"But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed" (James 1:25).

This law is the law of liberty, because the same Word which reveals what God is and what He wills has made us partakers by grace of the divine nature; so that not to walk according to that Word would be not to walk according to our own new nature. Now to walk according to our new nature_the nature of God_and to be guided by His Word, is true liberty.

The law given on Sinai was the expression in man, written not on the heart but outside man, of what man’s conduct and heart ought to be according to the will of God. It represses and condemns all the motions of the natural man, and cannot allow him to have a will, for he ought to do the will of God. But the natural man does have a will, and therefore the law is bondage to him, a law of condemnation and death.

Now, God has begotten us by the Word of truth_has given us a new nature. This new nature, as thus born of God, possesses tastes and desires according to that Word. The Word in its perfection develops this nature, forms it, enlightens it, and the nature itself has its liberty in following the Word. Thus it was with Christ; if His liberty could have been taken away (which spiritually was impossible), it would have been by preventing Him from doing the will of God the Father.

It is the same with the new man in us (which is Christ as life in us) which is created in us according to God in righteousness and true holiness. The liberty of the new man is liberty to do the will of God, to imitate God in character, as being His dear child, according as that character was presented in Christ. The law of liberty is this character as it is revealed in the Word, in which the new nature finds its joy and satisfaction; even as it drew its existence from the Word which reveals Him, and from the God who is therein revealed.

(From Synopsis of the Books of the Bible.)

FRAGMENT The "law of liberty" (James 1:25) has been often and very aptly likened to a loving parent who tells his child that he must go here or there_that is, the very places which he knows perfectly the child would be most gratified to visit. It is like telling the child, "You must go and do such and such a thing," all the while knowing that you can confer no greater favor on the child. It has not at all the character of resisting the will of the child, but rather the directing of his affections in the will of the object dearest to him. The child is regarded and led according to the love of the parent, who knows what the desire of the child is_a desire that has been produced by a new nature implanted by God Himself in the child.

God has given His children a life that loves His ways and Word, that hates and revolts from evil, and is pained most of all by falling through unwatchfulness under sin. The law of liberty therefore consists not so much in a restraint on gratifying the old man as in guiding and guarding the new. The heart’s delight is in what is good and holy and true, and the Word of our God on the one hand exercises us in cleaving to that which is the joy of the Christian’s heart, and strengthens us in our detestation of all that we know to be offensive to the Lord.