Freedom in Christ, part 5

Freedom in Christ lesson 5,Part 2: The theory of the declaration and the constitution.

 

Satan attempts to destroy the prosperity and strength that comes from equality and liberty. And he has had the same strategy in the Church and in the nation.

 

GAL 5:1 It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.

 

Someone bullied the Galatians back into the yoke of the Mosaic Law and they were convinced that it was the source of justification.

 

God has declared that the Law has been abolished and that a righteous life that brings glory to Him is by means of grace in freely receiving the word of God  and the filling ministry of God the Holy Spirit.

 

2CO 3:17 Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

 

2CO 3:18 But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

 

GAL 3:1 You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?

 

Only a fool gives up his natural right to liberty.

 

GAL 3:2 This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith?

 

GAL 3:3 Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?

 

GAL 3:4 Did you suffer so many things in vain —  if indeed it was in vain?

 

GAL 3:5 Does He then, who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you, do it by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith?

 

The freedom to assemble as you are (minimal standards) and to be as you are (minimal standards of manners) in the local assembly guarantees liberty. The lack of hierarchy that is found in many large denominations guarantees liberty as a believer can leave one assembly that he feels is not teaching the truth and choose another one. Yet, as it is in our current school system, churches of certain denominations are forced to teach the same doctrines, even if they are deemed false by the clarity of the word of God.

 

GAL 2:4 But it was because of the false brethren who had sneaked in to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, in order to bring us into bondage.

We all face the question of pleasing God or pleasing men. People have a way of pressuring others into their belief system for acceptance and ridiculing those who don't conform. The fast ascension of political correctness in our country is a prime example of this.

 

GAL 1:10 For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ.

 

God will always provide prepared pastor-teachers to those with positive volition. They will teach the unadulterated word of God from its historical, categorical, and exegetical text. None of them have 100% knowledge but their variance will only be the areas of conjecture and not on sound doctrines that are clearly revealed in the word of God.

 

There are seven parts to the theory of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in our study.

 

A. Freedom comes from the clear understanding of Scripture. Satan can't remove it entirely, so the attack is to change the meaning of words.

 

The Declaration of Independence stated the natural law and the constitution protected those laws.

 

Declaration of Independence contained the moral fabric of state and federal constitutions.

 

The first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

 

Conservatives and liberals both disagree on different parts, especially the definition of equal. What is important is to know what the founders meant by the word "equal" and "equality."

 

The believer is to determine what the words of the word of God mean as God meant them through the writers of Scripture. To assist the Church in this, God has given the gift of pastor teacher. God makes sure that in every generation there are prepared PT's with proper motivation who diligently study and teach through a careful exposition of context, original language, and history.

 

1PE 5:1 Therefore, I exhort the elders among you, as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ, and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed,

 

1PE 5:2 shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight not under compulsion, but voluntarily, according to the will of God; and not for sordid gain, but with eagerness;

 

1PE 5:3 nor yet as lording it over those allotted to your charge, but proving to be examples to the flock.

 

Being a pastor is a career in the capitalistic sense but a life of service and so is the job of a politician, but this has been perverted by opportunities for power and wealth.

 

2PE 2:1 But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves.

 

2PE 2:2 And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned;

 

2PE 2:3 and in their greed they will exploit you with false words; their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

 

2PE 2:4 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment;

 

2PE 2:5 and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;

 

2PE 2:6 and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly thereafter;

 

2PE 2:7 and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men

 

2PE 2:8 (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day with their lawless deeds),

 

2PE 2:9 then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment,

 

2PE 2:10 and especially those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires and despise authority. Daring, self-willed, they do not tremble when they revile angelic majesties,

 

2PE 2:11 whereas angels who are greater in might and power do not bring a reviling judgment against them before the Lord.

 

2PE 2:12 But these, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, reviling where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed,

 

2PE 2:13 suffering wrong as the wages of doing wrong. They count it a pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are stains and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, as they carouse with you,

 

2PE 2:14 having eyes full of adultery and that never cease from sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed, accursed children;

 

2PE 2:15 forsaking the right way they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness,

 

2PE 2:16 but he received a rebuke for his own transgression; for a dumb donkey, speaking with a voice of a man, restrained the madness of the prophet.

 

2PE 2:17 These are springs without water, and mists driven by a storm, for whom the black darkness has been reserved.

 

2PE 2:18 For speaking out arrogant words of vanity they entice by fleshly desires, by sensuality, those who barely escape from the ones who live in error,

 

2PE 2:19 promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved.

 

2PE 2:20 For if after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.

 

2PE 2:21 For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment delivered to them.

 

2PE 2:22 It has happened to them according to the true proverb, "A dog returns to its own vomit," and, "A sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire."

 

False doctrine uses the same Bible and the same terms as true doctrine just like progressives in our day use the same words with different definitions.

 

Liberals see "equality" as declared in the Declaration of Independence as not going far enough. Generally they want the definition to include the UN 1948 universal declaration of rights which include a right to social security, rest, leisure, standard of living, untraditional marriage, health care, etc. Equality has become affirmative action. Labor has changed from a free exchange of labor and wages to quotas, minimum wages, and piles of regulation. If someone refuses to work when capable the government must provide public housing and transportation.

 

To the founders, liberty was the right to be free from the coercive interference of others. They didn't think it included a right of money and services except in extreme cases.

 

Our constitution of 1787 stated that state government handle domestic policy while the feds handle foreign policy. In this way, a person who disagreed with a state government would have the freedom to move to another that had better policy. In the same way there was to be no organization to the Church other than individual local assemblies. God gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor-teachers. The apostles and prophets are long gone. Evangelists' ministries are unto the unbeliever wherever God leads him, though he may be affiliated with a certain local assembly. Therefore, the local assembly is headed by the pastor-teacher and the believer can cast his vote for or against him by attending his messages or not.

 

B. God provides many local assemblies in order to remove tyranny of the majority. Satan's attack on this is denominations that provide buildings and money to charters who will teach their doctrines.

 

ROM 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

 

Federalist 51, James Madison

It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. There are but two methods of providing against this evil: the one by creating a will in the community independent of the majority—that is, of the society itself; the other, by comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable.[end quote]

 

Madison goes on to say that the first is usually accomplished through self-appointed authority or a power independent of society, like a monarch.

 

I find it interesting that God does not turn out the power or somehow shut down churches who claim to be Christian and who are teaching false doctrine. Just as He preserved His word with many copies and not one preserved original so He has preserved His church and His doctrine through a vast number of churches. Though Satan has attempted to unify them under one monarch throughout all history, he has constantly failed to do so fully. And although he will be successful in this during the Great Tribulation it will be an utter disaster.

 

Madison goes on to say:

 

The second method will be exemplified in the federal republic of the United States. Whilst all authority in it will be derived from and dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority. In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects. The degree of security in both cases will depend on the number of interests and sects; and this may be presumed to depend on the extent of country and number of people comprehended under the same government. [end quote]

 

C. God gives each believer a new life in Christ, a new spiritual liberty, and the potential of divine happiness. Satan's attack is to change the meaning of these words.

 

Second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

 

Since words could not be changed without either changing or removing the whole document Satan set out on a course to change the definition of words one would think are so simple and clear that this would be impossible; men and equal.

 

Most of the theoretical works authored by Progressives begin with a critique of natural rights principles.

 

Not many have had the gall that W. Wilson had in an address ostensibly honoring Thomas Jefferson:

 

"if you want to understand the real Declaration of Independence, do not repeat the preface." [first two paragraphs] W. Wilson.

 

In other words, do not repeat that part of the Declaration that enshrines natural rights as the focal point of just government not only for the founding era, but for all time.

 

Equality is not protected by governments or a product of law, but a right of every human being from birth. In the same way, no person can determine equal privilege and opportunity for another person. God has given this equality at the second birth which every believer has the privilege and opportunity to enjoy from the moment they believe in Christ. It does not guarantee happiness but it does guarantee the pursuit of it. And unlike governments, God's freedom to pursue happiness is eternal. It is provided for no matter what circumstances may be since it is a legacy of the new creature in the soul. So no matter what happens, even if earthly freedoms are removed, even if in prison or captured or handicapped in some fashion, God provides the pursuit of freedom for all of His children.

 

Changing God's words: life does not mean experiencing the life beyond dreams. Liberty does not mean doing anything you want. Happiness is not for those who reject God's will.

 

All things work together for good to those that love God. Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man all that God has prepared for those who love Him. Life is the new life and liberty is the new spiritual liberty, but a believer must learn and put his faith in the word of God in order to experience the fullness of these in time.

 

ROM 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

 

ROM 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death [life and liberty].

 

ROM 8:3 For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh,

 

ROM 8:4 in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit [pursuit of happiness].

 

ISA 61:1-2

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

Because the Lord has anointed me

To bring good news to the afflicted;

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

To proclaim liberty to captives,

And freedom to prisoners;

To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord,

 

1PE 2:16-17

Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God. Honor all men; love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king.

 

1CO 9:19

For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, that I might win the more.