2. A life-giving obedience (Joh_8:51; Deu_11:27; Act_5:29; Rom_6:16; Heb_5:9; 1Pe_1:22).
3. An ever-living Saviour (Joh_8:58; Psa_90:1; Joh_1:1; Joh_17:5; Col_1:17; Heb_1:10; Rev_1:18). (Sunday School Times.)
Bondage and freedom
I. PHYSICAL BONDAGE.
1. An ancient institution (Gen_9:25-26).
2. Called bondmen (Gen_43:18; Gen_44:9).
3. Some born in bondage (Gen_14:14; Psa_116:16).
4. Some captured in war (Deu_20:14; 2Ki_5:2).
5. Subject to sale (Gen_17:27; Gen_37:28-36).
6. Debtors sold into bondage (2Ki_4:1; Mat_18:25).
7. Thieves sold into bondage (Exo_22:3).
8. Bondage of Israelites not perpetual (Exo_21:2; Lev_25:10).
II. SPIRITUAL BONDAGE.
1. Is to the devil (1Ti_3:7; 2Ti_2:26).
2. Is to fear of death (Heb_2:14-15).
3. Is to sin (Joh_8:34; Rom_6:16).
4. Is to corruption (2Pe_2:19; Rom_8:21).
5. Is to iniquity (Act_8:23).
6. Is to the world (Gal_4:8).
7. Is to spiritual death (Rom_7:24).
8. Is unknown by its subjects (Joh_8:33).
III. SPIRITUAL FREEDOM.
1. Promised (Isa_42:6; Isa_24:7; Isa_61:1).
2. Typified (Exo_1:13-14 with Deu_4:20),
3. Through Christ (Joh_8:36; Rom_7:24-25).
4. Proffered by the gospel (Luk_4:17-21).
5. Through the truth (Joh_8:32).
6. Testified by the Spirit (Rom_8:15; Gal_4:5-6).
7. Enjoyed by saints (Rom_6:18-22).
8. Saints should abide in it (Gal_5:1).
(Sunday School Times.)
The Kingdom of the Truth
I. THOSE WHO ARE NOT ITS SUBJECTS THOUGH THEY SAY THEY ARE.
1. Accepting a mere dead orthodoxy does not constitute one a genuine subject of the Kingdom of Truth (Joh_8:31-33). This declaration is levelled against the traditional faiths and old maxims which those Jews were holding as their birthright blessing.
2. Nor being born of respectable and even believing lineage. Our Lord was confronted with the dry statement that they descended from Abraham, and that they were never slaves even in morality. “Professing themselves wise, they became fools.” Christ answered with directness that the plain reason why they did not believe in Him, was that they were not born of God. All there was of good in their boasted ancestor was due to his having by faith seen Christ’s day. And when this maddened them, He raised His word to an imperial utterance, such as only the King of the Kingdom of Truth could make (Joh_8:58). There are two things in this:
(1) He that is not in Christ’s kingdom is in Satan’s.
(2) He who is not a Christian cannot be a true man in life, thought, temper, etc.
3. Nor following mere blind formulas of performance. Education has value; but the truest men in an age like ours must sometimes turn back upon their training with a free judgment. Antiquity is no proof of soundness in the right. The devil has all the force of the argument in that direction, and Jesus told these Jews that Satan was their first father.
4. Nor insisting on mere sincere convictions. One may have honest preferences for an absolutely false standard. It is possible that the affections have grown perverted. The later history of Turner can be explained only on the supposition of a disease in his eyes; this threw all his work out of drawing. He was as honest and industrious as ever; his sense of colour was as fine as in his early days, but his eyes had become mechanically untrustworthy. The men, arguing here with our Lord, did not believe in Him, not because what He told them was not true, but because they, in their innermost hearts, were not true; there was a distorted image upon their souls.
II. THOSE WHO ARE ITS SUBJECTS.
1. A true man will accept true doctrines. “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” The two grand divisions of our race have always been ranged around Christ and Anti-Christ (1Jn_4:2-6).
2. A true man will cherish true principles. Joseph said he must refuse sin because he could not offend against God. Hazael had no more to offer in objection than that he was afraid he might be thought only a dog. Expediency is not enough, genuineness of principle is needed.
3. A true man will cultivate true tastes. He may not always get in love with some forms and phases of religion. He may find that 1:8 has to get himself into a more amiable and trustful frame of mind before he is anything but the artificial being that training for a bad lifetime has made him. If he does not love gentleness, or humility, or charity, or temperance, or godliness, when he sees it, it is a task for him to set about to grow to love it as soon as he can. For a critic who does not like a true painting is not himself true. If one prefers Turkish jargon to a harmonious tune, he is not true. And when one turns away from a true child of God, it is because he is not true.
4. A true man will manifest true consistency. Christ gave us the Word of God as the standard of reference. The New Testament is the book of manners in the social circle of the Kingdom of Truth.
5. A true man will live a true life. There will be a fine, high unconsciousness that anything else could be expected of him. He never will seek to pose; he means to be. Pure and noble, he wishes only for a career “without fear and without reproach.” Can anyone tell why the old college song still thrills us when we are quite on in life? There is a wonderful power in the famous “Integer Vitae” of our early days. We would like to be reckoned as integers--whole numbers--when the world adds up the columns of its remembered worthies (Psa_15:1-4). (C. S.Robinson, D. D.)
Jesus and Abraham
I. THE RELIGION OF THESE JEWS.
1. It was a matter of blood and ancestry. There were, it is true, certain ceremonies to be observed, but it was enough to be “Abraham’s seed” to secure the favour of Jehovah. Without that the most diligent piety could not avail. Good parentage no one will despise. If we have got our vigour from virtuous ancestors, we may well be thankful. Even if prodigal of such an inheritance, we shall still have an advantage in the battle of life. Aaron Burr was a stouter sinner because his mother was Jonathan Edward’s daughter. Robert Burns exhausted himself at thirty-eight, but what did he not owe to an honest and frugal parentage? The first generation of sinners lasts longer than the second; much longer than the third. But it will not do to trust blood as a substitute for religion. “Who is your father?” may be the first question, but “Who are you?” comes next. Many a boy disclosing his father’s name has excited surprise in the police court, but the father’s good name does not keep him out of prison. Absalom was David’s son, and Judas Abraham’s.
2. Christ told the Jews that this dead faith in our ancestor was really a bondage to the devil (Joh_8:34-44). Their ancestors had been slaves in Egypt and Babylon, and now the Roman Eagle had them in its talons. Yet by some legerdemain of logic they reasoned that to be a Hebrew was to be a free man. At once Jesus set them on a deeper search (Joh_8:44). What a hard master the devil is! For Paradise Eve gets an apple. See this illustrated in the case of Cain, Esau, Samson, Saul, Judas, Agrippa. The prodigal is sure to be set on the lowest tasks, and left to crave even husks. Nor has the devil grown kinder since.
3. Of course the bondsmen of Satan “cannot bear” the truth (Joh_8:43; Joh_8:45; Joh_8:47), neither receive nor recognize it. Paul thought he was doing God service when killing Christians, and perhaps these Jews were sincere, but with the maladroitness of those who give themselves to the service of evil they reserve their criticisms for that which was most fair, and direct their assaults when the line was most secure. Our Lord’s treatment of the woman was apparently the cause of their hostility. The truth and goodness which angered them angers sinners now.
II. CHRIST’S DISCIPLES.
1. They are those who abide in Christ’s Word. The dead religion was a mere name, an accident of birth; the new religion laid hold of the soul and was light and life (Joh_8:31-32; Joh_8:47). What the mind must have is truth. A man who believes a lie warms a serpent in his bosom. Christ’s heel has crushed the head of the serpent of falsehood, and for His disciples its charm is broken. Having come to the light the real children of Abraham continue in it. Bartimaeus has no wish to return to his blindness. The Christian’s love of the truth is one that lasts. And Christians obey the truth (Joh_8:31; cf. Pe 1:22; Gal_3:1; Gal_3:5; Gal_3:7). The truth not only touches their intellect, judgment, conscience, but quickens, guides and establishes their will (Joh_8:39).
2. Yet they enjoy a real freedom--a further contrast (Joh_8:32; Joh_8:36; cf. Rom_6:14-22). Subjection to Christ’s word is not slavery. Freedom does not destroy law nor overturn authority. The best liberty finds its satisfaction within the limits of a law which is loved. Note the Divine order; first a change of heart, then morality and piety. To require these bloodthirsty children of Abraham to do his works would be to put an intolerable yoke upon them. The Bible is a weary book to a bad man. Prayer to the worldly is a burden. For the dissolute no shackles so heavy as the rules of virtue. But change a man’s mind, and his world is changed. Obedience becomes a song. Besides this, there is the liberty from the penalty of sin by Christ’s Cross.
3. As a result of all comes an assurance of endless life (Joh_8:51, etc.). (H. A.Edson, D. D.)
The grace of continuance
I. A PREPARATORY STAGE OF DISCIPLESHIP. The mind, heart, will, moved, but the soul not yet made new in Christ. The vestibule of salvation. All depends on holding on. The seed is in the soil, but needs to get root and grow. Satan then tries to check it.
II. THE RESULTS OF CONTINUANCE.
1. Confirmation of discipleship.
2. Revelation of truth.
3. Emancipation from sin.
III. OUR LORD GIVES HIS FOLLOWERS SOMETHING
1. To do.
2. To prove.
3. To know.
4. To become. (A. T. Pierson, D. D.)
Disciples indeed
I. THE CHARACTER OF A DISCIPLE INDEED. Let us look at Christ’s first disciples.
1. They forsook all they had. See the case of Paul (Php_3:7-8). Every sin, idol, circumstance inconsistent with Christ’s claim must be renounced.
2. They were docile. Christ taught them as they were able to hear. They had much ignorance and many prejudices, but they willingly sat at Christ’s feet. This is requisite in all true disciples (Mat_18:2-3).
3. They had a spiritual knowledge of Christ (Joh_17:6-8), although the world knew Him not. So it is still (2Co_4:6).
4. They enjoyed the friendship of Christ (Joh_15:15). The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him (1Jn_1:3).
5. They were engaged in Christ’s service (Joh_15:16). “None of us liveth to himself.”
II. THE PRIVILEGE PROMISED TO CHRIST’S DISCIPLES. “Ye shall know the truth.”
1. The truth referred to. Christ is the truth (Joh_14:6). We read Eph_4:21) of the truth as in Jesus--the truth full of Christ’s personal glory, love, power to save. There is truth in His holy character, in His sublime life, in His vicarious death. He speaks here of the redemptive truth of which He Himself was the sum and substance!
2. The knowledge spoken, of “Ye shall know,” not as mere theory, but living power, spiritually, experimentally. The inner eye is opened, the inner car is unstopped, the heart is melted, the soul is subdued. Truth must be engrafted in the soul (Jam_1:21).
3. The result predicated. The truth in Jesus emancipates the soul from the
(1) Condemnation (Rom_8:1);
(2) the power and depravity of sin (Rom_6:23; Rom_8:30);
(3) harassing fear of the wrath to come (1Th_1:9-10);
(4) the depressing anxieties of life;
(5) from the dark and gloomy forebodings of death (Heb_2:14-15).
III. THE CROWNING EVIDENCE THAT ONE IS A DISCIPLE INDEED. “If ye continue in My word.” Many of Christ’s professing disciples do not continue in His word. See the parable of the sower. But all Christ’s true disciples do.
1. His word is engrafted in their souls. The gospel is a living shoot that produces fruit of its own. That soul thus Divinely operated on continues in Christ’s word, and Christ’s word continues in it.
2. They are joined to the Lord in an everlasting covenant. Every true disciple has entered into a perpetual covenant to be Christ’s, having found that he is interested in God’s everlasting covenant, ratified and established forever by the blood of the Surety! His motto is, “I am not My own!”
3. They are sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise. Without the indwelling, ever-abiding Spirit, there is no spiritual life, power, worship or service; without Him there is no safety. He comes as our life, and He seals us as God’s forever and ever.
4. They are kept by the power of God through faith unto final salvation (1Pe_1:5; Joh_13:1-2). His Almighty arms of unchanging love areplaced underneath, and round about (Deu_33:27; Isa_27:3). God’s true people are kept not in mere safety, but in a life of holy love and devotedness; not in sloth and indolence, but in holy activity and spiritual diligence. (T. G. Horton.)
Continuous piety is piety indeed
It is the evening that crowns the day, and the last act that commends the whole scene. Temporary flashings are but like conducts running with wine at the coronation, that will not hold, or like a land flood, that seems to be a great sea, but comes to nothing. (J. Trapp.)
Constancy a severe test of piety
Many who have gone into the field, and liked the work of a soldier for a battle or two, soon have had enough, and come running home again; whereas few can bear it as a constant trade: war is a thing that they could willingly woo for their pleasure, but are loath to wed upon what terms soever. Thus many are easily persuaded to take up a profession of religion, and as easily persuaded to lay it down. Oh! this constancy and persevering is a hard word; this taking up the cross daily; this praying always; this watching night and day, and never laying aside our clothes and armour, indulging ourselves to remit and unbend in our holy waiting upon God, and walking with God, this sends many sorrowful from Christ; yet this is the saint’s duty, to make religion his every day’s work, without any vacation from one end of the year to the other. (J. Spencer.)
The best service is constant
After a great snowstorm a little fellow began to shovel a path through a large snow bank before his grandmother’s door. He had nothing but a small shovel to work with. “How do you expect to get through that drift?” asked a man passing along. “By keeping at it,” said the boy, cheerfully. “That’s how.” That is the secret of mastering almost every difficulty under the sun. If a hard task is set before you, stick to it. Do not keep thinking how large or how hard it is, but go at it, and little by little it will grow smaller, until it is done. If a hard lesson is to be learned, do not spend a moment in fretting; do not lose breath in saying, “I can’t,” or “I don’t see how;” but go at it, and keep at it--steady. That is the only way to conquer it. If you have entered your Master’s service and are trying to be good, you will sometimes find hills of difficulty in the way. Things will often look discouraging, and you will not seem to make any progress at all; but keep at it. Never forget “that’s how.”
Evidence of discipleship
A soldier’s confidence in his commander is evidenced by the soldier obeying his commander’s orders. A patient’s trust in his physician is shown by the patient following the physician’s directions. A disciple’s sincerity in his professions of discipleship is proved by the disciple walking according to the Master’s teaching. It is not that there is any merit in the obedience itself; but it is that there is no sincerity in a profession of faith where there is no obedience. (H. C. Trumbull.)
Truth and liberty
Faith cometh by hearing (Joh_8:30). It is in connection with the word of truth that the Holy Spirit works in us.
I. THE RECEPTION OF CHRIST’S WORD BEGINS DISCIPLESHIP. There may be alarm, disquietude, inquiry, before this, but these are not discipleship. They are but inquiries after a school and a teacher which will meet the wants, capacities, and longings. All men are saying, “Who will show us any good?” Discipleship begins, not with doing some great thing, but with receiving Christ’s word as the scholar receives the master’s teaching. What does He teach?
1. The Father.
2. Himself. From the moment that we accept this we become disciples--taught not of man, but of God.
II. CONTINUANCE IN THAT WORD IS THE TEST OF TRUE DISCIPLESHIP. This is not continuance in general adherence to His cause; but continuance in the word by which we become disciples. As it is by holding the beginning of our confidence that we are made partakers of Christ, so by continuing in the word we make good the genuineness of our discipleship. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly”--in that word is everything we need.
1. It is an expansive word: ever widening its dimensions; growing upon us; never old, ever new; in which we make continual discoveries; the same tree, but ever putting forth new branches and leaves; the same river, but ever swelling and widening--loosing none of its old water, yet ever receiving accessions.
2. It is a quickening word: maintaining old life, yet producing new--“Thy word Lord hath quickened me.”
3. It is a strengthening word: nerving and invigorating us; lifting us when bowed down; imparting health, courage, resolution, persistency.
4. It is a sanctifying word: it detects the evil and purges it away, pouring holiness into the soul. Let us continue in this word; not weary of it, not losing relish for it.
III. KNOWLEDGE OF THE TRUTH IS THE RESULT OF DISCIPLESHIP. All that enter Christ’s school are taught of God. Consequently they know the truth; not a truth or part of it, but the truth--not error--Him who is the Truth. They shall know it; not guess at it, speculate on it, get a glimpse of it; but make choice of it, realize it, appreciate it. Blessed promise in a day of doubt and error!
IV. THIS TRUTH IS LIBERTY. All truth is, so far, liberty, and all error bondage; some truth is greater liberty, some error greater bondage. Bondage, with many, is simply associated with tyranny, bad government, evil or ecclesiastical despotism. Christ’s words go deeper, to the root of the evil. The real chains, prison, bondage are within--so true liberty. It springs from what a man knows of God and of his Christ. Seldom do men realize this. Error, bondage! How can that be if the error be the man’s own voluntary doing--the result of his intellectual effort? But the Master is very explicit. The truth shall make you free. There is no other freedom worthy of the name. “He is a free man whom the truth makes free; and all are slaves besides.” (H. Bonar, D. D.)
Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free
True freedom
1. Three mighty thoughts--knowledge, truth, freedom.
2. Men claim to be free born or to attain freedom at a great price; yet he who sins is a slave of sin.
(1) Political freedom is but the bark, intellectual freedom but the fibre, of the tree spiritual: freedom is the sap. Men contend for bark and fibre, Christ gives the sap. Sometimes we have political freedom, but formal, sapless, as dead as telegraph poles strung with the wires of politicians.
3. Circumstances cannot fetter freedom or confer it. Joseph was as free in the dungeon as on the throne. “Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.” The Israelites in the desert were a nation of slaves despite their liberty. It matters not where I place my watch, so I wind it, it is really free; if I interfere with the works, wherever it may be, it is in bondage. So of man--bind, chain, imprison; if the soul be in sympathy with God, sustained by truth, you have a free man; if the reverse, you have a slave. John, though in prison, was free; Herod, though on the throne, was a slave--Christ and Pilate. Freedom, like the kingdom of heaven, is within. Thetext teaches a threefold lesson--man may know; truth is: the knowledge of the truth brings freedom.
I. The word KNOW carries us back to the dawn of history.
1. Two possibilities are placed before man--life or knowledge. Full of life, he chooses knowledge at the risk of life.
2. The race is true to its head--exploration, geographical, scientific, philosophical.
3. Yet men were then setting up altars to the unknown God: men now to God unknowable. The great Teacher says: “Ye shall know.”
4. The promise implies that man can trust himself and the results of his research and experiences.
II. THE SUBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE IS TRUTH. Truth stands in contrast
1. With a lie. Christ accuses His hearers of being children of the devil. Today as then men lie; wilfully misrepresent in business, political, and social life. Truth is consistency between what we
2. With veracity, think and say and what is. Veracity is consistency between what we say and think; but we may think wrongly.
3. Truth is reality as opposed to a lie and to appearance. Christ, as Son of God and Son of Man, sets forth certain realities regarding both, and the relation between the two. That God is, what God is, and what man is: alienation and possible reconciliation; regeneration by the Spirit; the results of separation from and reconciliation with God. These facts, relations, results, are truth, and may be known,
III. THE RESULTS OF SUCH KNOWLEDGE IS FREEDOM.
1. Freedom from the past, “Son, remember;” but the knowledge of God’s reconciliation blots out the sin-stained past as a cloud.
2. Freedom from fears for the future based upon the past.
IV. THE ONE CONDITION OF ALL THIS IS BELIEF IN CHRIST. Faith as a grain of mustard seed grows into knowledge, etc. (O. F. Gifford.)
Freedom by the truth
Observe
1. The greatness of Christ’s aim--to make all men free. He saw around Him man in slavery to man, race to race; men trembling before priestcraft, and those who were politically and ecclesiastically free, in worse bondage to their own passions. Conscious of His Deity and His Father’s intentions, He, without the excitement of an earthly liberator, calmly said: “Ye shall be free.”
2. The wisdom of the means. The craving for liberty was not new, nor the promise of satisfying it; but the promise had been vain. Men had tried
(1) Force: and force in the cause of freedom is to be honoured, and those who have used it have been esteemed as the world’s benefactors--Judas Maccabaeus, etc. Had Christ willed so to come, success was certain. Men were ripe for revolt, and at a word, thrice three hundred thousand swords would have started from their scabbards; but in that case one nation only would have gained independence, and that merely from foreign oppression.
(2) Legislative enactments. By this England could and did emancipate her slaves; but she could not fit them for freedom, nor make it lasting. The stroke of a monarch’s pen will do the one--the discipline of ages is needed for the other. Give a constitution tomorrow to some feeble Eastern nation, and in half a century they will be subjected again. Therefore Christ did not come to free the world in this way.
(3) Civilization. Every step of civilization is a victory over some lower instinct; but it contains elements of fresh servitude. Man conquers the powers of nature, and becomes in turn their slave. The workman is in bondage to his machinery, which determines hours, wages, habits. The rich man acquires luxuries, and then cannot do without them. Members of a highly civilized community are slaves to dress, hours, etiquette. Therefore Christ did not talk of the progress of the species; he freed the inner man that so the outer might become free. Note
I. THE TRUTH THAT LIBERATES.--The truth Christ taught was chiefly about:
1. God. Blot out that thought and existence becomes unmeaning, resolve is left without a stay, aspiration and duty without a support. Christ exhibited God as
(1) Love; and so that fearful bondage to fate was broken.
(2) A Spirit, requiring spiritual worship; and thus the chain of superstition was rent asunder.
2. Man. We are a mystery to ourselves. So where nations exhibit their wealth and inventions, before the victories of mind you stand in reverence. Then look at those who have attained that civilization, their low aims and mean lives, and you are humbled. And so of individuals. How noble a given man’s thoughts at one moment, how base at another I Christ solved this riddle. He regarded man as fallen, but magnificent in his ruin. Beneath the vilest He saw a soul capable of endless growth; hence He treated with respect all who approached Him, because they were men. Here was a germ for freedom. It is not the shackle that constitutes the slave, but the loss of self-respect--to be treated as degraded till he feels degraded. Liberty is to suspect and yet reverence self.
3. Immortality. If there be an idea that cramps and enslaves the soul it is that this life is all. If there be one which expands and elevates it it is that of immortality. This was the martyrs’ strength. In the hope and knowledge of that truth they were free from the fear of pain of death.
II. THE LIBERTY WHICH TRUTH GIVES.
1. Political freedom. Christianity does not directly interfere with political questions, but mediately it must influence them. Christ did not promise this freedom, but He gave it more surely than conqueror, reformer, or patriot. And this not by theories or constitutions, but by truths. God a Spirit, man His redeemed child; before that spiritual equality all distinctions vanish.
2. Mental independence. Slavery is that which cramps powers, and the worst is that which cramps the noblest powers. Worse therefore than he who manacles the body is he who puts fetters on the mind, and demands that men shall think and believe as others have done. In Judaea life was a set of forms and religion--a congeries of traditions. One living word from Christ, and the mind of the world was free. Later a mountain mass of superstition had gathered round the Church. Men said that the soul was to be saved only by doing what the priesthood taught. Then the heroes of the Reformation said the soul is saved by the grace of God; and once more the mind of the world was set flee by truth. There is a tendency to think, not what is true, but what is respectable, authorized. It comes partly from cowardice, partly from habit. Now truth frees us from this by warning of individual responsibility which cannot be delegated to another, and thrown off on a church. Do not confound mental independence with mental pride. It ought to co-exist with the deepest humility. For that mind alone is free which, conscious of its liability to err, and, turning thankfully to any light, refuses to surrender the Divinely given right and responsibility of judging for itself and having an opinion of its own.
3. Superiority to temptation. It is not enough to say that Christ promises freedom from sin. Childhood, paralysis, impotence of old age, may remove the desire of transgressions. Therefore we must add that ode whom Christ liberates is free by his own will. It is not that he would and cannot; but that he can and will not. Christian liberty is right well sustained by love, and made firm by faith in Christ. This may be seen by considering moral bondage. Go to the intemperate man in the morning, when his head aches and his whole frame unstrung: he is ashamed, hates his sin, and would not do it. Go to him at night when the power of habit is upon him, and he obeys the mastery of his craving. Every more refined instance of slavery is just as real. Wherever a man would and cannot, there is servitude.
4. Superiority to fear. Fear enslaves, courage liberates. The apprehension of pain, fear of death, dread of the world’s laugh at poverty, or loss of reputation, enslave alike. From all such Christ frees. He who lives in the habitual contemplation of immortality, cannot be in bondage to time; he who feels his soul’s dignity cannot cringe. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)
Spiritual and scientific truth
There is a well-known picture by Retzsch, in which Satan is represented as playing at chess with a man for his soul. The pieces on the board seem to represent the virtues and the deadly sins. The man is evidently losing the game, while in the background stands an angel sad and helpless, and statue-like. We need not stay to criticize the false theology implied in that picture, because our immediate concern is with a meaning which has been read into that picture by a great scientific teacher of our day. We have been told by Professor Huxley, that if we “substitute for the mocking fiend in that picture a calm, strong angel who is playing, as we say, for love, and would rather lose than win,” we shall have a true picture of the relation of man to nature. “The chessboard is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call the laws of nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us, We know that his play is always fair, and just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.” Such is the modern reading of the picture. And here there is a great truth, or at least one side of a great truth, expressed. It puts before us in a very real and concrete form the fact that, in our mere physical life, we are engaged in a great struggle. We must learn to adapt ourselves truly to the physical conditions of our life, or we must perish in a fruitless opposition to natural laws. But that physical life which we live is not our whole life, nor are what we call the laws of external nature the only laws which we need to know. We are surrounded by spiritual forces in which our moral life is lived. In that more real life we have relations with spiritual beings, some like ourselves and some above us, and One whom we love to call our Father, which is in heaven. Are there no laws in that spiritual world? No truths there, the knowledge of which will make us free? If the violation of physical law is death, is there no death in the moral and spiritual sphere? Is the life of the soul less real, its death less terrible than that of the body? And if not, what do we know of the great spiritual realities which environ life?
1. All truth gives freedom. To know nature is to gain freedom in regard to her; to know her fully is to conform ourselves to her. And to know God is to cease to be afraid of Him, to know Him fully is to love Him perfectly, and to conform ourselves to His likeness.
2. Why, then, is there such fear and jealousy of dogma amongst men who gladly welcome every new truth about their physical life? If all truth is from God, and every truth sets us free, why is it that men hesitate to allow these characteristics to that which, above all, claims to be from God, and to give us perfect freedom? It is here that we touch the characteristic difference which exists between the laws of the spiritual and the laws of the material world. The laws of nature are discoveries; the laws of the spiritual world are revelations. The former are found out; the latter are given. The former are confessedly imperfect, added to continually as years go by; the latter are complete, the same yesterday, to day, and forever. The former lay claim to no finality; they may be challenged, put upon their trial, called upon to justify themselves. The latter, if they are from God, claim our reverence, our obedience, our willing submission. (Aubrey L. Moore, M. A.)
Freedom only to be found in God
Last summer the good ship Wieland brought over a large number of caged birds. When we were about mid-ocean one restless bird escaped from his cage. In ecstasy he swept through the air, away and away from his prison. How he bounded with outspread wings! Freedom! How sweet he thought it! Across the pathless waste ha entirely disappeared. But after hours had passed, to our amazement, he appeared again, struggling towards the ship with heavy wing. Panting and breathless, he settled upon the deck. Far, far over the boundless deep, how eagerly, how painfully had he sought the ship again, now no longer a prison, but his dear home. As I watched him nestle down on the deck, I thought of the restless human heart that breaks away from the restraints of religion. With buoyant wing he bounds away from Church the prison, and God the prison. But if he is not lost on the remorseless deep, he comes back again with panting, eager heart, to Church the home, and God the home. The Church is not a prison to any man. It gives the most perfect freedom in all that is good and all that is safe. It gives him liberty to do what is right, and to do what is wrong, there is no rightful place to any man in all the boundless universe. (R. S. Barrett.)
Freedom by the truth
The truth shall set us free from
I. PHYSICAL SUFFERING. The laws of nature are the laws of God, and to know and obey them will liberate us from every sickness except that of death. There is
1. The law of heredity, This is a Bible law; for it states that the sins of the fathers shall be carried down to the third and fourth generation, Know that, and care for the health of your bodies, and your posterity will be free from the taint of hereditary disease.
2. The law of sanitation. Know that, and obey it, and you free your cities from fevers and infectious diseases. Much suffering is entailed by ignorance, apathy, or wilful negligence about this truth.
3. The law of temperance; that obeyed will make you free from the suffering of bodily anguish and the sense of degradation.
II. SOCIAL DISARRANGEMENT. This is one of our most rampant evils. Contrast the suburbs with their villas and the slums with their hovels. These extremes should not exist in a Christian country. What is the cure? The truth that humanity is one.
1. The strong should help the weak. The rich, who enjoy their libraries, drawing rooms, gardens, should not be satisfied that the poor should have to tramp long distances to see a tree or read a book. Parks, museums, baths, libraries, should be within reach; and by recognising the truth on this matter, the wealthy should lend a helping hand.
2. The weak should help themselves. Too much help would pauperize. The poor must be taught and encouraged to raise themselves. Much can be affected by cooperation. If the money spent in beer were utilized for this purpose, the millennium would be hastened.
III. CHRISTIAN ANTAGONISM. What a pity it is to see the strife of sects over nice doctrinal or ceremonial points. Christ wants His Church to be one, and so do good men. But the truth only will unify; and there is enough truth held in common by all churches, which, if recognized, would soon bring Christian unity. All are agreed that Christ’s life should be lived by His followers. Surely this is a good working truth; and as all hold it, all should act upon it, and be one.
IV. ALIENATION FROM GOD. What a slave was the prodigal, and all his degradation arose from his distance from God. But when the vision of his father arose before his mind, he arose and went back. What sinful men want to know is, the truth about God as revealed by Christ; how He loves the sinner, and would save him from his sins. (W. Birch.)
Freedom by the truth
It is no strange thing for truth to set people free. What delivers men from terror--e.g., over prodigies, etc.--but the truth about them? In the darkness, which invests harmless objects with weird appearances, the imaginative man is as timid as a child. But let the day dawn, and the truth of things be revealed, and fear vanishes. The truth sets us free from
I. THE DREADS OF LIFE.
1. Those which belong to our physical life--dreads of want, disease, poisoned air, accidents. Christ frees us from these by revealing the providence of God (Mat_6:26-28).
2. Social fears--fears of what men can do unto us. Christ says, “Fear not them which kill the body,” etc. Their wrath is restrained by our Father; and at their worst they can only drive man closer to God, and bring him nearer home.
3. Spiritual fears--about God. Christ frees from this by His truth--“Our Father.”
II. THE SINS OF LIFE. These make the real bondage. Our fears weaken us, but our sins corrupt, and lead to death. They bind in two ways.
1. By spreading their shame through our soul (Ezr_9:6). Christ frees us by His declaration (Joh_3:17), and His own treatment of a sinner in shame (Joh_8:3-11).
2. By weakening our will, so that when we would do good we cannot. Christ brings not only pardon to banish shame, but power to put away sin 1Ti_1:13).
III. DWARFED CONDITIONS OF LIFE.
1. In church life--from the tyranny of forms and places (Joh_4:21-23).
2. In individual life. The truth of Jesus liberates the highest faculties--faith, hope, love, conscience. (J Todd.)
Freedom by the truth
Christ, by His truth, delivers man
I. From the bondage of IGNORANCE. That truth enlightens, invigorates, instructs.
II. From the bondage of ERROR.
1. Intellectual--scepticism or superstition.
2. Practical; for with it He gives His example and His guiding spirit.
III. From the bondage of ream
1. The fear of death and judgment.
2. Of God’s conscience-searching word.
3. Of the supernatural.
IV. From the bondage of sin.
1. As a fitter.
2. As a service.
V. From the bondage of the LAW.
1. The ritual, which is abolished.
2. The moral, which by grace becomes perfect freedom. (P. N.Zabriskie, D. D.)
Truth and liberty
God’s grace reveals itself in endless diverse forms. The thousand changing colours which play upon sea, land, and sky, in the high day of summer, are but variations of the one clear and transparent light which comes down from above; and the same water of the sea is the same water of the sea, whether it is called ocean, gulf, or strait. A recognition of this truth is essential to the understanding of what Christian liberty is. It is the liberty of the light which, always opposed to darkness, yet reveals itself in constantly new tints and shades of colour; it is the liberty of the water, ever cleansing and ever essential to life, which yet takes its shape from the vessel into which it is poured. It is the liberty of the tree to be green, of the sea to be blue, of the sunset to be crimson, of the sand to be yellow--each obtaining its own tint from God’s clear light, and no one quarrelling with the beauty of the other. So God’s grace reveals itself in the lives of God’s true children. In each it is the same grace, yet in each it takes a special form and colour--that of the individuality in which it reveals itself. And the liberty for which Christ has made us free, is the liberty for each of us to grow into that special manifestation of grace for which his nature is most fitted. It is freedom for us to grow in our own way, without conforming at all points to the growth of another; and (what we are more likely to forget) it is liberty for others to grow in their way without conforming at all points to our way of growth. If we compare the Church to “a garden shut up,” we ought to remember that the wise cultivator does not expect the tender vine to grow in the same way as the sturdy oak, nor does he expect the apple or the pear tree to bring forth grapes or figs. (H. G. Trumbull, D. D.)
Spiritual liberty
Liberty is a matter which interests everyone. But it is sadly limited. By it men mean political, intellectual, physical, and some, alas! sinful freedom. Christ proclaims real liberty--that of the soul. Secure this, and all that is worth the name of liberty will follow. Christ effects this emancipation by the truth. We must accept the truth, not as theory in our minds, or sentiment in our hearts, but by experience and practice; then we shall be free. The truth thus received liberates from
I. THE FETTERS OF IGNORANCE, SUPERSTITION, AND PREJUDICE--three links in a mighty chain.
1. We have but to pass the line of Christendom to behold a world ignorant of God and Divine truth. What follows? The most debasing superstition, idolatry, witchcraft, etc. Hence the almost invincible prejudice there is at first against the reception of the gospel.
2. But within Christendom and in its most cultivated circles, how many men learned in this world’s wisdom are utterly ignorant of the things of God? And what can result here but superstition, the worship of the idols of the mind, and putting light for darkness, bitter for sweet? The consequence is sceptical prejudice.
3. The same holds good in regard to Popery. The Bible-prohibited people are in gross darkness; believe what they are told to believe, however irrational; bow to images, and worship the creature above the Creator; and therefore bitterly oppose, and, where they can, persecute the gospel.
4. From all this Christ’s truth sets us free.
(1) By throwing light on the darkness of ignorance, and bringing knowledge to mind and heart.
(2) This knowledge removes the grounds of superstition and prejudice.
II. THE THRALDOM OF SATAN. However manifold the links bound round the soul led captive by the devil, the last link is in his hand. Men are either slaves of Satan or free men of Christ. Christ comes as a strong man armed to break the links of the chain, which are mainly three.
1. Guilt, and the consequent curse of God. For this Christ provides pardon, and secures God’s blessing.
2. Corruption, and consequent moral impotence. For this Christ provides the grace of the Holy Spirit.
3. The world and the fear of man, that bringeth a snare. But “this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.”
III. THE BONDAGE OF THE FEAR OF DEATH. Spite of his boasting, no man is so hardy but he shrinks from death. Why? Because “after death the judgment.” This is seen in the mad recklessness of the profligate, and the unspiritual service of the moralist, the religious inventions of the devotee. Momentary oblivion of the dread spectre is all that these can produce. But he who receives the truth of Christ triumphs over death. Conclusion: This liberty includes a service, but it is perfect freedom. (Canon Stowell.)
Spiritual emancipation
These words suggest
I. THAT A KNOWLEDGE OF THE TRUTH MAY BE SECURED.
II. THAT THIS KNOWLEDGE IS MENTAL AND EXPERIMENTAL.
III. THAT EXPERIMENTAL KNOWLEDGE IS ALONE SAVING.
IV. WHAT IS THE ESSENTIAL TRUTH, THE EXPERIMENTAL KNOWLEDGE OF WHICH MAKES FREE.
1. We may know the truth as we know language, science, etc.; as a mass of doctrines; Christ a historical character like Pilate. All this knowledge may have no effect on the heart or life.
2. The new man obtains his knowledge by a different process. He experiments, verifies, proves. Truth becomes the prevailing principle of action, and enthrones itself. To be sure a man must become possessed of Christian facts and doctrines. These are the bones for the body of holiness.
3. An experimental knowledge of the truth frees man morally, and from the bondage of merely human views, and introduces man into the broad province of ideas world wide in their grasp and extending back to the Creation.
4. The condition of the freedom promised by Christ is belief in His Divine sonship, “as many as received Him,” etc. The emancipating power of this truth is made to us
(1) Wisdom, by enlightening us and thus freeing the mind;
(2) Righteousness, by justifying us and thus freeing us from the law;
(3) Sanctification, by purifying us and thus freeing our hearts:
(4) Redemption by the union of them all, thus purchasing us into blessed immortality. (J. M. King, D. D.)
The hour of emancipation
August 1, 1834, was the day on which 700,000 of our colonial slaves were made free. Throughout the colonies the churches and chapels were thrown open, and the slaves crowded into them on the evening of the 31 st of July. As the hour of midnight approached they fell upon their knees and awaited the solemn moment, all hushed in silent prayer. When 12 o’clock sounded, they sprang upon their feet, and through every island rang the glad sound of thanksgiving to the Father of all, for the chains were broken and the slaves were free. (Heroes of Britain.)
The freedom which Christ gives
It is a freedom from the servitude of sin, from the seduction of a misguided judgment, and the allurement of any ensnaring forbidden object: consisting in an unbounded amplitude and enlargedness of soul towards God, and indetermination to any inferior good; resulting from an entire subjection to the Divine will, a submission to the order of God, and steady adherence to Him. (John Howe.)
Spiritual freedom
They make a great fuss when they give a man the freedom of the City of London. There is a fine gold casket to put it in. You have got the liberty of the New Jerusalem, and your faith, like a golden box, holds the deeds of your freemanship. Take care of them and rejoice in them tonight. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man
Moral bondage
Note that its subjects
I. ARE UNCONSCIOUS OF IT (Joh_8:33). This was an interruption of Christ’s discourse on freedom. As much as to say “Why talk of freedom to us? We are free men.” But in the eye of Christ they were in the most miserable captivity. It is common here in England to hear men
1. Boast of religious liberty who have no religion. Some of its most strenuous advocates are destitute of reverence to God, and charity to men. These will repeat the boast while they are in bondage to their own prejudices, exclusiveness, love of fame or gain.
2. Boast of civil freedom who are moral slaves. Men who are under the tyranny of their own lusts and greed, who are even governed, as Carlyle says, “by a pot of heavy wet” and a clay pipe, peal out in thunderous chorus “Britons never shall be slaves.” The worst part of this bondage is that men are unconscious of it. Hence they are mere creatures of circumstances. It is the more sad because it precludes any aspiration for self-manumission; and it is only self-effort that can liberate. Other men may deliver the prisoner from his dungeon, or the slave from his tyrant, or the serf from his despot; but no one can deliver him from bondage but himself, “He who would be free, himself must strike the blow.”
II. ARE THE AUTHORS OF IT (Joh_8:34). It is not the sin of another man that makes me a slave, but my own. Solomon says, “His own iniquities shall take the wicked.” Paul says, “To whom ye yield yourselves to obey his servants ye are,” etc. Shakespeare says, Vice is imprisonment. Every sin a man commits forges a new link in the chain that manacles his soul. The longer a man pursues a certain course of conduct the mere wedded he becomes to it, and the less power he has to abandon it. Habit is a cord strengthened with every action, at first it is as fine as silk, and can be easily broken. As it proceeds it becomes a cable. Habit is a momentum, increasing with motion. At first a child’s hand can obstruct the progress, by and by an army of giants cannot arrest it. Habit is a river, at its spring you can divert its course with ease, as it approaches the ocean it defies opposition.
III. CAN BE DELIVERED FROM IT (Joh_8:36). How does Christ make the soul free? By generating in the heart supreme love to the supremely good. It is a law of mind to have some permanent object of affection, and that object limits its field of operation. The man who loves money most will have all his faculties confined to that region. The same with him who loves fame, or pleasure, etc. But all these objects are limited; hence the soul is hemmed in as in a cage. In order to have freedom the heart should be centred on an infinite object, and this Christ does. And with God as the centre of the heart all the faculties have unbounded scope. Conclusion: All souls not made free by Christ are in slavery. Even the heathen considered the virtues essential to true freedom. Cicero said “The wise man alone is free.” Plato represents the lusts as the hardest tyrants. Seneca speaks of the passions as the worst thraldom. Epictetus said “Liberty is the name of virtue.” And this virtue is obtained only through Christ. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
The vain boast of the Jews
The whole past history of their nation was the record of one bondage following hard on another, they for their sins having come at one time or another under the yoke of almost every people round about them. They have been, by turns, in bondage to the Canaanites, in bondage to the Philistines, in bondage to the Syrians, in bondage to the Chaldaeans; then again to the Greece-Syrian kings; and now, even at the very moment when this indignant disclaimer is uttered, the signs of a foreign rule, of the domination of the stranger, everywhere met their eye. They bought and sold with Roman money; they paid tribute to a Roman emperor; a Roman governor sat in their judgement hall; a Roman garrison occupied the fortress of their city. And yet, with all this plain before their eyes, brought home to their daily, hourly experience, they angrily put back the promise of Christ, “The truth shall make you free,” as though it conveyed an insult: “How sayest thou, ye shall be made free? We were never in bondage to any man.” (Abp. Trench.)
Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin
Sin is spiritual slavery
Sin is the suicidal action of the human will. It destroys the power to do right, which is man’s true freedom. The effect of vicious habit in diminishing a man’s ability to resist temptation is proverbial. But what is habit but a constant repetition of wrong decisions.
The will cannot be forced or ruined from outside. But if we watch the influence upon the will of its own yielding to temptation, we shall discover that the voluntary faculty may be ruined from within. Whatever springs from will we are responsible for. The drunkard’s powerlessness issues from his own inclination and therefore is no excuse. “If weakness may excuse, what murderer, what traitor, parricide, incestuous, sacrilegious, may not plead it? All wickedness is weakness.” Sin is spiritual slavery, if viewed in reference
I. TO MAN’S SENSE OF OBLIGATION TO BE PERFECTLY HOLY.
1. The obligation to be holy as God is rests upon every rational being, and he is a debtor to this obligation until he has fully met it. Hence even the holiest are conscious of sin, because they are not completely up to this high calling. This sense is as “exceeding broad” as the commandment, and will not let us off with the performance of a part of our duty. It is also exceeding deep, for it outlives all others. In the hour of death it grows more vivid and painful as all else grows dimmer. A man forgets then whether he has been prosperous or unsuccessful and remembers only that he has been a sinner. It might seem that this sense would be sufficient to overcome sin, and bring man up to the discharge of duty; but experience shows that in proportion as a man hears the voice of conscience, in this particular does be become aware of the bondage of his will.
2. In our careless unawakened state we sin on, just as we live on without being distinctly aware of it. A healthy man does not go about holding his fingers on his wrist, neither does a sinner as he goes about his business think of his transgressions. Yet the pulse beats, and the will transgresses none the less. Though the chains are actually about us they do not gall us. “We are alive without the law.” But as the Spirit of God awakens the conscience, that sense of the obligation to be perfectly holy starts up and man begins to form an estimate of what has been done in reference to it. Now the commandment comes, shows us what we ought to be and what we are, and we die (Rom_7:9-11). The muscle has been cut by the sword of truth, and the limb drops helpless, and we learn in a most affecting manner that “whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin.” But suppose after this discovery we endeavour to comply with the obligation: this only renders us more painfully sensible of the truth of the text.
II. TO THE ASPIRATIONS OF THE SOUL. All those serious impressions and painful anxieties concerning salvation, which require to be followed up by a mighty power from God to prevent their being suppressed again by the love of sin and the world. For though man has fallen into a state of death in sins, yet through the common influences of the Spirit of Grace, and the workings of rational nature, he is at times the subject of aspirations which indicate the heights from which he fell The minds of the greatest of the ancient pagans were the subjects of these aspirations, and they confess their utter inability to realize them. The journals of the missionary disclose the same in modem heathenism. All these phenomena show the rigid bondage of sin. The drunkard in his sober moments longs to be free and resolves never to drink again. But the sin is strong and the appetite that feeds it is in his blood. Temptation comes before the enslaved will. He aspires to resist but will not; and never is he more conscious of being a slave to himself than when he thus ineffectually aspires to be delivered from himself. This applies to all sin. There is no independent and self-realizing power in mere aspiration, and when, under the influence of God’s common grace, a man endeavours to extirpate the inveterate depravity of his heart, he feels his bondage more thoroughly than ever.
III. TO THE FEARS OF THE SOUL.
1. The sinful spirit fears the death of the body, and therefore we are all our lifetime subject to bondage. We know that bodily dissolution can have no effect on the imperishable essence, yet we shrink back from it.
2. The spirit fears that “fearful something after death”--eternal judgment. We tremble having to give an account of our own actions, and to reap the harvest, the seed of which we have sown.
3. The spirit has an awful dread of eternity. Though this invisible realm is the proper home of the soul, never is the soul stirred to so great depths as when it feels the power of an endless life. Men will labour convulsively day and night for money, power, fame, pleasure; but what is the paroxysm of this activity compared with those throes, when the startled sinner sees the eternal world looming into view.
4. If, now, we view sin in relation to these three great fears we see that it is spiritual slavery. Our terror is no more able to deliver us than our aspirations. The dread that goes down to hell can no more save us than the aspiration that goes up to heaven.
Conclusion:
1. This bondage is self-inflicted, and therefore the way of release is not to throw the burden of it upon God.
2. The way out of it is to accept the method of deliverance afforded by Christ. (Prof. Shedd.)
The progress of the lost soul to destruction
I. Note OF WHOM OUR LORD SPEAKS. “He that committeth sin”--i.e., he who has become a doer of sin; the habitual, conscious, wilful sinner. He is the bondslave, the absolute thrall, the hopeless subject of an overmastering tyranny. It will help us to obtain a completer view of what this implies if we trace the steps by which the end is reached.
1. We must begin by having a clear idea of what temptation is. It is the suggestion to our mind of the pleasure or good to be got by doing or allowing something which is against the will of God, and so against the perfectness of our own true nature. Such suggestions are innumerable and take their peculiar colour from the temperament of our own mental and bodily constitution. For as there is a special excellence to which we may attain, so there must be, in the perversion of that excellence, a special character of evil to which we are most prone. In the mere entrance of this suggestion there is nothing sinful. Such were east into the mind of our Lord. Sin begins when the mind rests with pleasure upon the evil suggestion, but if this is resisted there is no sin. But when the sweet morsel is rolled under the tongue, the acting of sin has begun, and the next step is near the consent of the will to the suggestion.
2. How the bond is wound around the soul, the contemplation of the progress of sin suggests to us. One impure thought cherished, still more one impure act allowed, is the certain cause of after suggestions of impurity: and so it is of every other sin. The harbouring of anger opens the mind to new suggestions of wrath; the allowance of one wandering thought in prayer, invites the disturbing presence of a crowd of others: the nursing one doubt multiplies after its kind.
3. He who has allowed his spirit to rest on the conscious sweetness of sin has made that indulgence a necessity to him: and then, as this, like all other sweetness, soon palls upon the taste, he has made it needful in order to obtain the same gratification, to yield himself more completely to it, and to seek it in its larger measures and fiercer qualities. And so his taste becomes degraded and his gratifications coarser; until the power of relishing purer pleasures is rapidly becoming extinguished; they seem used up and insipid; and thus he is led to the one step further of consenting to the evil which has miserably become his good. Then indeed the chain is bound about him. For though every indulgence lessens the pleasure of indulging, yet the growing power of habit more than supplies the place of the energy of enjoyment, nay, the pleasure of sin may not only be lessened, but be gone; the chain may even gall him, but he cannot break it.
4. Other bonds besides those of habit are winding themselves around him.
(1) There is from the conscience, commixing continually with pollution, a daily lower ins of the standard of the soul, which makes it with less consciousness of its degradation bow itself to greater evils, until the infirmity is such that it can in no wise lift itself up.
