art accurst and a transgressor of the law.' A man cannot justifiably set at nought a positive commandment or institution unless he has sight of some higher principle which determines his course of action. Tlie freedom an enlightened man asks is freedom to do what he sees he ought to do, and to do what he may do without injury to others.
For St. Paul very emphatically insists on the necessity of qualifying the exercise of one's own libertj' by regard for the claims of others. It must not involve harm to others or an infringe- ment of their libertj'. Self-limitation for the sake of others is, indeed, an example of the truest exercise of freedom.
3. As a description of the Christian life and experience. — Social conditions being what they were in the 1st cent., it was most natural that the life resulting from faith in Christ, as that is pre- sented in the NT, should be described in the ajjos- tolic writings by a cycle of metaphors centring in the word 'redemption' (Deissmann, op.cit.,\). 149). This is specially characteristic of St. Paul.
The Christian life is represented as (a) freedom from the bondage of law. — St. Paul's treatment of this topic (found mainly in the Epistles to Romans and Galatians) is not easy to follow and is doubt- less coloured by his own vivid personal experience. We do not find quite the same line taken in other early apostolic writings that have been preserved to us. By general consent, it is true, it came to be held that Jewish and Gentile Chi-istians alike were free from obligation to observe the Jewish Law in its peculiar institutions and ceremonial rules. The old sacrificial system was abolished ' that the new law of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is without the yoke of necessity, might have a human oblation' {i.e. the dedication of the man himself) (Epistle of Barnabas, ii. ; so also Epistle to the Hebrews, and Epistle to Diognetus, iv. [regarding Sabbath, circumcision, ' kosher ' foods, and the like]). But St. Paul has far more than this in view. He is thinking of all law as the expression of God's will for man's life and the severe revealer of man's sin as he departs from it : law that has only condemnation for the sinner (see the autobiographical Ro 7).
That the Apostle countenances an antinomian freedom he himself indignantly denies. Nor did he lack the true Jew's veneration for the Torah. With him law assumes the form of ' an imperious principle opposed to grace and liberty only when it is viewed as the condition of jxistification, the means of attaining to righteousness before God through the merit of good works.' As the expres- sion of God's will and the guide of human obedience it is 'holy, just, and good' (Ro 7'-; see E. H. Gilford, Romans [in Speaker's Commentary, 1881, p. 48]). Torah comes to its own in the new life which springs from Christian faith and the unio mystica between the Christian and his Lord. And if other early Christian Avriters present this life as lived under law (see Epistle of James, especially the happy expression, 'law of liberty,' ch 1^; also 1 Jn 3--*^-), St. Paul Iike^^•ise lays stress on 'the law of Christ ' (Gal 6'^) and gives us the far-reach- ing aphorism: 'Love is the fulfilment of law' (Ro 1310).
(6) Freedom from the bondage of sin. — Sin is here personified as a tj'rannical master (see espe- cially the line of treatment in Ro 6 ; cf. Jn 8^). An interesting parallel is furnished in the Dis- cotirses of Epictetus (iv. i.), where it is laid down that ' no wicked man is free.'
(c) Freedom from the bondage of idolatry. — See Gal 4*'- — a point of material importance to the Gentile world in apostolic days.
(d) Freedom from the bondage of corruption
698
LIBYA
LIFE AND DEATH
(Ro 8-'). — This rather belongs to the hope for the world at large wliich contemplates the social state wherein the new life is perfectly realized. ' The glory of the children of God ' is a liberty which all creation sighs to share.
It remains briefly to point out that not only does the term ' redemption ' (applied to the work of Christ in opening to men tlus new experience of life) derive from the social state in the midst of which Christianity was born, but ' adoption ' as used by St. Paul (Ro S'^- ^3, Gal 4^) similarly gains special significance as denoting entrance upon the life of liberty. Adoption, in a general way, was no uncommon phenomenon in the old Avorld (see vlodeffla in Deissmann, Bible Studies, Eng. tr., 1901, p. 239), but it was also one recognized way of giving freedom to a slave.
There is no inconsistency but only striking paradox when this experience which is described as freedom is also described as a servitude to God (cf^ 1 P 2'6, Oeov 8ov\oi, and Ro 6^^ dovXtadevres t^J 6e(f). Here, too, it is of interest to recall that it was a Stoic doctrine of liberty that true freedom consists in obeying God, or, as Philo of Alexandria (see Tract, Quod sit liber quisquis virtuti studet) puts it, the following of God. Again, as the Christian is commonly described in the NT as a SovXos Xpia-Tov, the singular use of direXevdepos (=libertiis, freedman) in 1 Co 7-'-^ noticeably in- troduces the notion of enfranchisement to describe the gaining of freedom in Christ. There may be here the underlying thought that the 'freedmen ' of Christ stand related to Him somewhat as the libcrti stood to their patron, to whom they were bound to render, in the language of Roman Law, obsequiiim et offtcium.