John 8:31-59 Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If you continue in my word, then are you my disciples indeed;… I. WHAT BELIEVERS ARE NOT FREED FROM IN THIS WORLD. 1. From obedience to the moral law. It is true that we are not under it as a covenant for justification, but we are still under it as a rule for direction. Its matter is as unchangeable as the nature of good and evil is (Matthew 5:17-18). Its precepts are still urged under the gospel to enforce duties (Ephesians 6:12). It is therefore a vain distinction of the Libertines that it binds us as creatures, not as Christians; the unregenerate part, but not the regenerate. But this is a sure truth that they who are freed from its penalties are still under its precepts, and though no more under its curse, Christians are still under its conduct. The law sends us to Christ to be justified, Christ sends us to the law to be regulated (Psalm 119:4, 5). 2. From the temptations and assaults of Satan. Even those who are freed from his dominion are not free from his molestation (Romans 16:20; 2 Corinthians 12:7). Though he cannot kill them, he can and does afflict them (Ephesians 6:16). 3. From the motions of indwelling sin (Romans 7:21-24). Corruptions, like Canaanites, are still left to be thorns in the side. 4. From inward troubles and exercises on account of sin (Job 7:19; Psalm 88:14, 16; Psalm 38:1-11). 5. From the rods of affliction. God in giving us liberty does not abridge His own (Psalm 89:32). All God's children are made free, yet what son is there that his father chasteneth not (Hebrews 12:8). Exemption from affliction is rather the mark of a slave. 6. From the stroke of death, though they are freed from its sting (Romans 8:10). II. WHAT THAT BONDAGE IS FROM WHICH EVERY BELIEVER IS FREED BY CHRIST. 1. From the rigour and curse of the law, which is replaced by the gentle and easy yoke of Christ (Matthew 11:28). The law required perfect working under the pain of a curse (Galatians 3:10), accepted of no short endeavours and no repentance, gave no strength. But now strength is given (Philippians 4:13), sincerity is reckoned perfection (Job 1:1), duty becomes delight, and failings hinder not acceptance. 2. From the guilt of sin. It may trouble, but it cannot condemn them (Romans 8:33), the handwriting against them is cancelled (Colossians 2:14). 3. From the dominion of sin (Romans 6:14; Romans 8:2). 4. From the power of Satan (Luke 11:21, 22). (1) By price. The blood of Christ purchases believers out of the hand of justice by satisfying the law for them, which being done, Satan's authority fails of course, as the power of a jailer over the prisoner when he has a legal discharge (Hebrews 2:14). (2) By power (Acts 26:18; 2 Corinthians 10:5; Colossians 2:15). 5. From the poisonous sting and hurt of death (1 Corinthians 15:55, 56). Where there is no hurt there should be no horror. III. WHAT KIND OF FREEDOM THAT IS WHICH COMMENCES UPON BELIEVING. There are two kinds of liberty. 1. Civil, which belongs not to the present business. Believers are not freed from the duties they owe to their superiors, whether servants (Ephesians 6:5) or citizens (Romans 13:4). 2. Spiritual. That which believers have now is but a beginning — they are free only in part — but it is growing every day and will be complete at last. IV. THE EXCELLENCY OF THIS STATE OF SPIRITUAL FREEDOM. 1. It is a wonderful liberty never enough to be admired. (1) We owed God more than we could pay. (2) We were in the possession of the strong man, armed. (3) We were bound with many chains — the understanding with ignorance, the will with obstinacy, the heart with hardness, the affections with bewitching vanities. For such to be set at liberty is a wonder of wonders. 2. It is a peculiar freedom — one which few obtain, the great multitude abiding still in bondage (2 Corinthians 4:4). 3. A liberty dearly purchased. What the captain said (Acts 22:28) may be much more said of ours (1 Peter 1:18). 4. A growing and increasing liberty (Romans 13:11). 5. A comfortable freedom (1 Corinthians 7:22). It ranks the slave above the noble. 6. Perpetual and final (Acts 26:18).Improvement. 1. How rational is the joy of Christians above the joy of all others in the world (Psalm 126:1, 2; Luke 15:24). 2. How unreasonable and inexcusable the sin of apostasy. Will a delivered captive return to his shackles (Matthew 12:44, 45). 3. How well-becoming is a free spirit in believers to their state of liberty. 4. Let no man wonder at the opposition of Satan to the preaching of the gospel (Acts 26:18). 5. How careful should Christians be to maintain their spiritual liberty (Galatians 5:1; 2 Corinthians 1:24). 6. Let Satan's captives be encouraged to come to Christ. (J. Flavel.)Only in the Son does human nature come to liberty, to the free use of all its powers. to the realization of all its privileges, to the full satisfaction of all its desires Christ gives us freedom from sin. I. AS SIN REVEALS ITSELF IN UNBELIEF. 1. Peter says of some, "they cannot see afar off." They are short-sighted, they can only see what is close to them: food on the table, a five-pound note, title deeds, the earth and the stars, but they cannot see the highest universe, its grandeurs, its treasures, its delights. Thousands of men apparently free are really the poorest of slaves — the slaves of the senses. Some of these look round and think it a big cage, but the physical is only a cage, ample as it may seem. Many contrive to make themselves comfortable in their captivity; they trim their feathers, peek their sugar, sing their song, yet is the earthly life at its best but a captivity. It is only when man emerges into the spiritual element that he gets into the sky, stretches his wings, and tastes the pleasures for which he was born. 2. The truth as it is in Jesus makes us free from the tyranny of the senses; it opens our eyes and causes us to see the world behind the world, the sun behind the sun; it strengthens us that those heavenly places become accessible to us. Oh! how the walls of the prison house of sense would close in upon us quite if it were not for Jesus Christ. How the Lord's Prayer brings us into the full presence of the spiritual universe — the Divine Father, the Divine kingdom, the Divine will, the Divine grace, the Divine and everlasting goal! With that prayer realized in our heart, we feel there is something more than physiology, mechanism, and victuals; we have dropped the fetters of sense, we have got our feet out of the clogging bird lime of earthliness, we are free, gloriously free, like Tennyson's eagle "ringed round with the azure sky!" 3. We hear much in these days about "free thought," but free thought in the truest, noblest sense is realized only in Jesus Christ. The bondage of thought is the tyranny of materialism. Christ frees us from the most terrible illusions of all, the illusions of time and sense, and causes us to see that real universe, that glorious city of God of which this earth is but the shadow. II. AS SIN REVEALS ITSELF IN DISOBEDIENCE. 1. "Whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin." Sin makes slaves of us in a variety of practical irregularities. Some of these are coarser, some more refined, but how impossible thousands find it to shake off the tyranny of those evil habits which have established themselves through years! One man is the victim of vanity, another of covetousness, another of ambition, another of appetite. A man's will can do much, but it sadly fails here. You will see sometimes a performer at a fair with an electric machine. At length a bumpkin comes up, and at the invitation of the professor smilingly seizes the handles. In a moment the poor fellow is convulsed, dances in pain, and cries for deliverance. Why does he not drop the thing? He cannot. Does not the crowd help? No; the crowd grins — the crowd always grins. The poor simpleton is at the mercy of the operator, and he goes on grinding. So it is today with thousands of men in sin; they are ashamed of themselves, horrified at themselves, filled full of torment and remorse; but they are powerless under the mysterious spell, and do again and again the thing they execrate. 2. But here again Christ can make you free indeed. Some of you think you will have to be buried in your fetters. Let me assure you Christ, by His mighty truth, and love, and grace, can strengthen you to burst these miserable bonds as Samson burst the green withes wherewith he was bound. Where is the proof? I will give you the best logical proof in the world — thousands of living men and women who have attained full mastery by the spirit of Christ. "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God?...And such were some of you," etc. III. AS SIN REVEALS ITSELF IN LUST. 1. Christ does not repeal the moral law. He does not accommodate it to our weakness; on the contrary, He brings out more fully its deep, wide meaning, making it more imperative than ever. One of our sceptical writers tells us that when she got rid of Christianity she felt she emerged on "the broad breezy common of nature." Well, we are bound to accept her testimony. But, is there anything so very desirable about "breezy commons?" I never understood that the best things grew there; ferns and furze bushes are there, brambles, and crab apples; but the ripe orchards, the golden corn, the purple clusters, the richest blooms and blossoms, these are not found on breezy commons. I never understood that breezy commons were very desirable places to live on. And I never understood that the picturesque parties who usually pitch their tents and live on breezy commons constitute the cream of the world's population. There was far more truth in that lady's words than she suspected. To get rid of Christianity, its laws, its hopes, its fears, its inspirations, its reverence and love, is to emerge on a breezy common, all the best things lost forever. If our countrymen are to repudiate Christ, our country will emerge on that breezy common, and we shall dwell there as our Druidical fathers did before us. It has taken us more than a millennium to get off that breezy common, and find the goodly heritage of our present civilization, and every step of our progress has been through self-denial, self-limitation, renunciation, subordination, obedience. We have nothing to gain by license. 2. Christ does not give us liberty by modifying the law to suit our weakness. He destroys in us the element of lust or irregular desire. We find in ourselves what the theologian calls our fallen self, what the evolutionist calls our animal self, and this contradicts our best reason, and brings us into bondage. "The flesh lusteth against the spirit," etc. A man is a real slave when he is a slave at heart, when he cannot follow out delightfully the noble impulses and aspirations of his nature, and such slaves are we all by birth. Christ makes us "free indeed" by putting God's laws into our heart and writing them in our mind; by filling us with high, pure, bright, strong, expansive feeling; by making us to say with Himself, in His strength, "I delight to do Thy will O God." This is the true liberty, to will the good, to delight in it, to follow it passionately, to find our only heaven in it. And this is the freedom wherewith Christ maketh free. IV. AS SIN REVEALS ITSELF IN FEAR. 1. The slave serves in fear. Now Christ, the Son, makes us sons, and, filling our heart with love to our heavenly Father, makes all life's duty light. In the power of a sublime love we accomplish the loftiest law, and taste the utmost freedom. Science tells us that the atmosphere presses upon us to the extent of something like fifteen pounds to the square inch, and an average sized man carries about with him something like fifteen tons weight. But we feel the atmosphere no burden — it is a pleasure to breathe, to feel it around us; "light as air" is a proverb. Why is this? The inward pressure of gases in our body is equal to the external weight, so we suffer no inconvenience — the air is no burden, it is life, joy, to all healthy organizations. So, as John shows, when we love God "His commandments are not grievous." The inward pressure, joy, power, hope, are equal to every exaction of the outward law, and so far from the commandment being a burden to us, it is a delight and glory. 2. And then, as to the future, sin fills us with fear. As Christ shows us in this place, sin disinherits us. "The slave has no permanent place in the household." And so we look forward with dismal apprehension. We are all our lifetime subject to the fear of death. Here Christ, by making us sons, changes fear to hope, and so gives us precious liberty. "The sting of death is sin," etc. (W. L. Watkinson.) Parallel Verses KJV: Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; |
    |