With Liberty Comes Duty

    “Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend of liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man…The sum of all is, if we would truly enjoy this gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people.” (Samuel Adams, February 12, 1779)

The man in the White House today is neither wise nor virtuous.

However his being in the Oval Office has not come to pass merely by his usurpative actions of refusing to produce a long form birth certificate, albeit not a wise or virtuous action to take. The people who voted for this man, even though he had a mere 143 days as a US Senator, no real experience in leading anything, they are the ones who are to be held accountable. None more so than self-professing Christians who voted for Barack Obama!

Birth certificate issue aside, his support of partial-birth abortion alone disqualified him as president. Christians who voted for this ungodly man failed in their Christian duty, which is the watch guard of Christian liberty. Theologian Lester DeKoster wrote:

    “To live is to choose; to choose is to live. The exercise of choice, however, does not in itself make us free. Choice is only the shuttle that weaves the fabric of our lives into a shroud of death or a chrysalis of new life, depending on which ‘god’ defines the values, goals, and purposes that attract our choices. Freedom, or liberty (the terms are here synonymous), is not that we can choose but what we choose; freedom is not, then, a status but an achievement. Indeed the freedom of the Christian is a divine gift. It is a fatal delusion to confuse ability to choose with an illusory right to choose as we please—all choice is an obedience to some ‘god.’ Christian freedom resides in obedience to God in whose service is liberty. Christian liberty emerges out of duty. The sense of duty has its origins in God, who lays the demands of His law upon everyone through the witness of conscience.”

So with liberty comes duty? That’s not a concept being touted today! Duty alludes to a sense of responsibility; personal responsibility is not selling too well in America today. It is never the fault of the individual. This is antithetical to the Bible and it is why I always say that Christianity is counterculture. This is why we have so many “religions” and “philosophies” to escape personal responsibility. That will not do one any good the day he or she stands before God’s throne:

    “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.” (Romans 1:18-23)

Our liberty does not relieve us from personal responsibility; it demands of us that very thing! Our Christian liberty does free us from the penalty and power of sin:

    “He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.” (Colossians 1:13-14)

Our Christian liberty also frees us to duties to the Heavenly Father and our need for His forgiveness through Jesus Christ:

    “But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:21-24)

Our recognition of our sinful nature calls us to repentance:

    “But the Scripture has confined all under sin that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed. Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” (Galatians 3:22-24)

And what is our greatest duty to Christ? It is to love one another and to portray our love for Jesus by obeying His Commandments.

    “If you love Me, keep My commandments…He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him…If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father’s who sent Me.” (John 14:15, 21, 23-24)

    “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (John 15:12)

Dear Lord Jesus, how far we have fallen from our first love for you! How is it that a nation founded under the God of the Holy Bible with the Lord Jesus Christ as the role model of the perfect citizen, that we today reject the very Christianity that brings us both national liberty and eternal freedom? Have we soon forgotten, or worse yet never been taught, the words from the inaugural address of our 9th President William Henry Harrison—son of Benjamin Harrison a signer of the Declaration of Independence?

    “I deem the present occasion sufficiently important and solemn to justify me in expressing to my fellow citizens a profound reverence for the Christian religion, and a thorough conviction that sound morals, religious liberty, and a just sense of religious responsibility are essentially connected with all true and lasting happiness.”

Would it be too much to ask just one postmodern president to recognize the preeminence of Christianity in our nation’s history all the while recognizing that Christian liberty brings free will to choose or refuse to follow the Lord Jesus Christ as one’s Lord and Savior?!

We are losing our liberties everyday because Christian will not do their duty. We strategize and analyze instead of doing what another great president and son of a Founding Father, John Quincy Adams once said:

    “Duty is ours; results are God’s”

That is a very famous quote; I’ve used it many times as have others. But I would like to leave you with another not so familiar J.Q. Adams quote, which is so fitting just two days from Independence Day:

    “From the day of the Declaration…they (the American people) were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of The Gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledge as the rules of their conduct.” (John Quincy Adams, July 4, 1821)

In Christ
Dave
Ps. 37:4

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