Galatians 5:1 “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.”
Speaking about liberty, Noah Webster wrote the following:
“Almost all the civil liberty now enjoyed in the world owes its origin to the principles of the Christian religion. Men began to understand their natural rights, as soon as the reformation from popery began to dawn in the sixteenth century; and civil liberty has been gradually advancing and improving, as genuine Christianity has prevailed. By the principles of the Christian religion we are not to understand the decisions of ecclesiastical councils, for these are the opinions of mere men; nor are we to suppose that religion to be any particular church established by law, with numerous dignitaries, living in stately palaces, arrayed in gorgeous attire, and rioting in luxury and wealth, squeezed from the scanty earnings of the laboring poor; nor is it a religion which consists in a round of forms, and in pompous rites and ceremonies. No; the religion which has introduced civil liberty, is the religion of Christ and his apostles, which enjoins humility, piety, and benevolence; which acknowledges in every person a brother, or a sister, and a citizen with equal rights. This is genuine Christianity, and to this we owe our free constitutions of government”
As the founders were creating this nation, they recognized the importance of liberty. In fact, the reason they recognized liberty itself was because they had experienced liberty through Christ. They desired a form a government that would prevent the entanglement of bondage that comes from the strict hierarchy of monarchy and the strong hand of governmental power. They had seen such entanglement before, through the rigid structures of the church and through the rigid structures of the state. They never wanted to be entangled again.
We owe our free constitutions of government to the first-hand reaction of the founders to what they had experienced of liberty and bondage. They wanted all of the former and none of the latter. They created our government around the liberty of Christ, which enjoins humility, piety, and benevolence and that bestows equal rights to every citizen.
PLEASE PRAY THAT AMERICANS AND AMERICAN LEADERS WOULD CLING TO THE LIBERTY PROVIDED ONLY BY CHRIST. That liberty extends beyond the temporal to the eternal, and our founders acknowledged such liberty as the originating principle of our nation.
