09. 9. The Application to Believers and Unbelievers
9. The Application to Believers and Unbelievers
If it is the case that Christ has purchased freedom for believers only, and brought believers and them only into the possession of such a privilege, then what must be the fearful condition of unbelievers. You are still in bondage to sin and Satan and the law of God, and who can express a more miserable condition than this. The Miserable Bondage of the Unbeliever (i) Bondage to sin
You are in bondage to sin, not only in bondage by reason of sin, nay, but delivered up to all evils, spiritual, temporal, and eternal. You are under the command of every lust. Every sin is a tyrant in the soul. Christ tells us that whosoever commits sin is the servant of sin (John 8:34). First a man entertains sin as his friend, and afterwards it becomes his master. You are the servants of sin (Romans 6:20). You are sold under sin, as the apostle explains in reference to his own natural condition (Romans 7:14). He says, I am carnal, sold under sin’. Indeed, we are all of us sold under sin by nature, but here we sell ourselves to sin. As it was said of Ahab, that he ’sold himself to work wickedness’, so it may be said of us. We are not only passively content to be vassals of sin, but we actively endeavour to bring ourselves into vassalage. We are actively willing to be sin’s slaves rather than to be God’s servants. It is set down in Scripture as the character of a man in his natural condition, that he is disobedient, serving divers lusts and pleasures (Titus 3:3). His obedience to sin is not forced, but free, not involuntary but natural and with delight. Hence it is said that sin reigns in natural men. Sin exercises a sovereignty, not a tyranny, in them. They are the professed servants to sin (2 Peter 2:19), like those men who chose their masters after the Lord’s jubilee was proclaimed and whose ears were bored in token of their willingness to be in perpetual subjection.
Such is your state. You are in bondage to sin, and it is a fearful bondage indeed. It is soul slavery. The condition of the Israelites under Pharaoh, and of those who are now prisoners in Turkish galleys, is very sad, but that is but the bondage of the body. But this is a soul slavery, bondage of the soul. What is it to have our bodies in vassalage and our estates enslaved in comparison with the bondage of the soul? Better to be under the tyranny of the most imperious man, than under the vassalage and slavery of sin and our own corruptions. This is the ultimate, the finishing stroke of God, when He gives up a man to the dominion of his sins. ’He that is filthy, let him be filthy still’ is the worst of all judgments. And again, it is a senseless slavery, that is, a slavery we are not conscious of. We say in natural things that those diseases are most mortal that deprive us of sense. And such is the slavery of sin. We are in chains and feel it not; we are under the weight of sin and are not conscious of it. God often brings men into bondage by sin, clapping them under the fears and terrors of an accusing conscience, and all this that He might deliver them from sin’s bondage. We say that a burning fever is more hopeful than a state of lethargy. A physician sometimes brings his patient into a state of fever to cure lethargy. Just so, a wounded and troubled conscience is better than a secure and dead conscience. When the strong man keeps the house, all is at peace. Such is the misery of this bondage, that a man is unconscious of the bondage.
Further, it is an active slavery. A man held by his lusts will drudge or take any pains to satisfy them. He will spend his strength, his health, his estate, and endure pain, to satisfy his lusts, though such a man thinks anything too much that is laid out for God and Christ. But nothing is too much to spend on his lusts. Thus is it an active slavery.
It is also a willing slavery. The man counts his slavery freedom, his bondage liberty, his chains of brass to be chains of pearl. The man is of his own will a servant to sin. How often has the Lord’s jubilee been sounded in his hearing! How often has Christ been tendered to him to set him free! Yet he chooses to return to his old master. It is therefore a righteous thing with God that he should bore the man’s ears in token of eternal slavery to sin and Satan. And again, it is a bondage from which a man cannot by his own power deliver himself. He cannot redeem himself by price, nor can he deliver himself by power or by conquest. A man may be in bondage to men and yet able to ransom himself, if not from his own resources, yet by the helps and collections and contributions of others. But no man can redeem his own soul. Nay, all the contributions of men and angels fall too short. They have but oil to keep their own lamps alight (Matthew 25:9). It is set down as not only the proper work of Christ, but as the greatest work which Christ has done, to redeem His people from sin. Indeed He did it by price (Galatians 4:5). He bought His people back, but it was not by silver and gold, as Peter tells us; the redemption of their souls is more precious (Psalms 49:7-8), and it was by the blood of Christ. Nor can the people of God redeem themselves by power. To be a sinner and to be without strength are one and the same thing, in the apostle’s phrase (Romans 5:6-8). And therefore he tells us:, While we were sinners and without strength, Christ died for us.’ Indeed we could do nothing to help ourselves out of this bondage. We were not able to weep, to pray, to work ourselves out of this condition. It is with us as with men caught in quicksands; the more they strive, the deeper they sink into them. So the more we strive in our own strength and by our own power, the more we become entangled, and the stronger the chain becomes which binds us to this condition. Thus you may get a glimpse into the nature of this miserable state. But this is not all.
(ii) Bondage to Satan
You are in bondage to Satan, not that you owed him anything - you were only indebted to God’s justice - but he is God’s jailer, who holds poor souls down as under brazen bars and behind iron gates not to be broken. If a man is in bondage it is some relief to him to have a merciful jailer. But this adds to the misery of the sinner, that he has a cruel jailer. The jailer of hell is like Nebuchadnezzar who will take no rewards; he will not be bribed; he cannot be persuaded to set the soul free. Satan is a cruel tyrant who rules in the hearts of the children of disobedience (Ephesians 2:2). The sinner is taken captive at his will, as the apostle tells us (2 Timothy 2:26).
Yet some are more royal slaves than others. Some he keeps in close custody. He holds them down with many weights and chains, under the raging power of many lusts and corruptions. Others he keeps in an easier custody, and allows them to be prisoners at large. He suffers them to walk about. They have the liberty of the prison. But yet they are imprisoned at his pleasure and taken captive at his will. He may permit them to do many things - Herod to hear, Judas to preach - yet he holds them by their lusts, and can bring them to heel when he pleases.
Such then is your bondage to Satan. It is a cruel, merciless bondage, to which the bondage of Israel under Pharaoh is not worthy to be compared. It is a universal bondage, universal in respect of persons, for all men are born slaves, and universal in respect of parts, for all parts of a man are involved in it. No part is free. The judgment, the will, the affections, the mind, and the conscience are all in chains, all enslaved to Satan. It is universal also in respect of acts and performances. A sinner in bondage cannot perform one act as a free man. He is required to perform the actions of a free man, such actions as free men do; but he cannot perform them as a free man. He prays as a slave, not as a son. He weeps as a slave, not as a free man. He acts more from fear of the lash, than for hatred of sin and love of God. All his acts are acts in bondage. His very spirit is in bondage. He has no spirit of freedom. And in this sad condition he remains until Christ sets him free.
(iii) Bondage to the law of God
Furthermore, such a man is in bondage to the law of God, that is, to its curse and its rigour. The penalties and forfeitures of the law attach to him, as the apostle states in Galatians 3:10 : ’As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse’. And why so? ’For it is written, Cursed is every one that does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.’ And that is impossible to him. Therefore of necessity he is under the curse.
I will take the curse to pieces, as it were, and show what lies within it. It is a comprehensive curse, a universal curse. A man under it is cursed in every condition, in his gold and silver, and in his relations, yea, in his very mercies. Where others are blessed in their afflictions, he is cursed in his mercies. As there is a blessing hid in the worst of things to the godly, in their crosses and losses and in death itself, so there is a curse in the best of things for the wicked man, in his wealth, in his comforts, and in his enjoyments. It is an extensive curse.
It is also an unavoidable curse. Man is born heir to it as surely as he is born a son of Adam. It is an unsupportable curse, which neither men nor angels are able to bear. The angels who have fallen lie under it, and cannot help themselves. The wrath of man may be borne, or at least undergone. It is a wrath that reaches to the body. But who can bear the wrath of God? This is a wrath that reaches to the soul, and who knows, much less who can bear, the power of His wrath?
It is an unremovable curse, so far as we look to anything we can do of ourselves to remove it. If God lays it on a man, not all the power and wit of men and angels can take it off. As none can pluck believers out of the hands of God’s mercy, so none can pluck unbelievers out of the hands of His justice. Thus you are in bondage to the curse of the law.
Then, too, you are in bondage to the rigour of the law. It is rigorous in that it requires hard things, difficult things. If you look over the duties commanded, you will find them so. Indeed, you will find them impossible things, as related to the state in which you find yourself. It is a yoke which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear (Acts 15:10). We might as well be set to move mountains, to stop the sun from running his course, to fetch yonder star from heaven, as to do what the law commands. And yet all this it requires to be done by us in the exactness and according to the exactness of the command. It requires perfect obedience, both in respect of the principle, in respect of the manner, and in respect of the end, and it will abate nothing. And all this it requires in our own persons. It will not admit of obedience by a surety. Performance on our behalf by a substitute is Gospel, not law. The law requires all to be done, with the utmost exactness, in our own person (Galatians 3:10). Nor will the law accept of the most earnest endeavours if there is any failure anywhere in the performance. It will not allow of desires instead of deeds, or of endeavours instead of performance. Desires and endeavours belong not to the law but to the Gospel. And the law requires constancy in its fulfilment; it requires obedience from the whole man of the whole law for the whole of life. If you obey for never so many years and yet fail in one tittle at the last, even if only in a thought or some inclination of the mind, all the obedience counts for nothing. For the law says: ’Cursed is he that does not continue to obey in every thing’.
Notwithstanding all this exaction from a man, yet the law will not afford him any strength or suffer him to get help from another. He must bear his burden alone. The law lays loads on him; it imposes duty without considering his strength; nor will the law afford him strength. It bids a man look for that where he can. It requires performance in strength without giving a man strength to perform.
This, too, shows the rigour of the law, that upon the least failing, all the hopes you may have had of getting good by the law are gone. You are rendered helpless and incapable of ever expecting good from the law. You are undone for ever. Upon Adam’s first sin, all his hopes of life by the law ended, and if God had not introduced a Saviour he would have been lost for ever. But some one may say: Might he not have been able to do twice as much good as he had done evil, and so made amends for his former fault? Not at all, for when once a man has offended, if only in the least particular, he can never make amends for it. He can never outdo the law. If he could outdo what the law required, yet all he could do would never make amends, or make up for the former fault. If you were to go about to redeem every idle word by an age of prayers, every act of injustice with a treasury of alms, every omission of duty by millions of duties, yet all this would be too little. It could not possibly make amends for the former failing. But you will say, Why? What then? Will not the law accept of my tears, my repentance for my fault? No! Here is the further rigour of the law, that if ever you have offended though in the least particular, it will accept of no attempt at amendment. It admits of no place of repentance. It will not admit of tears. Repentance is brought in under the Gospel, not under the law. If you fail in one small thing, and shed seas of tears, even tears of blood; if you weep your eyes out of your head, yet all this is unavailing, for the law admits of no repentance.
Thus it is seen how miserable a thing it is to be under sin’s bondage. I have enlarged on the matter so as to commend the great privilege of a Christian’s freedom by contrast with it. It is commonly said that contraries illustrate one another, and certainly the sight of the misery of bondage enables the Christian to conceive the better of the blessedness of the freedom which comes through Christ. And this freedom I have explained at length in the earlier part of my discourse, showing how it includes freedom from sin, Satan, and from the law. 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’ (Galatians 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 1:3). 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.
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 lock 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’ (Romans 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 (Ephesians 5:6; 2 Corinthians 4:8; 2 Thessalonians 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 Thessalonians 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 ’Thou 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 1:16. We know but in part (1 Corinthians 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 Corinthians 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’ (Galatians 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 Corinthians 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 Peter 2:16 : You are free, but use not your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God.