Today in different parts of the world nations are fighting for their independence. The people of those countries engaged in independence struggles wish to control their own affairs and not be subject to other powers. Sometimes these attempts end with the people more in bondage than they were before. At other times the outcome may be that they do truly win their independence.
The Bible teaches us that we can be members of a nation where civil liberty is enjoyed and yet that we may in reality be in bondage. We are in bondage when we are under the power of sin and unbelief. The bondage of sin is a hard bondage. Satan is a cruel taskmaster, worse than any of the taskmasters of Egypt in the days when the children of Israel were in bondage in Egypt. There is no let-up in his service. He will keep the faces of all who are in his power to the grindstone. Do what we will, as fallen children of Adam there is no escape for us from his service. If we are ever to be delivered then the Lord must set us free. We cannot deliver ourselves.
When the Lord, by His Word and Spirit, begins to deal with a sinner, He first of all shows him that he is in bondage to sin and to Satan — a truth that the sinner will never acknowledge of himself. It takes divine, almighty power and teaching to convince a sinner of his lost condition. It is the Holy Spirit’s work to do this by His awakening grace. It is a solemn experience for the sinner to discover that he is in the power of an enemy who is too strong for him.
What good news the gospel contains for awakened sinners! It declares, through Jesus Christ, liberty to the captives, the opening of the prison to them that are bound. It declares the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God. What good news for an awakened soul — that there is a way of escape from the wrath to come; that there is everlasting deliverance from sin and death; that through the Lord Jesus Christ a way has been opened whereby the sinner may escape out of the prison house of a lost and ruined state and be translated into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. The sinner’s escape out of this prison is no less remarkable than that of Peter out of Herod’s prison, the Lord sending His angel, opening the doors and leading him out. What a miracle of grace is the conversion of one sinner!
The sinner who escapes out of the prison house is set at liberty. This does not mean that he has license to do as he pleases. The liberty that is in Christ is far from this. Gospel liberty implies the possession of a new heart and willingness to walk in the way of God’s commands. To walk in disobedience to the will of God would imply bondage. This the soul has been mercifully and graciously delivered from. The soul that is truly set free says: How may I best please God? This is the soul that can say from personal experience that wisdom’s ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace.
Can we say that we have been brought to this freedom ourselves? Have we a holy delight in doing God’s will, in yielding obedience to His laws? Do we desire to please God in everything? Surely it must come to this if we claim to have been set free by Christ. He does not give sinners freedom in order that they would do evil but rather that they would do good. What need we have of grace day by day to walk in the way of God’s commands. As we cannot bring ourselves into the narrow way neither can we keep ourselves in it. The Lord alone can sustain and keep us, and to Him we must look and ask Him to do for us above what we can ask or think. Our prayer then will be:
Hold up my goings, Lord, me guide
in those thy paths divine,
So that my footsteps may not slide
out of those ways of thine.