christ who "hath loved him and washed him from his sins in his own blood," and love for his fellow-men, begotten in his soul "by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost." This love to God and man gives delight in the law and service of God. It becomes the grand and effectual inspiration to every duty to God and humanity which the divine law enjoins, and is, therefore, "the fulfilling of the law."

Under the inspiration of this love, the Christian finds his highest liberty and happiness in the performance of the very duties that seem burdensome and intolerable to the carnal mind. It is this that makes Christ's yoke easy and his burden light. If Christian duty is ever felt to be a burden to us, or any restraint upon our liberty, it is the want of love that makes it so. We shall enjoy perfect liberty in doing the will of God, when that doing is prompted by love; for Christian obedience is the natural expression of love. "If a man love me, he will keep my words." "For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not grievous." It is the very nature of love to prompt to duty and give the sense of freedom in doing it. Perfect love gives perfect liberty. The man who loves God with all his heart and his neighbor as himself, will have perfect liberty, that is, liberty to do exactly what he pleases; for, with this love as his controlling motive, he will please to do only those things which are right and pleasing to God.

— Methodist.