True Liberty Is Found in God’s Law

 

God says in Deuteronomy 32:39, “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.”

Life and death belong to God. He is the giver of life, the sustainer of life, and the One who determines the boundaries of life. Job tells us that our days are determined and that God has appointed our bounds that we cannot pass. We are not the authors of our own existence. We did not give ourselves life, and therefore we do not have the authority to decide for ourselves how life ought to be lived.

God gave us life, and God has the absolute right to tell us how that life is to be lived.

That brings us to something that is terribly misunderstood in much of modern Christianity: the law of God. We are constantly told that we are under grace and therefore have nothing to do with God’s law. But the Bible does not teach that grace abolishes the law. We are under grace as the means of salvation and justification, but we are under God’s law as the rule of life, direction, and sanctification.

Paul asks in Romans 3:31, “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.”

That could hardly be clearer. The gospel does not destroy the law of God. Faith does not make the law meaningless. Paul says that faith establishes the law.

Jesus Himself said in Matthew 5:17, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.”

Why would God do away with something that Paul describes as “holy, and just, and good”? Romans 7:12 says, “Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.”

Furthermore, under the new covenant God does not say that He will remove His law from His people. He says He will write it within them. Hebrews 8:10 says, “I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts.”

The method of writing changed. Under the old covenant, God wrote His law upon tables of stone. Under the new covenant, He writes His law upon the hearts of His people. The law did not suddenly become evil. God places it within those whom He has redeemed.

We also need the law because without the law we cannot properly understand sin.

Paul says in Romans 3:20, “For by the law is the knowledge of sin.”

How do you know what is right and wrong? How do you know what is righteous or unrighteous? How do you know what is holy or unholy? God defines those things by His law.

First John 3:4 gives us one of the clearest definitions of sin in the entire Bible: “Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.”

If you remove the law, you remove the biblical definition of sin. And if men do not understand sin, why would they ever understand their need of a Saviour?

The law shows us that we are sinners. It shows us that we cannot save ourselves. God’s law demands personal, perfect, and perpetual obedience, and none of us has rendered that obedience. The law shows us the great gulf between the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man. It teaches us that we need a mediator, and Scripture tells us that there is “one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”

That is why Galatians 3:24 says, “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.”

The law does not save us. Christ saves us. The law cannot justify us. We are justified by faith. But the law shows us why we desperately need Christ.

There are passages in the New Testament that speak negatively about the law, but we must understand what they are saying. Some deny the law as a means of justification. We cannot work our way into heaven. Others speak of our deliverance from the curse and penalty of the law. Christ suffered that curse for His people. Still others concern ceremonial ordinances that were fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

The sacrifices, priesthood, tabernacle, and temple ceremonies pointed forward to Him. We no longer bring an animal sacrifice because “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.” We no longer depend upon an earthly high priest because Jesus Christ is our great High Priest. The shadows have been fulfilled because the reality has come.

But God’s moral standard has not disappeared.

And this brings us to one of the most important truths we need to understand: God’s law is not bondage. God’s law is liberty.

James calls it “the perfect law of liberty.”

The world thinks freedom means escaping restraint. Man says, “If I can get rid of God’s commandments, then I can finally be free.” But freedom from God is not liberty. It is destruction.

Think about a fish. God created a fish to live in water. Water is its proper environment. You may say, “I’m going to liberate this fish from the restrictions of water.” So you take it out and place it on dry ground. Have you liberated it? No. You have killed it.

A bird was created for the air. Put that bird beneath the water and call it liberation if you want, but the bird will die.

A tree was created to grow with its roots in the soil. Pull it out of the ground and announce that you have freed it from the limitations of the earth. You have not given it freedom. You have given it death.

In the same way, man was created to live under God.

God’s commandments are not arbitrary restrictions designed to make us miserable. They establish the environment in which human life is meant to flourish.

When an individual, family, church, or nation removes itself from God and His law, that is not an act of liberation. It is an act leading toward death and destruction.

Look at the language God uses in Deuteronomy 30:15: “See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil.”

Then He says in verse 19, “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.”

God connects obedience with life because His commandments are for our good.

Deuteronomy 6:24 says, “And the LORD commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive.”

Did you hear that? “For our good always.”

God is not against us when He gives us His law. He is for us.

The great sin of man is presumption. We presume that we have the authority to decide for ourselves what is right and wrong. We presume that we can determine morality apart from God. We presume that we can establish our own standards of holiness.

But we are creatures. God is the Creator.

We do not define good and evil. God does.

We do not define righteousness. God does.

We do not determine the proper boundaries of human life. God does.

True liberty, therefore, is not freedom from God. True liberty is freedom to live as God created us to live.

Christ has freed us from the traditions and commandments of men that would enslave the conscience. He has freed His people from the condemnation and curse of the law. But He has not freed us so that we may become rebels against God.

We have been redeemed so that we might live unto Him.

If we want to please God, we obey Him. Jesus said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.”

First John 5:3 says, “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.”

God’s law is our standard and our measure for conduct. It shows us what pleases Him. It directs us toward righteousness. It protects us from the destructive consequences of rebellion.

There are ultimately only two roads before us: God’s way and man’s way, obedience and rebellion, life and death.

Joshua put the matter plainly when he said, “Choose you this day whom ye will serve.”

That decision still stands before us.

God is the Author of life. God is the Sustainer of life. God determines the proper boundaries of life. And because He gave us life, He alone has the right to tell us how that life should be lived.

Do not believe the lie that obedience to God is bondage.

Outside God’s order there is destruction. Within the boundaries God has established there is life.

His law is not the enemy of liberty.

His law is the perfect law of liberty.

Therefore, choose life. Choose obedience. Choose to walk in the ways God has revealed. And let us be able to say with Joshua, “As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”

I kept it at roughly the length you requested and shaped it as a standalone article rather than a transcript.