Religious Liberty by Law

A few days since the writer was very much interested in reading the story of the experience of an agent of the Bible Society in South America. It told of narrow escapes from Roman Catholic mobs, and of the power of the preaching of the pure Gospel, to remove prejudice. In the last paragraph of the article there occurred this statement: “No less a personage than the public school teacher came to warn me that, not bonds and imprisonment (we have religious liberty by law), but death at the hands of a mob awaited me if I did not desist from entering Orobe Grande.” 

This started a train of thought. What is religious liberty? and is it something which can be secured to people by law? Is its existence doubtful if it be not upheld by law? and can oppressive laws deprive people of it? The answers to the last three questions depend upon the answer to the first. According to the popular idea of religious liberty, the last three questions must be answered in the affirmative; but there is at least a strong probability that the popular idea of the matter is wrong. How can we find out the true definition? 

A question concerning religious liberty is one that pertains to religion; and where should we go for information concerning religion, except to the Bible? There we learn that, “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world” (James 1:27). 

How can one keep himself “unspotted from the world”? – Again we read the answer, in the statement that the Lord Jesus Christ “gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father” (Galatians 1:4). Therefore true religion is a religion of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

There are very many kinds of religion in the world, but only one true religion. That is not a form, but a life. It consists not in a creed and ceremonies, but in a living faith in Christ. The word religion is not synonymous with Christianity, but true religion is. It promises what no other religion does, and fulfils its promises. It alone gives salvation. Besides the name of Jesus, “There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” There is not salvation in any other (Acts 4:12). And this salvation is not merely something, promised for the future, but is a present reality. It is deliverance “from this present evil world” (Galatians 1:4), and that means deliverance from the evil of this present world. (See John 17:15.) 

The word deliverance means freedom. To deliver is to free. Therefore we find that the religion of Jesus Christ is a religion of freedom. Read the words of Christ, and the opening of His earthly ministry. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised” (Luke 4:18). 

Read again what He said to the Jews who followed Him: “If ye continue in My word, then are ye My disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31, 32). Then when the Jews demurred, saying that they were never in bondage, He continued, “Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin” (verse 34). And so the apostle Peter, speaking of false prophets that were to arise, teaching false light, said: “While they promised them [that is, their followers] liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption; for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is He brought in bondage” (2 Peter 2:19). 

We have just read the Scripture which says that the Spirit of the Lord anointed Jesus to preach deliverance to the captives, and to set at liberty them that are bound. Now read in 2 Corinthians 3:17: “Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” That means, as well, that where the Spirit of the Lord is not, there is not liberty. If it were otherwise, there would be no point in Christ’s work. He came to grant liberty, for the reason that liberty could be obtained from no other source. 

We have therefore the answer to our first question. Religious liberty is the possession of the Spirit of the Lord. The others are easily answered. Can religious liberty be secured by law? – Not unless the Holy Spirit can be secured by law. What saith the Scripture? – “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). The Spirit of God is subject to no men, or the will of the men. God is not a subject; He is the King of kings; and therefore His Spirit cannot be controlled by any human power. The Spirit can no more be affected by human law than the north wind can by legal enactment be made to blow from the south. Therefore since religious liberty is obtained only through the Spirit, it is evident that religious liberty is something with which human laws have no more to do than with the blowing of the wind or the shining of the sun. 

That which is ordinarily called religious liberty is not religious liberty in any sense of the term. Legal permission to worship in public without molestation, is of precisely the same nature as liberty to open a shop, or to carry on any business without interference. But liberty to think or to believe, is something with which laws can have nothing to do. The slave is as free to think as is his master. Prison bars cannot stop a man from thinking what he pleases, nor can they take away man’s freedom to believe. Nay, more, they cannot take away a free man’s freedom to speak what he will. The apostles spoke in spite of all the laws against them; and their words were with power because of the very liberty which they enjoyed through Christ, which could not be checked by bonds and imprisonment. 

The man who depends upon civil law for liberty to believe, is not a free man, even though the law be the most liberal ever known. For the fact that he derives his freedom from the law, shows that if the law were adverse, he would at once lose his liberty; and that shows that his is not the liberty of Christ, for that comes from heaven. 

It is evident therefore, that they who think to advance the cause of religious liberty by political action, are really working against it. The very existence of laws concerning religion is a badge of slavery. When men wish a law to “protect” them in the performance of religious duties, or what they conceive to be religious duties, they thereby show that they are slaves to fear. They want a law to help them to do what they have not the power or the courage to do without the support of “public sentiment.” “God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7). 

“The word of God is not bound” (2 Timothy 2:9), and therefore whosoever has it abiding in him has liberty. Let us “stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free (Galatians 5:1), and not dishonour Him by intimating that He or His cause depends to any degree whatever on human laws. 

Present Truth UK, November 23, 1893, 531, 532.