by Rev. Samuel Bolton (1606-54)
THE DUTY OF THE BELIEVER
(i) To maintain Christian liberty
But yet again: It is the work of those whom Christ has brought into the enjoyment of this high and glorious privilege to maintain it: ‘Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free’ (Gal. 5: 1). There are two chief things which Christ has entrusted to us, and we are to preserve them inviolate. The first is Christian faith: ‘See that ye earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints’ (Jude 3). The second is Christian liberty: ‘Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.’ Every man should be faithful in those things which are entrusted to him, and God has entrusted the Christian man with precious things. Christian faith and Christian liberty are alike precious, and how careful we should be to maintain them! Civil liberties and liberty to go where we will are very precious. How much we engage ourselves just now* in defence of our liberties and freedoms against those who would deprive us of them! And indeed they may justly be esteemed men of abject minds who would on any account at all forego their freedoms and liberties.
* The reference is to the first Civil War (Parliament v Charles I), 1642-5.
Leo the Emperor drew up a severe constitution, in which he forbade all men the buying, and all men the selling, of their freedom, esteeming it madness in any man to part with his freedom. And if civil freedom is so precious and is to be maintained, how much more is spiritual freedom, the freedom wherewith Christ makes a man free! A freedom dearly purchased by the blood of Christ! We esteem our civil freedom the better as we remember that it cost so much of the blood of our ancestors to obtain it. It would be baseness in us to be careless of that which cost them their blood. How much more then should we esteem our freedom which was purchased by the precious blood of Christ! You are redeemed, not by silver and gold, but by the blood of Christ, says the apostle. Our freedom is dearly bought, mercifully revealed, freely bestowed, and fully conveyed to us by the Spirit of Christ. We have many and great reasons therefore for maintaining it, and for keeping ourselves clear of the yoke of bondage.
Maintain your liberty in Christ by refusing to look any more to the law for justification, and by refusing to fear its words of condemnation. You are to live, in respect of your practice and obedience, as men who can neither be condemned by the law nor justified by it. It is a hard lesson to live above the law, and yet to walk according to the law. But this is the lesson a Christian has to learn, to walk in the law in respect of duty, but to live above it in respect of comfort, neither expecting favour from the law in respect of his obedience nor fearing harsh treatment from the law in respect of his failings. Let the law come in to remind you of sin if you fall into sin, but you are not to suffer it to arrest you and drag you into the court to be tried and judged for your sins. This would be to make void Christ and grace. Indeed Christians too much live as though they were to expect life by works, and not by grace. We are too big in ourselves when we do well, and too little in Christ in our failings. O that we could learn to be nothing in ourselves in our strength, and to be all in Christ in our weakness! In a word, let us learn to walk in the law as a rule of sanctification, and yet to live upon Christ and the promises in respect of justification.
The law is a yoke of bondage, as Jerome calls it. They who look for righteousness from it are like oxen in the yoke, which draw and toil, and when they have performed their labour, they are fatted for the slaughter. Likewise, when men have endeavoured hard after their own righteousness, they perish at last in their just condemnation. As I have previously said, Luther calls them the devil’s martyrs. They take much pains to go to hell. ‘They being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God’ (Rome. 10: 3). Proud nature would fain do something for the purchase of glory. God will have it to be of grace, and man would have it of debt. God will have it to be of gift, and man would have it of purchase. We have too much of this nature in us. We go to prayer and look upon our duties and our tears as so much good money laid out for the purchase of eternal blessings. Nay, even if we do not bring money, yet we would plead our own qualifications and dispositions as if they were our deservings. This utterly crosses with God’s designs. He will have all to be of grace. Man would have all to be of debt. God’s word is not now, ‘Do this and live’, but ‘Believe and thou shalt be saved’. Walk in the duties of the law, but with a Gospel spirit. The law is to be acknowledged as a rule of sanctification, but it is to be rejected in respect of justification. It was well said by Luther: ‘Walk in the heaven of the promise, but in the earth of the law’, that is, in the heaven of the promise, in respect of believing, and in the earth of the law in respect of obeying. In this way the Christian gives the law its honour and Christ His glory.
Maintain your Christian liberty against men, as well as against the law. That liberty is a precious jewel and we must suffer none to rob us of it. Let us never surrender our judgments or our consciences to be at the disposal and opinions of others, and to be subjected to the sentences and determinations of men. We must allow neither power nor policy, neither force nor fraud, to rob us of it.
The apostle says, ‘Stand fast and be not entangled’. Let us not return like willing slaves into our former chains. Ambrose has said that it is a greater evil for a freeman to be made a slave than for a man to be born into slavery. The believer must beware of being tempted into slavery, as the fish is enticed into the net. He must take heed that he is not ensnared and overwhelmed by the policies of men. We are warned in the Word to take heed that none deceive us (Eph. 5: 6; 2 Cor. 4: 8; 2 Thess. 2: 3), as if it were in our power to prevent it. And so it is! We can only be ensnared by our own fault. We often betray away our liberty when we might maintain it; and thus we become the servants of men.
This fault arises either from weakness of head, or from wickedness of heart. It is my exhortation therefore to all Christians to maintain their Christian freedom by constant watchfulness. You must not be tempted or threatened out of it; you must not be bribed or frightened from it; you must not let either force or fraud rob you of it. To what purpose is it to maintain it against the Papists, who are the open enemies of it, and against others who would take it from us, and yet give it up to them by our own hands, yea, to them perhaps who do not seek it from us? Nothing is more usual. We must therefore beware. We must not give up ourselves to the opinion of other men, though they be never so learned, never so holy, merely because it is their opinion. The apostle directs us to try all things and to hold fast that which is good (1 Thess. 5: 21). It often happens that a high esteem of others in respect of their learning and piety makes men take up all upon trust from such, and to submit their judgments to their opinions, and their consciences to their precepts. This should not be so. Men will suspect a truth if a liar affirms it. For this reason Christ would not own the devils’ acknowledgment of Him, when they said, ‘Though art the Son of God’. But men are ready to believe an error, to give credit to an untruth, if an honest and faithful man affirms it. Whatever such a man says comes with a great deal of authority into men’s spirits. Yet it is possible for such men to be mistaken.
It is a most dangerous thing to have men’s persons in too much admiration, as we are warned in Jude 16. We know but in part (1 Cor. 13: 12). The best are imperfect in knowledge. For the most learned and for the holy martyrs we must make due allowance. They are but men, and thereby they are liable to err, though it may be granted that, since they are learned and holy, it is highly probable that what they speak is truth. But learning and holiness are not infallible evidences. There is much heed to be given to learned and holy men, but we are not to tie our boat to their ship, or, as the phrase is, pin our faith upon their sleeves. We must not subject our judgments, and rest our faith, upon their authority. This would be to make men masters of our faith. This would be a thread of that garment whereby Babylon is distinguished, a mark of the antichristian Church of Rome. It would cause our faith to rest upon the authority of men. This is not to be our practice, though I grant that it is done (though more finely done) by many, even as by those Papists of whom implicit faith and blind obedience are required.
Suffer the continued work of exhortation. It is your duty to labour to maintain Christian freedom. It was dearly purchased for you and mercifully bestowed on you, and therefore should not be weakly lost. Nor should it be maintained in a wilful way. It was given in mercy and must be kept in judgment. We must use the judgment of discretion in rejecting or embracing doctrines. We are neither blindly to subject ourselves to them, no matter how holy and learned they may be who teach them, nor are we to reject them perversely. So much, then, by way of the second part of this exhortation. But there is still something more.
(ii) Not to abuse Christian liberty
Beware of abusing our liberty in Christ. Christian liberty is a precious thing: and the more precious, the more care is needed not to abuse it. Precious things are usually commended to us with words of caution. That I may not speak into the air, I must say that there are various ways in which Christian liberty may be abused. We abuse it when, in the use of it, we cause grief to others. Liberty was purchased for the comfort of ourselves, not for the afflicting of others. They abuse it who so use it as to grieve others. We read of some young Christians at Corinth who ate meat offered to idols, for the sole purpose of showing their liberty. But the apostle tells them: ‘All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient’ (1 Cor. 10: 24). The same apostle is frequent in instructing Christians how to exercise their liberty without causing scandal. ‘Brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another’ (Gal. 5: 13). Christ has taken off our former yoke of bondage, not that we should be more wanton, but more careful. It is indeed for our comfort that he has done it, but not to destroy others, as the apostle argues in 1 Cor. 8: 11: ‘Through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died.’
But I will hasten to a conclusion, so will include all else in a final brief word. There is another way in which we may abuse Christian liberty, and that is, when we use it to admit superstition. Many will say they have Christian liberty, and therefore dare venture upon any observances, customs, and practices, although never warranted by the Word. This indeed is Christian licentiousness, not Christian liberty. Christian liberty is a liberty bounded by laws and rules. Those who do away with all such bounds are therefore libertines.
We abuse Christian liberty when we make void the law of God, as I have already shown at length; when we judge it our liberty to be exempted from duty. This is true bondage rather than true liberty. The liberty of a believer lies not in exemption from service, but in service; and surely that man is yet in bondage who does not judge service to be his liberty.
We also abuse our liberty when we give too much scope to ourselves in things that are lawful. It is an easy thing to run from use to abuse. Of such men Jude speaks in the fourth verse of his epistle: ‘There are certain men . . . who turn the grace of our God into wantonness.’ We also abuse it when we use it undutifully, denying obedience to lawful authority in things lawful, upon pretence of Christian liberty; which is tantamount to the overthrowing of all lawful authority. We abuse it also when we will be tied to nothing but what our own spirits incline us to. Of this, too, I have spoken at large, and therefore I shall conclude with the words of the apostle in 1 Pet. 2: 16: ‘You are free, but use not your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God.’
(Extracted from The True Bounds of Christian Freedom by Samuel Bolton.)