Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

A Longing for Liberty

Douglas Wilson
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Blog and Mablog

One of the things that the Holy Spirit gloriously does in this sorry world of ours is His liberating work. The Holy Spirit is an agent of liberty. The Spirit sets men free, and He does it through the gospel.

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; Because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; He hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives, And the opening of the prison to them that are bound” (Is. 61:1).

The Lord Jesus quoted this verse in Luke, using it to describe the work that he had come to do (Luke 4:18). So this is in fact all about the gospel. But when that is said, there are too many Christians who might be tempted to say that they are glad I was not getting into politics. Oh, but I was getting into politics, because politics is part of everything, and the gospel gets into everything.

This Spirit of liberty is not a spirit of stoicism, which cares only for an internal liberation, where the slave is liberated by pure thoughts and cares not that his chains are clanking. There is an approximation of this in Paul’s exhortation to slaves, but note that Paul tells them to take the first door out when they have opportunity.
“Were you a bondservant when called? Do not be concerned about it. (But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity.)” (1 Cor. 7:21, ESV). There is a stark difference between Christian teleological patience in affliction and a Stoic acquiescent patience in affliction.

Christian patience is all about patience as we await deliverance, which means that it knows which direction to look, to long, to pray, and to labor. This means that one of our central tasks as culturally engaged Christians is the task of advancing the blessings of liberty, real liberty — not the potsmoking kind. “Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Cor. 3:17).

A people who are enslaved to their lusts will never be the kind of people who successfully throw off tyrants. We have been offered a series of bribes — free love, porn, drunkenness, government handouts, and other forms of lotus-eating — and these are the bribes that make us content with the dimensions of our prison cell. But a man set free by the gospel will be begin to think like a free man, and that will soon enough affect his body, his business, his travel plans, and so on. It is all grounded in obedience, and obedience is not possible apart from the grace of God that is offered to us in the gospel. Efficacious grace is first, and holiness second.

“So shall I keep thy law continually For ever and ever. And I will walk at liberty: For I seek thy precepts” (Ps. 119:44–45).

The verse that is inscribed on the Liberty Bell is this one:

“And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family” (Lev. 25:10).

That is why it is called the Liberty Bell. That is why we as a people used to be free. Jesus used to be with us.
Used to be free? Right. More on that later, along with what we should do about it. We need to learn the kind of obedience to God that is bane of all administrators of the royal prerogative.