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Welcome to Faith of Our Fathers. Today we feature John Stott. Whether in the west or in the Third World, a hallmark of Stott's ministry has been expository preaching that addresses not only the hearts but also the minds of contemporary men and women. When Stott speaks, he has a voice that is friendly, courteous and natural. It is humble and self critical, but also confident, joyful and optimistic. Stott's mission is to pierce through all the incrustation and share direct contact with Jesus. Stott says that the central message of the Gospel is not the teachings of Jesus, but Jesus himself, the human divine figure. He is always bringing people back to the concrete reality of Jesus life and sacrifice. Today, John Stott presents a talk on Christian Freedom.
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This is the second of a series of talks on the subject of Christian freedom. Perhaps I could spend a few moments recapitulating with regard to the first address. I began by emphasizing that Christian freedom is fundamentally positive and not negative as a concept. That is to say, it has to be defined in terms of what we are free for, not in terms of what we are free from. True freedom is freedom to be one's true self. God alone, the Creator, enjoys perfect freedom because he alone is invariably Himself. He never denies himself. God's creatures are free only when they fulfill their Creator's purpose for them. Thus we saw a fish is free when it's in its element, water. To be confined in water for a fish is not prison but liberty. We humans are free when we're in our element, which is love, love for God, love for our neighbor. Self centeredness for a human being is a prison to love God and others. Forgetting oneself is to enjoy liberty. So Christian freedom is the liberty of the children of God, the freedom of being his child, living in his family, under his fatherhood. I went on to suggest that this Christian freedom, freedom for God as His children, presupposes freedom from all those tyrannies which prevent us from from being what God made us and meant us to be. We began last time with freedom from the condemnation of God. True, this is not a tyranny because his condemnation is a just judgment and not an unjust one. Nevertheless, it is a bondage. As Paul argues in Galatians, it's impossible to be a child of God if I'm still under the judgment of God. I am not free to be his child until I've been set free from sin and guilt. That's where we began. There's no freedom without forgiveness. Forgiveness of sin must precede our adoption into the family of God as the children of God. Now I come secondly to the next tyranny from which we must be delivered before we are free to live as the children of God. And this has to do with our relationship to men, not our relationship to God. And I bring you as a text, the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians, chapter 9 and verse 19. It's a very remarkable statement. First Corinthians 9 and verse 19. He writes here, though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all that I might win the more. Here Paul describes his relationships to other people in terms of both freedom and bondage. In one sense, he writes, he is free from all men. In another sense, he has voluntarily made himself their slave. He is free from men because he knows that his final responsibility is not to them, but to God. He's a slave of all men because he has been called to serve them and voluntarily desires to do so. The commonest form which the second tyranny takes is bondage to the opinions of men. If I'm continually preoccupied with what other people are thinking of me and saying about me, I cannot be free to live as God's child seeking to please him. I'm free to please God only when I'm free from the bondage of trying to please men. And this applies to freedom both of thought and of deed. What is true intellectual freedom? Surely its deliverance from a slavish conformity to the opinions of men so that I am free to believe what God has revealed to be true. And what is true moral freedom? Surely its deliverance from a slavish conformity to the standards of men so that I may be free to do what God has revealed to be good and right. In a word, Christian freedom is freedom from human fashion, whether in belief or behavior, and for divine revelation. More simply, it is freedom from men for God. And I'm going to spend the rest of my time today considering with you two examples of this principle. And the first is Jesus Christ. I've already suggested that if any human being has ever been free, Jesus Christ was that person. He enjoyed and exhibited the true freedom of the Son of God, freedom for His Father to be what His Father wanted him to be. He said of himself, I always do what is pleasing to him. That was his freedom. And because Jesus, during the days of his flesh was so utterly free for God, he was completely free from men, especially from the traditions of men and from the conventions of men. Let's look at those two things. A His freedom from tradition. This was expressed in the six antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount recorded at the end of Matthew chapter 5, in which Jesus said, you have heard that it was said by the men of old. But I say unto you something different here. Jesus was not contradicting the law of Moses, which he believed to be the law of God. He was contradicting the traditions of the elders, which he knew to be the traditions of men. He also told the Pharisees, you will make void the word of God by your tradition. You see, for centuries the Jewish leaders had been enmeshed in the trammels of their own traditions. Their traditions were, in the words of Jesus, Matthew 23, verse 2. They were heavy burdens, hard to bear. As a result, the Pharisees and the other Jewish leaders were simply not free. They were burdened with their own traditions. But Jesus Christ, with tremendous audacity, swept them all away. Jesus refused to be bound by any human traditions. He was determined to be free for God's word, for the revelation of God that was given in Scripture. And in order to be free for God's word, he freed himself from the opinions of men. This is clear, for example, in the Sabbath controversies. He never broke the law of God about the Sabbath. What he broke was the traditions of men with which they had surrounded the Mosaic laws about the Sabbath. So much for his freedom from tradition be his freedom from convention. It's well known how remarkably unconventional the behavior of Jesus was. Jesus was free to do what none of his contemporaries dared to do. He was free to talk to women in public, which simply wasn't done. You know, in those days he was free to mix with swindlers, with lepers, with prostitutes, that is to say, with the dropouts of human society. And he positively scandalized religious people for doing it. People were quick to find fault with him and to call him all manner of rude names. But Jesus cared not for the opinions of men. He was not in bondage at all. And as for those men who were themselves in bondage to racial and social discrimination, as the Pharisees were, he cared nothing for them and for their opinions. He was free for God, a God who loved all men without discrimination. This then, was the freedom of Jesus. Some modern theologians teach a doctrine of kenosis, that is, of his self emptying when he became man. A doctrine which makes Jesus out to have been a prisoner of his own age. Some of these liberal and radical theologians say that Jesus thought what he thought and he did what he did because these were the things that people thought and did. In his day, he had the mentality of a first century Jew, and he was impossible imprisoned in the mentality of a first century Jew. That's what some teach, but you look at the documents and nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus Christ was gloriously free from his own age. He was free in both thought and deed. He was free from the traditions of the past and he was free from the conventions of the present. Now this freedom of the Son of God is part of the glorious freedom of all the children of God. It's not freedom to think and do as we please because we are under God's word as children, under our heavenly Father's authority. But in accepting this slavery to God alone, we become free from men. We're free from the pressures of social conformism, free from a cringing bondage to fashion. Last time I quoted from Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury's little book Faith, Freedom and the Future series of addresses he gave in Cambridge University in Lent 1970. And in the Speaking about the Christians intellectual freedom, he said that of course the Christian creed involves what he terms a certain yoke of specific belief. But it was also, he says, a means of intellectual liberty. And he went on like this. It frees you into the large room of the family of Christ's followers across the ages. There is a timelessness about such a faith. It is not 1st century or 16th century or 20th century. It can free you from one of the most horrible of tyrannies, the dominance of the contemporary. That I think is a great statement. So much then for my example of Jesus Christ himself. The second example I bring to you is that of the apostle Paul. Like his master, Paul endured great physical and mental suffering. He was constantly criticized during his apostolate. Men even said of him, as they said of Jesus before him, that he was mad. Paul knew that he was despised and rejected by men, just as Jesus Christ had been before him. He was also fleeing, flogged, spat upon, unjustly arrested, imprisoned, tried, condemned and executed, just like his master. Nevertheless, Paul also enjoyed freedom from the opinions of men. Am I not free? He cried out in 1 Corinthians 9, verse 1. Let's be clear that Paul's freedom from the men was derived from the lordship of Christ. Repeatedly he called Jesus Lord and himself the slave of Jesus. Jesus Christ was his Redeemer, his master, his judge. He knew that one day he would have to stand before the judgment seat of Christ and give an account of himself, his life and his ministry. And this sense of responsibility to Christ liberated Paul from Currying favor with men. And this freedom from men and from the opinions of men was also both intellectual and moral, as in the case of Jesus. Take his intellectual freedom. In Galatians, chapter one, we find Paul defending his gospel. He got it direct from Christ, he said, who revealed it to him. And there was no other gospel. So if anyone should preach another gospel contrary to that which he had preached, let him be accursed, said Paul. He then repeated his almost savage anathema, and he went on with these words, am I now seeking the favor of men or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still pleasing men, I would not be the slave of Christ. Now, that's it exactly. The apostle Paul was responsible for what he believed and what he taught to Jesus Christ alone. Men might reject his message, they might ridicule it, they might beg him to adapt it to their own opinions. But Paul simply could not manipulate the word of God in order to suit the convenience of his hearers. Nor can any Christian communicator. This was well expressed some years ago by an American Episcopal bishop, Bishop Phillips Brooks, in his famous book, Lectures on Preaching, in which he read, courage is the indispensable requisite of any true ministry. If you are afraid of men and a slave to their opinion, go and do something else. Go and make shoes to fit them. Go even and paint pictures which you know are bad, but which suit their bad taste. But do not keep on all your life preaching sermons which shall say not what God sent you to declare, but what they hire you to say. Be courageous. Be independent. He went on, I would frankly say that one of the chief occupational diseases of the Christian ministry today is a malady called men pleasing. It is an infectious disease. It's catching and it's very dangerous. It can completely ruin a man's ministry, and it often has done. For once a man is gripped by this fever, he is no longer a free man. He has sold himself into slavery, the slavery of public opinion. So much for Paul's intellectual freedom. Now be his moral freedom. The early church, I think you will remember, was divided on a number of secondary ethical, ceremonial issues. For example, where Christians at liberty to equal meat that had previously been offered in sacrifice to idols, or was it a form of idolatry to do so? Should they abstain? Indeed, some asked, should they eat meat at all? Ought they not rather to be vegetarians? And others were asking whether they should observe special days and seasons or esteem all of them alike? These were secondary ethical and ceremonial issues that were troubling the early church just yesterday. People are asking whether they should drink and dance and smoke and all the rest. Well, what directions does Paul give? I need to ask you to notice that he does not actually pronounce on any of these matters. He concedes that they all belong to the area of question, marked things. And then he adds letters. Every man be convinced in his own mind. Oh, he gives him certain principles, certain biblical principles, but urges that everybody's got to make up his own mind and reach his own conviction. And then let him not despise Christians who disagree with him and reach a different conclusion. He goes on, who are you? This is in Romans 14 who are you? To pass judgment on the servant of an it is before his own master that he stands or falls. So Paul pleads for the freedom, the moral freedom of Christian people to make up their minds responsibly and not criticize each other. Mind you, Christian free men in certain circumstances limit their own liberty voluntarily. He said says in another place, take care lest this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to the weak. In other words, don't let your liberty of conscience wound another Christian's conscience. Again he says, although I am free from all men because I'm responsible to Christ, I've made myself a slave of all in order that I may win them all. The principle seems to be quite clear that our love may limit our liberty either because we don't wish to offend the conscience of other people or because we wish to serve them. But although our love may limit our liberty, we are still free from bondage to their opinions because Jesus Christ is our Lord. Let me then recapit what we've tried to learn today and conclude I have suggested that freedom from the opinions of men is an essential feature of the glorious liberty of the children of God. The so called men pleaser is in real bondage. He can never open his lips, he can never move his little finger without being afraid of what somebody else will think or or say or do. He is in prison and his imprisonment is arbitrary because the fashions of the world and the opinions of men keep changing. Very different, however, is somebody perhaps I might term a God pleaser whose ambition is not to please men, but to please God. His Heavenly Father. The God Pleaser is free. He cares only what God thinks of him. He seeks to live for God and seeking to do so, he knows where he is. There's nothing arbitrary about the will of God. God is consistently the same. His standards do not change. So the God Pleaser is free where the man pleaser is in bondage. For the God pleaser is free from the whims of humans and fashion. Free to be what God wants him to be. In conclusion, I have to say that we must choose. No man can serve two masters. In order to serve and to please other people. It is obviously impossible also at the same time to please God. We've got to choose between these two. Perhaps I could point this up a little bit more clearly by saying that if I'm seeking to serve and please others, what I'm ultimately seeking to do is to serve and please myself. Because to curry favor with other people is ultimately a bondage to my own reputation. So in the end, the choice is between serving God and serving myself. To live for myself, for my own glory and my own reputation is the way of bondage. Bondage to the opinions of men. But to die to myself and to die to the praise of men and to live only for God is the way of freedom. It's freedom from the tyranny of fashion. It's the freedom of the church. Children of God.
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You've been listening to John Stott. Listen to Faith of Our Fathers each Saturday and Sunday to hear more great 20th century preachers.