Training · The 1689 Baptist Confession
Christian liberty and liberty of conscience
What Christ has freed believers from, who owns the conscience, and what liberty is not for.
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What has Christ freed believers from?
The guilt of sin, the condemning wrath of God, the curse of the law, this present evil world, bondage to Satan, the dominion of sin, the evil of afflictions, the fear and sting of death, the victory of the grave, and everlasting damnation.
It is a long list and it is worth reading slowly, because the items are of different kinds - legal, spiritual and emotional. The confession treats fear of death as something Christ deals with, not something Christians are expected to manage on their own.
But Christ rescued us from the curse of the law by taking that curse on himself, because the Scriptures say, 'Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.'
Galatians 3:13Confession 21.1
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What has Christ freed believers for?
Free access to God, and obeying him not out of slavish fear but with a child-like love and a willing mind.
The contrast is between two motives that can produce identical behaviour. The confession cares which one is operating, and says the gospel changes it.
You didn't get a spirit that makes you slaves and afraid again. Instead, you got the Spirit who makes you God's own children, and now we can call him 'Dad.'
Romans 8:15Confession 21.1
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Did believers before Christ have this same freedom?
Yes, all of it. The confession says that under the New Testament it is further enlarged - freedom from the ceremonial law, greater boldness of access to God, and fuller supplies of the Spirit than believers under the law ordinarily had.
It is a difference of degree rather than of kind, which fits the treatment of the covenant of grace as one thing progressively revealed. Nobody in the older arrangement was saved on different terms; they had less of what has now been given more freely.
Confession 21.1
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Who is Lord of the conscience?
God alone. He has left it free from any human doctrine or command that is contrary to his word, or simply not contained in it.
Both halves have teeth, and the second is the sharper one. A requirement does not have to contradict Scripture to be off-limits; it is enough that Scripture does not require it. To obey such a command as a matter of conscience is, the confession says, to betray true liberty of conscience.
There's only one Lawgiver and Judge - the one who can save or destroy. So who are you to judge your neighbor?
James 4:12Confession 21.2
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Is it wrong to require people to believe or obey without being shown why?
Yes. Requiring implicit faith or absolute blind obedience destroys liberty of conscience, and destroys reason along with it.
God alone is Lord of the conscience, and has left it free from human commands that go beyond his word. This adds that the manner of a demand can be as wrong as its content: a true thing demanded on no ground except authority still treats the person as something less than a person.
Confession 21.2
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Can Christian liberty be used as cover for sin?
No. Anyone doing that perverts the main design of the grace of the gospel to their own destruction.
The chapter that most strongly defends freedom of conscience closes by refusing to let it be used as an excuse. Liberty is freedom from condemnation and from human invention, not freedom to do as one likes.
You, my friends, were called to be free. But don't use your freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want. Instead, serve each other with love.
Galatians 5:13Confession 21.3