The Idol of Man's Personal Liberty

Today many say, “Don’t judge me!" So the guilty sinner cries. "It’s wrong to say it’s wrong,” they claim, because man's freedom is paramount, even to the denial of God's sovereign rule. To judge others in this day has become the most intolerable offense (Gen. 19:9). And men quote the Bible to defend their wickedness: “Judge not!” But when Jesus said, "Judge not lest ye be judged," He did mean we are to use His words to defend ourselves. Nor did He mean we are not to decry sin, not point out certain sins. No. The Bible does not say it’s wrong to say it’s wrong. The Bible says it’s wrong not to say it’s wrong (Acts 17:24-31; Romans 1:18-3:19; Titus 3:3; Eph. 2:1-3; 1 Cor. 6:9-11; Col. 3:5-9; Eph. 4:17-22; 2 Pet. 2:4-10; Jude 3-16).

Men today claim personal freedom. Liberty, they say, is the one inalienable, God-given right. It is the sacrosanct law that is above all laws. It is a God-given right and therefore, all sinful behavior is above all criticism.

The claim of liberty as an inalienable right is written in the United States Declaration of Independence. “Liberty”, according to that document, is a right that governments must protect. “Liberty”, they say, must not be restrained by human laws, but must be protected by them because God has given it as an inalienable right to men. Personal freedom, they claim, must not be violated. No matter what anyone says, say they, my freedom to do as I please must not be challenged, as long as my liberty does not take away another man’s freedom. So goes the theory. But in practice, wicked men do take away the freedom of others when it affords them more personal liberty. They do this whenever they try to silence the truth that exposes them as evil.

But, to say, as men claim today, that God gives men the right to do whatever they please, is to say no less than what those God condemned did in OT times: “Every man did what was right in his own eyes” (Gen. 18:20; Judges 17:6; Hosea 9:11). They rejected Christ as their Judge and they therefore never sought Him as their Savior.

This claim of personal, God-given liberty is nothing less than idolatry. It places man’s freedom on the throne. It produces lawlessness. God has given the duty to governments to punish evil doers and to protect people from harm inflicted by them, to keep the peace (1 Pet. 2:14). But when man’s laws remove God’s laws, then men are in league as hostile combatants against God, just as those who built Babel and its tower. But the child of God says, “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29)!

Are we to focus our attention and efforts on pointing out the sins of others? No. But we are to declare the Gospel to sinners. And how can we declare the Gospel without pointing out man’s great sin against God?! How can we declare the Gospel to the glory of God without pointing out what God by grace removed from His people at the price of the blood of His only begotten Son? How can we declare the Gospel if we do not declare how God exalted His Son because He gained the victory over sin’s reign unto death if we say nothing about sin (Rom. 5:21; Eph. 1:20-22)? How can we declare the Gospel if we do not declare how Jesus Christ was exalted to give a change of mind to those He saves, giving them a soul-cleansing sight of Christ and Him crucified, risen, reigning and interceding (Acts 5:31; Heb. 9:14)? If we can’t say what sin is, how can we talk about the faithful sayings of the Gospel, how Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief (1 Tim. 1:12-15; Rom. 3:19-20; 1 Cor. 15:1-4)?

We must point out what sin is, and that our sin comes from within us, out of our evil heart (Mark 7:21-23). We must point out that we are full of sin, and that our evident sins affirm this fact in agreement with God’s law. Our problem is that our sins are greatly evil and arise from our evil heart. Both our sins and our heart is against a holy God. We have offended God and are an offense to God (Titus 3:3)! Salvation is great because God in Christ has dealt with the great and many sins of His people in the suffering and death of our one and only great Savior (Ps. 25:11)!

If we deny that sin is sin, then we deny God’s right to be God; we deny His right to judge! If we deny that sin is sin, then we seek to remove God from His throne, because sin is transgression of God’s law, and is therefore against God (1 John 3:4; Ps. 51:4; Luke 15:18). If we deny that sin is sin, then we deny God’s justice under which, and in satisfaction to which, He crucified His Son! To do that is to accuse God of pouring out His wrath upon His Son for nothing! To deny that sin is sin and that we are sinners, is to deny that God is God. If we deny that our sin is sin, we hold ourselves to be righteous apart from Christ and deny our need of a Savior in opposition our own salvation! To claim liberty of God’s rule is to exclude ourselves from God’s salvation in Christ (Luke 15:18; 2 Tim. 2:25).

Neither the constitution of the United States, nor the current interpretation of that constitution defines sin against God. “Liberty” is not an inalienable, God-given right to sinners to do as they please. But our unavoidable personal accountability to the one holy and true God is. Sin, contrary to popular demand, is not violating sinful man’s personal liberty as the one law above all criticism. Claiming personal liberty as the one great protected right of man is opposition to God-given restraint and God's sovereign rule.

Men are presently opposing all prohibitions to publicly do and promote whatever they imagine to do and approve (John 3:20). Like the men of Sodom, they impose the thoughts of their corrupt minds and licentious lifestyles on others. Present laws give corrupt public school educators the right to indoctrinate young children to accept whatever men approve, even though what they approve is offensive to God. The highest courts of our government uphold this wickedness because they promote the lie that offending man is a great offense against God. Imagine that! Men exalt their right to liberty over God's right to be God!

But personal “liberty” is meant to underscore our unavoidable accountability to God. True liberty does not remove our accountability to God and replace it with accountability to man. True liberty is not serving sin. Only Christ by His grace can set us free from our sins and our sin (John 8:32). He sets the lawful captives free from sin, from satan, from death and from the justice and wrath of God by laying the axe of His sin-atoning death to the root: to our sins (Ps. 65:3; Isa. 49:24-25).

​May we be ever thankful for the love of God our heavenly Father that He faithfully afflicts us on the inside, to show us His glory in Christ our only Savior (Luke 2:30; Isa. 45:21; Acts 4:12). We must not resist God’s condemning law. It exposes our guilt. It reveals our corruptions. It tells us the truth about ourselves. We must repair to Christ for salvation from our sins and the judgment we deserve. We must be reconciled to God by His sin-atoning death (Ps. 119:67; Rom. 5:10; 2 Cor. 5:18-21; Luke 15:18; 18:13; Isa. 6:5; 2).

Rick Warta