FREE, YET BOUND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25298, 7 August 1943, Page 6

FREE, YET BOUND

Written for the Otago Daily Times By the Rev. Gardner Miller “The truth shall make you free.” How often these words have tripped from our tongues! I am not sure that we know quite what they mean. Most of us have experienced the freedom that truth brings, not o.nly in spiritual matters but also iit our daily contacts with others, but-just why it is so is not at all clear. It is astonishing how many of the sayings of Jesus, like tins one, have become so common (in the sense .of being in constant use) that we never stop to think about how penetrating they are. Dorothy Sayers, in her latest book, “The Man Born to the King” (about whom I expect to tell you something in a later article) remarks that if Jesus' were known only by His sayings He would be acknowledged as the world’s greatest teacher and wit. And that is true. I lift my pen for a moment and think of one saying after another. For instance, “ I am the Way, the 'Truth, and the-Life"; “I am the Light of the World”; “Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden“ The words that I speak unto you,-they are spirit and they are life Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away”; -;and I am overwhelmed by the richness. of them, their comfort, their power, and their eternal significance It is but a bare statement of fact that “ never man spake like this man. I have wondered sometimes if it would not be a good thing to lay a ban on the reading of the New Testament for, say, a month, <in the hope that the sayings of Jesus would hot only be recalled but seriously pondered. The New Testament, like prayer, suffers considerably from unthinking’ familiarity.' ■/ - . V; • Imprisoned ; When Jesus made this tremendous statement about freedom coming through truth (John viii, 32) He made no bones about implying that those who then listened to Him, and all those since who live within boundaries of their own making, are really in prison. And. a religious prison is the most ghostly of' all. I ao, riot mean being in prison for religion, but being in a home-made prison because of certain religious beliefs. You can be put in an actual prison for truth, but even then you are not imprisoned for the truth you stand for; the truth that has sent you to prison has set your mind free. Think of some of the great historical characters who have adorned prison cells. There are Paul, and John Bunyan, John Penry, and many others whose names add lustre to our Christian story—men and women who,- because 'the truth had set them free, turned their prison cells into sounding boards that sent, and still send, a message to the. uttermost parts of the earth. And I do not hesitate .to number among them ‘some of those brave women .who. suffered the indignities of prison because they believed that women should have the vote. They tried to free women, from, political bondage, 1 and now that the vote is granted (and not used as these brave women hoped it would be) their names should be for ever remembered. Trdth does set you free from the prison of servitude, tradition, apd selfishness. See how Jesus set men and women free by the truth He preached! The man who lived in the tombs was sent home to live in society because Jesus took him out of the prison of his fixed ideas Personality, in the view_of Jesus, must never be in chains. The man lying helpless on his bed and brought to the notice of Jesus by his friends was put on his feet and sent back to live a healthy life when Jesus broke through his prison of unhealthy living—that is sm. If there was one thing in all the world that aroused the power of Jesus it was to see men and women imprisoned by ill-health, disease, ignorance, hidebound tradition, and plain sin. Let the truth of Jesus—or,, as we are so fond of saying, the Gospel truthenter into a tussle with any imprisoned' man or woman and the result is ipevitable—freedom, oh one condition* and that condition is that the prisoner wants to be free. And then follows a glorious paradox, and a paradox is just something that is self-contradictory. The paradox is that no sooner does the truth set you free than immediately you are again ' . ' i Bound. Perhaps you will grasp easier what I mean if I remind you how Paul exults in his freedom from the law and then says he is the servant (slave) of the Lord Jesus Christ. When truth makes you free it breaks through and destroys your self-made prison house and brings you into a larger world. Your affections are set on higher things and your horizon is widened. The paradox lies in this, that to be freed from the bondage of self is to become the slave of the highest. Free, yet bound! It is not so much that you exchange one prison- for another as it is that you have been taken out of darkness and brought into the light, and now to walk in the light demands that you obey the rules of the light. To be free from sin is to be a captive of Christ, and I know of no greater freedom. “ Make me a captive, .Lord, and then I shall be free.” And wh,at ife this truth, some of you are saying, that makes us free? The truth is none other than Christ Himself. Take Him away and we'have left only a handful of sayings that tantalise us with their beauty and promise. But He Himself is the proof, the actuality of His sayings, and when we come to terms with Him—the terms of unconditional surrender on- our part—lo, all He says comes true and we are loosed from our fears and are bound to Him by ties that nought can sever.