services rendered or another product of grace?
[Unless otherwise noted, all quotes are from Bullinger’s Decades and have been lightly adapted.]
When I first heard of the category of ‘Christian liberty’ it was in the midst of discussions of all the things ‘Christians actually can do’ or ‘things that maybe Christians are perhaps permitted to do but really shouldn’t do’. Christian liberty was all about setting ourselves free from legalistic scruples and somehow also about shackling others to our own legalistic scruples. Both. At the same time. Odd that.
That was part of the shallowness of our church culture then. Theology wasn’t emphasized. The doctrines were disconnected from each other. Action, doing, activity, was the order of the day. ‘There are pastors who do and there are pastors who write. We’re the former.’ So Christian liberty was something Paul talked about to the Corinthians who were wound just a little too tight about their bbqs. It was a distraction from more important matters, like evangelism, or the next church growth project.
Now about Christian liberty the most holy apostle of Christ, St Paul, has reasoned very diligently and expansively, so that we may learn that understanding Christian liberty is neither of no weight nor of little profit.
In other words, it really matters.
Bullinger was a shepherd. His sheep were those who had suffered greatly under the yoke of medieval Roman Catholicism. Endless rules on what you could eat when, how you could purchase forgiveness, when you were allowed to sleep with your spouse (based on the liturgical calendar), which sin was forgivable and which left you out of luck, and all of it under the soul-crippling teaching that experiencing assurance of salvation was surely damnable. That was only for the saints. The super holy. Not mere mortals like you and me. We had to stew in our guilty consciences.
Christianity, the good news, had become enslaving. Finding hope became more likely as an accident than from the diligent study of the church. It’s into this context that Bullinger writes about our bondage in sin. Why begin with enslavement from sin? Because that’s what we’re freed from.
Spiritual bondage looks a bit like bodily servitude. Adam, by his own fault, became a slave; and we, from him, are all born slaves as well. He was once free, and he had the Lord as his friend and patron; but he disloyally revolted from God and got himself another master, the devil, a tyrant as cruel as may be, who for his sin having got power over him did, like a merciless master, treat him miserably like a slave. Now we because of our corrupt grandsire are born corrupt and sinners, and for our sin are also under the devil’s dominion; we are in danger of the law and the curse thereof, we are the slaves of sin, and we are made subject to various calamities by reason of our sin. This is called spiritual bondage.
The picture is pretty bleak. After Adam’s sin in the garden, this is all of us. The more we become aware of ourselves, the more we feel the oppression of this sin. It’s all fine and well when we’re happy in our sin, at least till we die and face the judgment, but for one who feels his sin today? One who aches over her sin today? Those who long for forgiveness, those who so deeply want to stop sinning? The weight of sin truly is the shackles of slavery. The answer to this bitter servitude? Our Redeemer.
The son of God came into this world, and, having first oppressed the tyranny of Satan and crushed his head by his own death and passion, he has transferred us into his own kingdom, and he has made himself our Lord and king. He has adopted us to be the sons of God and with his blessing took away the bitter curse of the law; for he took away all sins and purged all the faithful from their iniquities. He also most freely gave us the free gift of the Holy Spirit, to the end that the sons of God should willingly and of their own desire submit themselves to the will of God and do the things that the Lord would have them do; for although the hatred of the law does not remain in our souls, the weakness of the flesh remains still. Lastly, our same Lord and King has taken from the shoulders of his elect the burden of the law…and has forbidden us, being once set free, from entangling ourselves again with any laws and traditions of men.
We think true freedom is the ability to follow ourselves, to satisfy any desire we have without cost. We want to be freed from limitations, from boundaries, from consequences. But that’s not freedom. That’s not even human. Animals live that way, not men.
I lost my temper at one of my children this morning for having hurt a sibling. The rage welling up in my soul felt uncontainable. Even as I worked to hold back the avalanche of anger, my words were still destructive rather than corrective and restorative. We feel the same sense of inevitability to our desires when we fear, when we lust, when we’re hurt, when we want… Our desires have to be satisfied. Saying no to ourselves feels futile, impossible, oppressive. But that’s not freedom, that’s slavery. We’re enslaved to ourselves, and to our sins.
Jesus offers true freedom, freedom from the compulsion we feel to gratify our desires. Freedom to say no to ourselves. Freedom to repent, to acknowledge our sin against God and against others. Freedom to make it right with those whom we have hurt (as I will do when that child returns home). Freedom to fight that sin longer next time. Freedom to grow past that sin so it no longer defines us as it once did.
Christian liberty is ultimately freedom from sin and the law, not that we’re no longer under any law, but we’re no longer enslaved under the curse of the law. Having been freed by Christ, now we are bound to the ten commandments as a covenant, not a covenant of works but a covenant of grace. Rather than Christian liberty being a vaguely theological excuse to do whatever we want that the Bible doesn’t explicitly tell us not to do, Christian liberty is about being set free to live as Christians, because Christ redeemed us from sin and death.
Now we have been freed to live as slaves of Christ. Freed to live according to the law in faith. Freed to produce good works.
Good works are deeds or actions worked by those who are regenerate by the Spirit of God through faith, and, according to the word of God, to the glory of God, the honesty of life, and the profit of our neighbour.
There’s a lot to work through here, and it’s not till a century later that this gets really clearly explained in Reformed theology. But Bullinger is trying to help believers understand how it is that scripture teaches both that we are justified by God’s grace completely apart from works of our own, and how scripture also teaches that justification and works are actually connected as well. How can good works be truly ours, and how can salvation be entirely of God’s grace?
The short answer is justification and sanctification were more or less the same category from Augustine onward (we’ve talked about this before). The Reformers separated justification and sanctification (following the way scripture usually speaks of both of them). Justification, dealing with our status before God, is a legal category in which Jesus forgives the debt of sin we owe God, and we play absolutely no role at all. We receive. We contribute nothing to our justification but the sin that makes it necessary (others have said that better than me). Sanctification deals with our nature, and it’s something the Spirit accomplishes in us, but it’s also something we do play an active role in. God empowers our action, but then we as believers genuinely act. So our works as sanctified believers are actually our works, and there is a sense in which there will be a justification of believers according to these works. But even that justification of works is still on the back of the justification by grace through faith that Jesus has accomplished for us completely apart from our works.
So what is the reward we receive for our good works? How can believers be said to be justified by works (while at the same time understanding that we are justified, we are made righteous, entirely because of Christ’s work and wholly apart from any labour of our own)?
God examines our works according to his own favourable mercy and not with the extremity and rigour of the law. He rewards them with infinite benefits, because they proceed from faith in Christ, even though, for the sin which still remains in us, our works are still impure and merit nothing…. Our bountiful God imitates the way in which earthly fathers deal with their children in this world. They bestow gifts upon their children as rewards of their well-doing, thereby urging them to greater virtues. The true and proper cause of this reward which the father gives to his child is not the obedience of the son, but the mere good-will and favour of the father.
Like parents who have given their children the paper and crayons that the children then scribble on and proudly offer back to the parents as a gift, so God has given us everything we need to produce good works. Then he receives from us what he has already empowered in us and is truly pleased with us for his Son Jesus’ sake.
Bullinger understands the temptation to love God for what he gives us instead of who he is in himself.
Although God, after the manner of men, entices us with rewards, draws us on with gifts, and keeps us in good works with many incentives, yet the reward or incentive must not be the mark after which the worker ought to look, respecting man’s own glory and service rather than the love and honour he owes to God. God will be worshipped for love’s sake only, and he will be loved of mere good-will, and not for the hope of any reward. Our works, which some call merits, are nothing else but the mere gifts of God.
The Westminster Confession of Faith (again, a century later) points out that good works actually strengthen our assurance. Do we want to feel God’s love, do we ache to sense the abiding in Christ Jesus has called us to? We should look at whether or not we’re obeying Christ. Those who obey do so because they’re abiding. Those who abide also obey. If we love Jesus we will obey his commands. This emphasis has been lost in Reformed-ish Evangelicalism in the last generation. Do we want to know if the Spirit is at work in us? Look to the fruit he produces in us.
But what’s the goal in all this? Why does God produce good works in us? For his glory. It’s all for his glory.
Good works are made by those who are regenerate, to the glory of God, the ornament of our lives, and the profit of our neighbour. For the Lord in the gospel prescribes this end for good works, when he says, ‘Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father in heaven.’
A few reflections in closing…
1. God is truly worthy of worship. He has accomplished salvation for his children in a way that brings all the glory and honor and credit to himself. We worship God for God’s sake, not to make ourselves feel better about ourselves. Bullinger reminds us to love God for God, not just for his gifts.
2. God is truly pleased with you, believing brothers and sisters. He purchased your salvation because of his delight in you. He loves the good works you produce for him, because his Spirit is at work in you to produce these good works. That is why he has redeemed you, because he loves you. Delight in him. Rest in his love. Fight the temptation to view God as distant and unloving. Yes, you are a sinner, but he knows that far better than you do, and he still loved you enough to free you from your sin and empower you to live for him.
3. God is worthy of obedience, and he has planned salvation in such a way that obedience to God contributes to the comfort in our souls. Perhaps part of the reason so many of us struggle in our assurance is we’ve never been taught 1) that God is pleased with those whom his Son has redeemed, and 2) our living according to God’s law, as slaves of Christ, actually helps us feel the effect of salvation in our souls.
4. God uses our good works to bring glory to himself. Do our lives proclaim the riches of his glorious grace? Are our lives testimonies to the freedom Christ has produced in us, or do we resent Christ’s law and long for the dominion of sin?
May our good works – works produced by the power of the Spirit in us and because of Christ’s justifying work for us on the cross – shine a witness in a dark and enslaved world and bring glory to our Triune King and God.
Next, on sin, original sin, and judgment
