Freedom in Christ

FROM Burk Parsons 

The Psalmist declared, “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day” (Ps. 119:97). Why would anyone love the law of God? Why would we love that which constantly tells us what miserable wretches we are, daily points out all our shortcomings, relentlessly reminds us of all our death-deserving sins, and keeps knocking us down to our knees, leaving us crying out for help?

The truth of the matter is that not just anyone loves the law of God but only those who have been set free by our law-giving, law-keeping, and law-liberating Savior. We love the law of God not because we possess some sort of inherent self-inflicting, self-deprecating sadistic disposition toward ourselves, but because, in His electing grace, God set His glorious and enduring love upon us, laid His eternal claim upon us, took hold of us and clutches us in the palm of His strong and steadfast hand, and made us His dutiful bondslaves that we might be free to delight in His law in our inner being (Rom. 7:22–25) and strive to observe all the commands of Christ (Matt. 28:20), who by no means abolished the Law but fulfilled it perfectly in our behalf (Matt. 5:17). His death is our life. His fulfillment is our freedom. His duty is our delight.

Our abundant life of freedom in Christ is not a freedom to do anything we want to do but to have the uninterrupted, Spirit-sustaining power to do what we know we ought to do as the Holy Spirit changes our wants and daily makes all of our God-given duties delightful as we rest in the finished work of Christ (Rom. 8:3–4).

The Holy Spirit sovereignly uses the law in several ways — to teach us about our Creator, to give us a glimpse of His righteousness, holiness, and justice, to restrain sin, to give us a glimpse of the heinous nature of our sin, to drive us to our knees in liberating repentance, to prompt us to cry out daily for help, to guide us in our lives as we strive to die more and more unto sin and live unto righteousness (WSC 35), and to encourage us to lift our eyes to Jesus Christ, the only mediator between God and man, who alone is our righteousness, who alone fulfilled the law perfectly, in whom we rest by faith, and faith alone, and to whom we are eternally united because the Father has declared us righteous on account of the substitutionary righteousness of Christ that has been imputed to us, and our sin imputed to Him, fully and finally.