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"Why is my liberty judged of another man's conscience?" (I Cor. 10: 29).
"Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" (II Cor. 3: 17).
"Our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 2: 4).
"Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free" (Gal. 5: 1).
"Ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh"
(Gal. 5: 13).
It will be seen that this quality of liberty is very comprehensive. It reaches forward to
`the glory', it is found `in Christ Jesus', it constitutes an element in our `calling', it rules
in the realm of `conscience', but it never leads to or countenances `license' or `an
occasion to the flesh'. Four out of these seven references are found in Galatians, where
three of them deal with the positive liberty which we have received, and one with a
warning concerning its abuse. Eleutheria is probably derived from eleutho `to come' and
Dr. Bullinger says in his Lexicon "eleutheros, one who can go where he will, hence, free,
at liberty". Eleutheros is found in Galatians six times, five of the occurrences dealing
with the allegory of Sarah and Hagar. There is a wealth of teaching which we may not
stay to investigate here, but some of our readers may appreciate the help given by the
parallelism of these six occurrences.
"Free" in Galatians.
A | 3: 28, 29. Abraham's seed and heirs. Cancels "bond and free".
B | 4: 22. Abraham's two sons. One by bondwoman. One by freewoman.
C | 4: 23. Son of freewoman was by promise.
C | 4: 26. Jerusalem above is free, and our mother.
B | 4: 30. Son of freewoman is heir.
A | 4: 31. Not children of bondwoman but of the free.
Eleutheroo occurs seven times in the whole N.T. Twice in John's Gospel:
"The truth shall make you free" (John 8: 32).
"The Son therefore shall make you free" (John 8: 36).
The Apostle preached Christ and stood for `the truth of the gospel' in his fight for
liberty, and was in full harmony with the dual statement of our Lord as recorded by John.
Four occurrences are found in Romans:
"Being made free from sin" (Rom. 6: 18, 22).
"Made me free from the law" (Rom. 8: 2),
and a future deliverance of the creature from the bondage of corruption into the glorious
liberty of the children of God (Rom. 8: 21). One occurrence only is found in Galatians:
"Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free" (Gal. 5: 1).
Turning to the contrastive word `bondage' we note that in Gal. 2: 4 the Apostle
uses the emphatic form, not douloo but katadouloo "to captivate thoroughly" or `to
reduce to slavery'. It was this that caused him to put up such a valiant fight for `the truth
of the gospel', and for which we can never be too thankful. The following extract from