James 1:25 But whoever looks into the perfect law of liberty, and continues therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work… "Law" — merely "law" — "law" only — is a bondage harsh and severe. "Liberty" alone, and unguarded, passes into licentiousness, runs riot, and becomes tyranny. "Law" needs to be sweetened by "liberty," and" liberty" is no "liberty" without the fences of law. St. James strikingly blends them, and finds the blending where only it exists — in God's Word: "The perfect law of liberty." It is just, what all good legislation has as its aim: "Law" which is no less than "liberty," and "liberty" which is compatible with "law." But what human legislation has ever yet reached it? It would not be too much to say that the Christian religion is the only code in the whole world which ever has united, or can perfectly unite, those two things, so as to make them really one. See how it is in God's method. And, first, we look at the "liberty." Every man who becomes a real Christian becomes a free man: and the more he is a Christian the more he is free. The date and the measure of his Christianity are also the date and measure of his "liberty." For, as soon as ever we really know Christ, and come to Christ, and believe in Christ, our sins are all forgiven. Therefore we are free from our past. And then, the Christian now, by his union with Christ, made, in a higher sense than before, a child of God, is undertaken for in everything: so that he need have no anxiety about what is coming. Every needful thing is covenanted to him for time and eternity: therefore that man is free from his future — he is liberated from the bonds of care. And the "liberty" is not only thus of a negative character. He is free, every moment of his life he is free, to go to the throne of God "by a new and living way"; to his own God, and to open there his whole heart and to tell Him everything; and have the closest communion with Him. And then to listen for "still small voices" which shall speak back to him. He is free to claim every promise. He is free to lay his hand of faith upon the Cross, and all that Cross has purchased, and say, "It is mine!" He is a freed man of the heavenly city, free, as a child of God is free of his Father's house. To him the doors of glory are flung wide open! And he is free to mingle with the saints; to sit down at the feast; to join in the song; free, to the very feet of Jesus; to know as he is known, and love as he is loved. That is "liberty!" Now see the law — "the perfect law of liberty." God has given, since the creation, four laws to man; but only one of the four can be rightly called a "law of liberty." The original "law" of all was the law of conscience, a law which if man had not fallen would have been, we must believe, a perfect guide. But as man is now, conscience is only "law" in so far as it is the reflection of other laws which God has given us. Secondly, there was a "law" given to Adam and Eve in Paradise. This was a law of prohibition. Therefore it was not a "law of liberty." The next "law" which God gave was the law enacted from Mount Sinai. But neither was this a law of liberty. Almost the whole of it is negative; it tells what we are not to do: and negatives can never be liberty. Fourthly, came the law of the Lord Jesus Christ. See what is the basis and the character of that fourth law. Every other law had failed; no man did keep it, or could keep it. If a man's eternal happiness depended upon any law which could be given, no man, from Adam to the latest man, could have fulfilled the condition. Christ saw that, and He came, and He Himself fulfilled all the law, to the minutest point. He carried out the whole mind of God. He fulfilled it as a Representative Man, that His fulfilment might be our fulfilment. And so God accepted it. What, then, is our "law"? Love, love, love for a law which has been kept for us. It is the strictest law that was ever made on earth. It binds every thought, every moment: but it has no shackles. It is more than voluntary: it is happy, quite happy — the only thing that is happy and makes everything else happy. It is free, quite free — the only thing that is tree and makes everything else free. It is the outcome of the heart. It is the law of angels. It is the law of the saints in heaven. It is the law of love; and the law of love is "the law of liberty." (James Vaughan, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. |
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