Our Father in Heaven, we are glad to begin our time that we've gathered together here by turning to you and asking you to bless this time. We ask that you will calm our hearts and minds and enable us to concentrate and focus on the truths that we are discussing today in our study of the Confession and concentrate on worshiping you during our time of worship. Father, we thank you again above all other things for our Lord Jesus Christ who has done everything necessary to unite us with you, forgive our sins, and give us everlasting life. We thank you that You have raised Him from the dead after He willingly suffered Your judgment against us, and that He has ascended into heaven. And Lord Jesus, we thank You for ruling over all things and over Your church, over us, Your people. We ask You, Father, now to again bless this time, help us understand, what we discuss today, and we ask that by your spirit, you will apply it to our souls and our lives. And Father, I ask you to help me by the presence and work of your spirit to present this study of chapter 21 of the Confession with clarity so that it might be effective for the church and useful for your people. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, who has accomplished salvation and granted us his righteousness, we pray, amen. Today we're beginning a study of Chapter 21 of the Confession, titled Christian Liberty and Liberty of Conscience. And even before we begin, I would like to ask you a question, and that question is, What is Christian liberty? And I just, you know, just right off the top of your heads, give me your comments about what Christian liberty is. This isn't a test, just an exercise to get us started. Remember, raise your hands and Daniel will bring you the microphone. Christian liberty is the ability for believers to only, the scriptures govern what we are to do or not to do, so we aren't bound by the will of other people, other men, so we have liberty. God directs us in this world. So Christian liberty is obeying the scriptures, not by man-made rules. I don't understand that, Jude. Could you repeat it? Who else? Any others? Okay. Oh, there's Kevin. Well, rather than trying to define it, I think of what's opposite of that, and that's the law. So I've heard it said that liberty is doing away with the law and not being bound by a set of rules, so being free. Again, I won't define what the opposite of that is, but that's what I've heard. Being free from the rule of the law. Okay. So, when I think of Christian liberty, I think of the fact that the law has given us principles for living that should guide our moral decisions, but there's a lot of decisions we make that don't have an obvious moral content to them that nevertheless should be governed by those same principles, and so that's really where wisdom comes in in how we live. And those prudential decisions we make are us exercising our liberty as Christians, is living wisely according to Scripture, in all aspects of how we live, and that those, to the point, the first point, are not directly forced or bound by some man's arbitrary rules. Okay, so the law gives us principles, and then, of course, scripture. All of Scripture gives us the information of the Word of God by which we should live. And we are free to live that way. Okay, that's a good start. Thank you all. So we just asked what Christian liberty is. We're looking at what the confession tells us it is. There are three paragraphs in the confession. You will find them on page 681 in the back of your hymnal, page 681 in the back of your hymnal. There are three paragraphs. We're going to begin today by reading through these three paragraphs rather quickly, and then get into our lesson. The liberty which Christ has purchased for believers under the gospel consists in their freedom from the guilt of sin, the condemning wrath of God, the rigor and curse of the law, and in their being delivered from this present evil world, bondage to Satan and dominion of sin, from the evil of afflictions, the fear and sting of death, the victory of the grave, and everlasting damnation, as also in their free access to God and their yielding obedience to him, unto him, not out of slavish fear, but a childlike love and willing mind, all which were common also to believers under the law for the substance of them. But under the New Testament, the liberty of Christians is further enlarged in their freedom from the yoke of a ceremonial law to which the Jewish church was subjected and in greater boldness of access to the throne of grace and in fuller communications of the free spirit of God than believers under the law did ordinarily partake of. Paragraph two, God alone. is lord of the conscience and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in anything contrary to his word or not contained in it so that to believe such doctrines or obey such commands out of conscience is to betray true liberty of conscience and the requiring of an implicit faith and absolute and blind obedience is to destroy liberty of conscience and reason also." Paragraph three. They who upon pretense of Christian liberty do practice any sin or cherish any sinful lust, as they do thereby pervert the main design of the grace of the gospel to their own destruction, so they wholly destroy the end of Christian liberty, which is that being delivered out of the hands of all our enemies, we might serve the Lord without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our lives. So there are two things that I would like to address as we begin, as an introduction. First of all, why is this doctrine important? And secondly, the fact that this doctrine is the head of the next major section of the Confession. I'm not going to spend any time reviewing the Confession and talking about the various major sections of the Confession. But this particular doctrine here is a prelude and the head of the doctrines in almost all of the rest of the chapters that follow Christian liberty. So this doctrine is the head of the next major section of the confession. As we consider why this doctrine is important, what I would like to do and what I'm going to do is just share some statements from people like John Owen and some other theologians and scholars about the importance of this doctrine. But first of all, let me talk about the importance of it in these four categories. It is important because it is the second pillar of the Reformation. Secondly, it is necessary for certainty or, and that's my word, certainty, it might be assurance or peace of conscience. You can think of it in those ways, but I thought certainty probably fit it a little better. It's necessary for certainty of conscience. It is essential for a correct knowledge of Christ, a correct knowledge of the gospel, and a correct knowledge of the peace of our souls. and it is necessary for the survival of the gospel. So it is the second pillar of the Reformation. G.I. Williamson in his book, The Westminster Confession of Faith, writes, here stands one of the glorious benefits of the Reformation for which our fathers gave their all. It was this truth, that is, liberty of conscience, so clearly taught in scripture that was wholly eclipsed in the apostasy of the Roman church. In other words, the Roman church just blacked it out. It was recovered only by the blood of many martyrs, the strong determination of covenanting Presbyterians in Scotland who would surrender to no man the crown rights of Jesus Christ is to be remembered reverently. They captured the spirit, they recaptured the spirit of the apostolic church as they answered those who tried to coerce them to believe or to do what was contrary to the word of Christ and they answered them with the apostles' words, we ought to obey God rather than men. Calvin talks, speaks of the doctrine in relation to the Reformation by saying it, that is the doctrine of Christian liberty, forms a proper appendix to justification and is of no little service in understanding its force. And we're going to talk more about this as we get further on in our discussion. But what we see is a justification and Christian liberty hold hands together. They're married together. It's a very critically important relationship. Owen says that Christian liberty is the second principle of the Reformation because at that point, Christians were at liberty and obliged to know for themselves what was true, what the scriptures taught. It is necessary for certainty of conscience or comfort and peace, assurance of conscience. Calvin writes that Christian liberty is a matter of primary necessity, one without the knowledge of which the conscience can scarcely attempt anything without hesitation. in many must demur and fluctuate, and in all proceed with fickleness and trepidation." Because as we discover what Christian liberty is, and we've already talked about it, and thinking about Christian liberty in terms of being freed from the rigors of the law, that we're no longer under law, and at the same time we're not under the commandments of men, Without Christian liberty, the conscience then is constantly questioning whether we're doing the right thing or not. Are we obeying the law? Are the rules that men give us, are giving us, are those rules that we need to follow? So you don't have this peace and comfort and assurance in your conscience. if without this doctrine of the liberty of conscience. It's essential for the correct knowledge of Christ and the gospel and peace of the soul. And we'll develop these principles or these truths later on as we go through the doctrine, but I wanted to begin with this kind of introduction. So it's essential for the correct knowledge of these things, and Calvin writes, if the subject, that is, Christian liberty, be not understood, neither Christ nor the truth of the gospel nor the inward peace of the soul is properly known. And it is necessary for the survival of the gospel. This is David Dixon writing in 1684, so the language is a little complicated. The apostle Paul withstood these false brethren. Unawares, men brought in, he opposed them, who came in secretly or deceitfully to spy out his liberty, which he had in Jesus Christ that they might bring him into bondage, to whom he gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour. In other words, he didn't give in to them. Kind of a long way of saying he didn't give in. that the truth of the gospel might continue where he lays so much weight upon Christian liberty that if that were taken away, the truth of the gospel would perish likewise. So that makes Christian liberty incredibly significant. If the truth of the grace of God and salvation in Christ would be taken away if we didn't have this doctrine. Secondly, this doctrine is the head of the next major section of the confession. This is chapter 21. Before we begin looking at some of the other chapters that follow, we need to begin looking at those with this fundamental truth in mind. There's a fundamental truth about Christian liberty, and that is Christian liberty is not freedom to do what we want to do, That would be simply pursuing the lust of our sinful natures. Christian liberty is the freedom to obey the Lord Jesus Christ because he has purchased us by suffering God's judgment against us. So let's keep that in mind as we now look at some sections of the following chapters. Christian liberty is the freedom to obey the Lord Jesus Christ. Every doctrine from chapters 22 through 30 is affected by the doctrine of Christian liberty. One of the reasons every doctrine is affected, because chapters 22 through 30 contain doctrines established by the Lord Jesus Christ. You have chapter 21, which is Christian liberty, and then following that, we have doctrines or teachings in scripture that Christ has established. So let's look at some of those. Chapter 22, Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day. I'm going to read through these pretty quickly, but as I do, I want you to look at them and see what part that you can point to specifically that indicates that this is something that Christ has established and the doctrine of Christian liberty then calls us to obedience or enables us to obey Christ in that way. Okay, the light of nature shows that there is a God who hath lordship and sovereignty over all, is just good and doth good unto all, and is therefore to be feared, loved, praised, called upon, trusted in, and served with all the heart and all the soul and with all the mind. but the acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by himself and so limited by his own revealed will that he may not be worshiped according to the imagination and the devices of men, nor the suggestions of Satan under any visible representations or any other not prescribed in the holy scriptures. So where do we see Christ establishing or giving us commands here, or where do we see Christ's commands reflected in the statement, I should say. Again, raise your hands and Daniel will bring you a microphone. Cheryl. Wasn't it part of how he says, so it's limited by his own revealed will? Because he has instituted it by himself, so the way in which we are able to provide acceptable worship is only through him. Otherwise, there is no other way that worship is acceptable. It's by His only revealed will. But the acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by Himself and limited by His only, His own free will. Now this, by the way, is the basis of what we call the regulative principle. You may or may not be familiar with the regulative principle, but all you see in our worship services reflects our attempts to conform our worship of God around the regulative principle. which says we only worship God the way God tells us to. We don't add to it. The Bible tells us how to worship him, and so we don't add anything to it. We don't have religious dance, for instance, or comedians. The Bible doesn't tell us to have those things. Paragraph two, religious worship is to be given to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and to him alone, not to angels, saints, or any other creatures, but since the fall, not without a mediator, nor in the mediation of any other but Christ alone. So, what do we see here? That, Arthur? that instructs us in our obedience to Christ. I think that this one is pretty clear against the Roman Catholic Church, that it is the proper worship that is to God alone, that it isn't to angels, it isn't to relics or, you know, or the like. Right. Worship is to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and to Him alone. And then paragraph eight, the Sabbath is then kept wholly unto the Lord when men, after a due preparing of their hearts and ordering their common affairs of forehand, do not only observe and wholly rest all day from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employment and recreations, but are also taken up the whole time in the public and private exercises of his worship and in the duties of necessity and mercy. To move along, the Sabbath is kept holy unto God. It's to be taken up the whole time in public and private exercises of worship and in duties of necessity and mercy. So we're being told how to use the Sabbath day. Lawful oaths and vows. A lawful oath is a part of religious worship wherein the person swearing in truth, righteousness, and judgment solemnly calleth God to witness what he sweareth and to judge him according to the truth or falseness thereof. So because of time, I'm just gonna move along now. So here, we're told that We make lawful oaths. It's lawful to make oaths, and a lawful oath is a part of religious worship in which we call on God to worship that what we swear is true or false. And so that is a way that we obey Christ in making lawful oaths. Civil governments, civil magistrates being set up by God for the ends of foresaid, subjection in all lawful things commanded by them, ought to be yielded by us in the Lord, not only for wrath, but for conscience sake, and we ought to make supplications and prayers for kings and all that are in authority that are under them, we may live a quiet, that under them we may live a quiet and peaceful life in all godliness and honesty. So here we are to be in subjection to the civil magistrate concerning lawful things commanded by them, And we need to pray, make supplication and prayers for kings and all that are in authority. Marriage, marriage is to be between one man and one woman, neither is it lawful for any man to have more than one wife. nor any woman to have more than one husband at the same time. So obedience to Christ here is obedience to this definition of marriage that simply is a summary of what we find in Scripture. The Church, the Catholic or universal Church, which with respect to the internal work of the Spirit and truth of grace may be called invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one under Christ, the head thereof, and is the spouse, the body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all. And here we are told that Christ is the head of who we are, the church, and by that we are to obey him and respond to him, which is an exercise of Christian liberty. The communion of the saints, all saints that are united to Christ, their head by his spirit and faith, although they are not made there by one person with him, have fellowship in his graces, sufferings, death, resurrection, and glory, and being united to one another in love, they have communion in each other's gifts and graces, and are obliged to the performance of such duties, public and private, in an orderly way, as conduced to their mutual good, both in the inward and outward man. So we are obliged to perform the duties connected with our love and communion with each other, and the use of our gifts and graces. Baptism in the Lord's Supper. without reading each of these, these are direct commands from Christ. So we can clearly understand that these are means by which we exercise Christian liberty. And this brings us to paragraph one, having come through our introduction. In paragraph one, presents us with five questions. Actually, it doesn't present us with five questions. It's easy to present paragraph one from a perspective of asking five questions. So that's what I've done here. What is the source of Christian liberty? What is Christian liberty? Who receives this liberty? From what are Christians set free? And what are the differences in this liberty between Old Testament and New Testament believers? And you find all of this information in paragraph one. And all we're going to look at today is the first question. The source of Christian liberty. Why do we need Christian liberty? We're going to ask that question in answering the source of Christian liberty, and then look at the statement that Jesus Christ is the source of Christian liberty. And there is another section here that I added after I put this on my iPad, so I didn't take the time to read you it all. And that is the direct effect of Christian liberty. Why do we need Christian liberty? Because we are slaves to sin. And so we turn to the confession again, to instruct us or give us the doctrine concerning our slavery to sin, chapter 6, paragraph 3, where we read, they, Adam and Eve, being the root and by God's appointment, standing in the room and stead of all mankind, the guilt of the sin was imputed and corrupted nature conveyed the guilt of their sin, I believe, was imputed and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity, descending from them by ordinary generation, being now conceived in sin, and by nature, children of wrath, the servants of sin, the subjects of death, and all other miseries, spiritual, temporal, and eternal, unless the Lord Jesus set them free unless the Lord Jesus set them free. Everything else that's in that paragraph talks about our slavery to sin, our corruption in our human natures, and our slavery to sin unless Christ sets us free. And again, the confession here is simply summarizing the doctrines that we find in scripture. Romans 5, 12, therefore just as through one man sin entered the world and death through sin and thus death spread to all men because all sinned. We didn't become sinners after we were born and reached an age of moral accountability and then actually sin. We were sinners at conception. Romans 6.20, for when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. What fruit did you then have in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. And what Paul tells us here is that we were slaves to sin before Christ set us free. And Acts 26.16, but rise and stand on your feet. And this is Christ speaking to the Apostle Paul. For I have appeared to you for this purpose, to make you a minister and a witness both of the things which you have seen and of the things which I will yet reveal to you. I will deliver you from the Jewish people as well as from the Gentiles to whom I now send you to open their eyes in order to turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God. that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in me. So Christ sends Paul to the Gentiles so that through his ministry, Christ can deliver them from the power of Satan, which is slavery to sin. Secondly, Jesus Christ is the source of Christian liberty. And the first sentence in Chapter 21, Paragraph 1, is, the liberty which Christ hath purchased for believers under the gospel. Christ has purchased Christian liberty for believers. In Chapter 11, Paragraph 1, talks about justification. And this is how Christ sets us free, purchases us. Those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth, not by infusing righteousness unto them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous, not for anything wrought in them or done by them, but for Christ's sake alone. not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or by any other evangelical obedience to them as their righteousness, but by imputing Christ's active obedience unto the whole law and passive obedience in his death for their whole and sole righteousness. They receiving and resting on him and his righteousness by faith, which faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God. Christ sets us free. by his death, burial, and resurrection, his sinless life, death, burial, and resurrection, and God imputes or credits to us the righteousness of Christ. And we are freed from our slavery to sin and freed from the law as a means of salvation or freed from thinking or responding to the law as a means of salvation. Justification removes the guilt of sin, according to Louis Burkhoff. Justification removes the guilt of sin and restores the sinner to all the family rights involved in his state as a child of God. As an adopted child of God then, the believer is free to obey God and enjoy all the rights and privileges of a child of God. If you recall the fundamental truth, we talked about before we started looking at some of the other chapters, that fundamental truth is that we are free to obey Christ, that Christian liberty at its most basic level is freedom to obey Christ. And how do we get that freedom? It's because we've been justified, and having been justified by God, then we're adopted by God, By the way, these things don't necessarily happen sequentially. Theologians tell us we can't list them in order of calling and justification and adoption. It's kind of like they all happen simultaneously. But as adopted children of God then, we belong to God. We're children of God. we've been given spiritual lives, born from above, born spiritually, born as children of God to be adopted by God. So as adopted children of God, we are free to obey God then. And we're not going to read all of these scriptures, but Isaiah 61.1 and Luke 4.18 are the same scriptures, essentially, Isaiah, it is prophetic, it is the prophecy of God about Christ in Isaiah, and in Luke, Christ is declaring that what the prophet Isaiah prophesied is who he is, is what he is. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, and to what? to proclaim liberty to the captives, liberty to those who are slaves to sin, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed by sin and the demands of the law, the rigorous demands of the law. Romans 8.1, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. 2 Corinthians 3.17, now the Lord is the spirit and where the spirit of the Lord is, There's liberty. So if the spirit of God lives in you, you're free to obey Christ. And until God makes you born again, you're not. You can't. In fact, you don't even want to. You might want to be moral, you might want to be respectable, you might want to be good, you might want to stop doing bad things that get you into a lot of trouble, but you don't really want to obey Christ. You not only don't want to, you can't, until the Spirit of God has set you free from your slavery to sin. And that's all of us, all human beings. The direct effect of Christian liberty, then. Christian liberty grants us freedom to obey the Lord Jesus Christ. And the direct effect, then, is the effect of Christian liberty on the human will. And the human will, a dictionary definition of the human will, is the faculty by which a person decides on and initiates action. And that's every action you take. You get up in the morning, you want to brush your teeth, you decide that. That's an exercise of what is called volition, or your will. You go to work. You decide to go to work or not go to work. You decide that you're going to love your wife or love your husband today and make them happy, or you decide that you're not going to. It just doesn't accidentally happen. Those are exercises of your will. You decide whether or not you're going to go to church and worship God as he commands, or you decide that you're going to let something else interfere with that. It is our capacity to make decisions. That's the human will. And in this matter of salvation, all kinds of churches have this wrong, because they say we have free will, therefore we can choose God. You have a free will. You can decide whether you're going to be saved or not. Hold up your hand, walk down the aisle, Make a decision for Jesus. Chapter 9 of our confession talks about free will. So I thought it would be valuable as we talk about the direct effect of Christian liberty to look at how it ties to this part of the Christian life and the doctrine in our confession. Paragraph 1, God hath endued the will of man with that natural liberty and power of acting upon choice that is neither, shouldn't have an A in front of it, neither forced nor by any necessity of nature determined to do good or evil. Now what that paragraph is telling us is that nothing outside of you or me will make our decisions for us, not even God. Not even God will make our decisions for us. That's why we're responsible before God. because he's given us a will, this capacity to make our own decisions. There's this little cliche, the devil made me do it, the devil never makes us do anything. But at the same time, God doesn't make us do it. Now he will persuade us, and he will persuade us powerfully with his truth and with the working of his Holy Spirit, In the final analysis, it is we who make the decision. Paragraph two, man in his state of innocency, that is Adam and Eve, had freedom and power to will and to do that which was good and well-pleasing to God and yet was mutable or changeable, in other words, so that he might fall from it. In other words, Adam and Eve were able to choose to obey God But that will in Adam and Eve also had the capacity, obviously, to choose to change and not be innocent anymore, and to disobey God. Paragraph three, man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation. So as a natural man, being altogether averse from that good and dead in sin, is not able by his own strength to convert himself or to prepare himself thereunto. What that is saying is that we are slaves to sin. We still have a free will. But think about how you make decisions. What controls our decisions? What we want to do, right? And what do we want to do is what's in our heart. And if we haven't been regenerated by the spirit of God, what's in our heart? Nothing but sin. It's a heart polluted and corrupted by sin, so the only thing we can choose is sin. Now, we might do some good moral things, but we're not doing those because we're seeking to obey God or in obedience to God. All we can do, all we can choose is sin. Paragraph four, when God converts a sinner and translates him into the state of grace, he freeth him from his natural bondage under sin and by his grace alone enables him freely to will and to do. that which is spiritually good, yet so as that by reason of his remaining corruptions, he doth not perfectly nor only will that which is good, but doth also will that which is evil. So once God saves a person, this paragraph is telling us that God brings us into a state of grace, and in doing that, he then enables us to will and to do that which is spiritually good. And in Philippians 2, 13, I think, the Bible says that it is God who works in us to will and to do, and it's talking about Christians. Paragraph five, this will of man is made perfectly and immutably free to good alone in the state of glory only. So paragraph four is saying, as a result of God saving us, we now, our will is now freed from its slavery to sin because we've received a new heart, a new nature, and now we can respond out of that new heart and new nature, although we can also respond in relation to the sinful nature that still abides in us. Oh, and paragraph five is telling us that we will, our will will be made perfect only in the state of glory. All right. Any questions? Comments? Okay. Thank you very much for your attention. I know I moved through that rather rapidly. Maybe I'll slow down next week. Forgive some of the typographical errors. I didn't stop and comment on them, but you could obviously see there were some. Like the word freely doesn't begin with an H. You can see that. Okay. Sure. Yes. Well, let's pray and thank God for the time we've been able to spend together this morning. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for giving us life this hour and by your divine appointment arranging for us to be here, calling us here. Thank you, Father, for the truth of this wonderful doctrine of Christian liberty. And thank you for what our study of it tells us, once again, about the gospel of Jesus Christ, that in him you have forgiven us, justified us, adopted us, and set our wills free to obey the Lord Jesus. Thank you, God. Through the Lord Jesus, who is our righteousness, and our salvation, we pray. Amen.