“Glorious Liberty”

Romans 8:22

There is a day coming, a day for which every believer longs, a day for which all creation groans, a day in which we shall at last be completely “delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.”

However, none will ever enter into that complete and perfect liberty at the resurrection who have not already entered into it by faith in Christ. All true believers are born free, free in Christ, by Christ, and because of Christ. In Christ we are free from the tyranny of Satan, free from the dominion of sin, and free from the law. As God’s free born children, it is our responsibility to “stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free,” and never again allow anyone to bring us back under “the yoke of bondage” (Gal. 5:1).

It is a sad, sad fact that so few who profess faith in Christ understand anything at all about the believer’s total freedom from the law in Christ. Most who claim to be married to Christ are still sleeping with Moses in the iron shackles of Sinai’s imprisonment. Having never tasted liberty, they love slavery. They look upon their manacles and shackles as tokens of love.

What a pity! Yet, confusion about the believer’s total freedom from the law is excuseless. Here are seven things so plainly and emphatically revealed in Holy Scripture that I cannot imagine anyone misunderstanding them, except those who are yet without the mind of Christ and blind to all things spiritual.

1. “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth” (Rom. 10:4). Christ is the end of the law as the fulfilment of it, as the satisfier of it, and as the conclusion of it. He is the end of the law for righteousness, justifying righteousness and sanctifying righteousness.

2. The Lord Christ, having lived in obedience to the law as our Representative, has redeemed us from the curse of the law by dying under the penalty of the law and satisfying its justice as our Substitute (Gal. 3:13). “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus!”

3. All who are in Christ are dead to the law (Rom. 7:1-4). There is absolutely no sense in which believers are alive to the law. We are alive to and married to Christ alone. Those who claim to be married to Christ, who wear his name, and still sleep with Moses are adulterers.

4. Being dead to the law, every child of God is free from the law. “Ye are not under the law, but under grace” (Rom. 6:14-15).

5. The law was given to be a schoolmaster unto Christ (Gal. 3:19-26). Since Christ has come, the schoolmaster’s work is over. It has done its job.

6. The only way any one can fulfil the law is to fulfil it perfectly; and the only way to do that is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 3:31).

7. All true believers are ruled, motivated, governed, and constrained in all the affairs of their lives, not by the threat of the law, but by the love of Christ (2 Cor. 5:14).

Don Fortner