{"id":4015,"date":"2016-09-04T07:26:55","date_gmt":"2016-09-04T07:26:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/?p=4015"},"modified":"2016-09-04T07:26:55","modified_gmt":"2016-09-04T07:26:55","slug":"ignorant-men-like-to-boast-of-their-free-will","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/?p=4015","title":{"rendered":"Ignorant men like to boast of their free will."},"content":{"rendered":"

Ignorant men like to boast of their free will.\u00a0 Free from what?\u00a0 Free from God?\u00a0 Truth is we are always servants subject to another.\u00a0 We are either the servants of sin, walking \u201caccording to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.\u201d (Eph 2:2<\/a>) Or we are the servants of righteousness, under the grace of God, subject to our Lord Jesus, the Prince of peace.<\/p>\n

We were born servants of sin.\u00a0 While in our natural born state we could not and would not serve God.\u00a0 Oh, we may have served a god of our imagination. But the \u201cnatural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.\u201d\u00a0 (1 Cor 2: 4<\/a>) While spiritually dead, even if we did things we thought were religious and godly, we were only serving different lusts and pleasures. (Titus 3: 3-6<\/a>) Our sinful hearts were full of malice and envy against God and men.\u00a0 While refusing to rest in Christ from our works, even those works we called love were really only us being hateful and hating one another.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut God be thanked.\u201d\u00a0 God sent us the gospel; God gave us a new heart; God granted us faith and repentance; God revealed his Righteousness in us, Christ Jesus.\u00a0 He promised, \u201cAs soon as they hear of me, they shall obey me: the strangers shall submit themselves unto me.\u201d (Ps 18: 44<\/a>) Therefore, by God\u2019s grace, when he delivered to us the good news that his Son has fulfilled the law for us and put away all our sins, we obeyed from the heart the Gospel.<\/p>\n

When Christ makes us free then we are free indeed.\u00a0 Free from God? No. True freedom is to be delivered from being the servants of sin. It is to be made the servants of Christ our Righteousness, seeking to walk in every precept he commands\u2014\u201cI will walk at liberty: for I seek thy precepts.\u201d (Ps 119:45<\/a>) Freedom in Christ is not to use liberty as a disguise to maliciously live in sin against God and men.\u00a0 (1 Pet 2: 16<\/a>) Liberty is knowing \u201csin shall not have dominion over you: for ye not under the law, but under grace.\u201d (Rom 6; 14)\u00a0 It is God granting us deliverance out of the hands of our enemies that we \u201cmight serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him, all our days.\u201d (Lu 1: 74-75)<\/p>\n

The yoke that makes the believer obedient to Christ is not the yoke of law but the yoke of Christ\u2019s love who gave himself for us. There was a little boy who had a horse that he loved and cared for greatly. In turn, the horse obeyed the little boy so that he never had to yoke the horse to a hitching post whenever he left his horse unattended. One day, the little boy left the horse untied and walked toward his neighbor\u2019s house to make a delivery for his mother. Thinking the horse was sure to run away, a man asked the little boy, \u201cSon, can your horse run fast?\u201d\u00a0 The little boy answered, \u201cNo sir. But he can stand fast.\u201d\u00a0 Believer, \u201cstand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.\u201d (Ga 5:1<\/a>) Clay Curtis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ignorant men like to boast of their free will.\u00a0 Free from what?\u00a0 Free from God?\u00a0 Truth is we are always servants subject to another.\u00a0 We are either the servants of sin, walking \u201caccording to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-clay-curtis","category-the-will"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4015"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4017,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4015\/revisions\/4017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}