But says Paul (Gal. 5:1), “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (Rom 8:2). The Gospel is not ethical precept — it is enabling power: not an impossible ideal — but a redeeming grace. For “if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you”. To Paul the Gospel was freedom from the slavery to law, a deliverance from the social and moral standards and conventions to which we can all become slaves by mere conformity to the ambition, the self-seeking and the materialism of our world.
The Gospel is also redemption — freedom from debt, from inadequacy, from frustration, from failure. “Ye are bought with a price.” Our feelings of shame, inhibitions, complexes, envies, jealousies, obsessions, which spring from an inner sense of unwantedness, insufficiency or inferiority, can fade before the awareness of the love of God, to whom we are of value, who wants us and loves us in a deep and personal way, without comparison or competition. Before God each one stands alone, in the quiet, precious moments of communion with Him, when we feel the infinite comfort of what it means to have a Father in heaven.
Moreover, the Gospel is conversion — freedom from self and all its weaknesses and limitations. For “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). “We . . . beholding . . . the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Cor. 3:18). As we look at Jesus with open hearts, we may be changed little by little “to be conformed to the image of God’s Son.” This is the glorious liberty of the children of God, a losing of self in him. For says Paul, “For me to live is Christ”.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One