In this video, Dr. J.V. Fesko describes the doctrine of Christian liberty and reminds us that God alone is the Lord of the conscience.
What’s the most overlooked doctrine among Christians today, and why is it overlooked? I think perhaps we could list a number of doctrines, but the one that comes to my mind is the doctrine of Christian liberty. Christian liberty is the teaching that in our justification, God declares us free from the curse of the law, and that He looks upon us as having completed and fulfilled all of the obligations of the law, which means that God alone is the Lord of the conscience and has left us free from the doctrines and commandments of men.
So often it’s the case that in the church, we are aware of the teachings of salvation and the blessings of the gospel. But in our efforts—and we can say that they are sincere efforts, but in our efforts to try to please God, we create other rules and other things that we think that will somehow commend us to God or perhaps other rules that other Christians should follow in the efforts to try to live godly and holy lives.
As sincere as those efforts might be, any time that we try to add to the law of God or set things beside the law of God in the Scriptures, we end up, in a sense, questioning the sovereignty of God in terms of His lordship, as well as His right being the sole person in our lives, to set those moral standards for us. And so, the doctrine of Christian liberty reminds us that God alone is the lord of the conscience, which means that all we need to do is seek His guidance in the law and that we’re free from any type of other rule that other Christians might try to create for us.
And so however well-intended they may be, we should never try to add to God’s law or to take away from it, but recognize that God is the sole lawgiver and that He is the one that sets the standards for the Christian life.