Spiritual freedom.
Our Lord Christ, who brings truth to the understanding and love to the heart, brings also the highest freedom to the active nature and life of man, and thus secures the prevalence of holiness, of willing and cheerful obedience to God.
I. THE BONDAGE IS PRESUMED WHICH RENDERS NECESSARY THE ADVENT OF THE DIVINE LIBERATOR. Man is by nature, whilst in this fallen state, under bondage to law, to sin, to condemnation.
II. PRETENDED FREEDOM, OF WHICH SINFUL MEN ARE FOUND TO BOAST, IS EXPOSED. The Jewish leaders, our Lord's contemporaries, asserted a certain liberty. Relying upon their descent from Abraham, and their consequent privileges in connection with the old covenant, the Jews claimed to be free men. The worst cases of bondage are those where there is the pretence of liberty, and nothing but the pretence. Free-thinkers, free-livers, are names given to classes who are utter strangers to real liberty, who are in the most degrading bondage to error and to lust.
III. TRUE FREEDOM IS EXPLAINED.
1. It is deliverance from spiritual chains and bondage.
2. It is liberty which reveals itself in the willing choice of the highest and noblest service. They are spiritually free who recognize the supreme claims of the Divine Law, who evince a preference for the will of God above their own pleasure or the example of their fellow men.
IV. THE SON OF GOD DECLARES HIMSELF THE DIVINE LIBERATOR. As such be has all the requisite authority, and all the requisite wisdom and grace. Political freedom may be secured by a human deliverer; but in order to enfranchise the soul a Divine interposition is necessary. Christ has the mastery of all spiritual forces, and can accordingly set free the bound and trammelled soul. He smites the tyrant who lords it over the spiritual captives; he cancels our sentence of slavery; he breaks our fetters; he calls us freemen, and treats us as such; he animates us with the spirit of liberty.
V. THE BLESSED RESULTS OF FREEDOM ARE PROMISED. The enfranchised from Satan's service become God's willing bondmen. Then, from being God's servants, they become his sons. As his sons, they are his heirs, and being such, they in due time enjoy the inheritance. This is liberty indeed—to pass from thraldom unto Satan into the "glorious liberty of the sons of God."—T.