The fact that we are given perfect liberty in Christ does not mean that we should spend our lives in gratifying our own fleshly desires. Just the opposite is the case. Believers have been delivered from the bondage ofΒ childhoodΒ and given the liberty of full-grownΒ sonsΒ in Christ (Gal. 3:24; 4:1-7), and this advance from infancy to maturity in itself implies the acquisition of a sense ofΒ responsibility.
The doctrine of our liberty in Christ does not support, it rather refutes, the false theory that those who are under grace may do anything they please. Paul was βslanderously reportedβ in this connection (Rom. 3:8), but there were carnal believers then, as there are now, who actually did use their liberty as license to gratify their own desires. To turn from liberty to license in this way is fully as serious an error as to turn from liberty to law.
Many a believer, motivated only by his own fleshly desires and not at all by love for Christ or others, has indulged in pleasures of the flesh and of the world, justifying himself on the ground that he is under grace and has liberty in Christ. Taking others down with him in his spiritual declension he complains of any who would help him, that, βThey are trying to put me under the lawβ.
Such are actually guilty ofΒ departingΒ fromΒ grace, for βtheΒ graceΒ of Godβ¦hath appearedβ:
βTeaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world;
βLooking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;
βWho gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good worksβ (Titus 2:11-14). source
