LIBERTY, CHRISTIAN

Fire, depending on how it is used, can be either beneficial or destructive. When used correctly, it can warm a house, cook food, and create a romantic evening with your spouse. However, when fire is used incorrectly, it can lay waste to woodlands, destroy houses, or even devastate an entire city.

Christian liberty is the same. When used correctly, it can be extremely beneficial, but when used incorrectly, it has great potential for destruction.769

Sometimes, when you enter a main highway or come to an intersection, you will see a sign with the word “yield” in large letters. The sign means that the driver on one road is to yield the right to proceed to any driver on the other road. The latter driver does not own the right of way; rather, another driver yields it to him.

This is an excellent picture of what Christian liberty is all about. We are to yield our rights so that others may go on to greater maturity. No one can demand that another believer yield his rights; rather, as an act of maturity, he should see the need to give up his rights for the good of another. Perhaps we should make yield signs and put them up in our homes and churches—because it is a Christian philosophy to yield, to give way to other believers.770

If the law states that one may drive 55 m.p.h., one has the “liberty” to proceed at that speed. However, it is not always wise to drive at the lawful speed because of other factors, such as a severe snowstorm, or fog. In a similar manner, a Christian has liberty in many areas, but sometimes he wisely restrains his liberty.771

When a man is released from prison, he is not free to do anything he feels like doing, but he is free to obey the law. In the same way, when we are freed from sin by trusting in Christ, we are not given a license to sin, but rather are set free to obey him.772

One of the greatest times of turmoil in the history of the church was the Reformation. Men like Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli were strong personalities in difficult times. Not a few people in those days found themselves banished from their ancestral homeland or city because of their beliefs. In some cases, wars were fought over beliefs and seemingly (to us) minor doctrinal points.

In a day of fiery personality conflicts, major doctrinal deviation, and battles at every level, a lesser-known German theologian, Philipp Melanchthon, summed up Christian liberty in a superb fashion: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”773