Jesus Christ, Author Of Liberty?

What did Jesus Christ declare about Himself directly and through the prophets?

II Cor. 3:17 Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Christ declared himself to be the Author of liberty.

Gal.5:1 Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Again, Christ declared Himself to be the Author of liberty. It is argued, correctly, that this verse refers to both Spiritual liberty from the bondage of sin and corruption, and political freedom. In the wake of Spiritual liberty comes the revelation and power of truth, which is the mortal enemy of political tyranny. Irresistibly, when Spiritual truth (Christ) gains its foothold, political freedom results.

John 8:32 Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Christ is truth.

14:6 I am the truth… He declared Himself to be the truth.

CHRIST’S MISSION STATEMENT: (Luke 4:18)
[He] hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor;…to preach deliverance to the captives, and the recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are oppressed.

Jesus Christ and America’s political liberties, in particular our priceless personal freedoms, are inseparable. On July 4, 1821 John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the United States, summed up the conviction of the founders: “The highest glory of the American Revolution was this; it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity”.

French historian and statesman Alexis deTocqueville, after visiting America and searching for the source of her great prosperity, invincible strength, and personal freedoms wrote: “Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other”.

COULD AMERICA HAVE BEEN FOUNDED BY ANOTHER RELIGION?

Today it is widely taught that “All religions are basically the same,” that their prophets teach the same basic moral and legal codes. But, are they the same? Except for similar moral codes, can any “religion” be equated to Christianity?

If so, why haven’t other religions produced a declaration of independence or constitution which exalt and protect the individual, declaring that he is created in the image of God and thus has a God-given right to be politically free; made the tyrant tremble and established invincible military forces to protect those freedoms as did America’s Christian founding fathers?

What’s the difference? Why and how does Christianity liberate men from the bondage of sin, corruption and political tyranny while by historical and contemporary contrast other religions tend to subordinate the individual to enslaving systems of freedom-denying tyranny, or worse?

The difference lies in the person of Jesus Christ. Biblical Christianity is absolutely unique in the nature of its central personage and founder, Jesus Christ. There is none other like Him in all of history or even in all literature. Some writers, of course, presume to place Christ as merely one in a list of great religious leaders, but this is absurd. He stands in contrast to all others, not in line with them, not even at the head of the line. His uniqueness is illustrated in the following partial list of His attributes:

Anticipation of His coming. His coming was prophesied in fine detail as to lineage, birthplace, time, career, purpose, nature of death, resurrection, etc., hundreds of years prior to His actual appearance. There has never been any other religious leader – indeed, no other man – in all of history for which this was true.

The virgin Birth. Christ’s virgin birth stands entirely alone; nothing like it was ever imagined elsewhere, thence He was born in a fully natural human birth with no actual genetic connection to human parents.

His Divine Human Nature. For byhim were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him (Col 1:16).Not even power-crazed tyrants and fanatics who have claimed to be god imagined that they had created the heavens and the earth and dominions and principalities.

Sinless: Of no one else in history could the claim ever be made in seriousness that he lived a whole lifetime without one sin in thought or word or deed. But this very thing was claimed by Jesus’ closest friends, by his worst enemies, by the greatest of the apostles and by Jesus Himself. Peter said, He did no sin (l Peter 2:22), and JohnsaidIn Him is no sin (1 John 3:5). Judas said,
I have betrayed the innocent blood (Mat. 27:4), and Pilot said, I find in him no fault at all (John 18:38).
Unique Teachings. The Sermon On The Mount is without parallel. The beauty and power of the Upper Room discourse, the compelling majesty of the Sermon on the Mount of Olives, the power of His parables, and all His other teachings are separated by a great gulf from even the finest teachings of other men.
His Unique Death. He said, It is finished, and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost (John 19:30). Literally, He dismissed His Spirit. It is evidently quite a difficult task even to commit suicide, but certainly no one can simply decide to die and then, by his mere volition, proceed to die. But Jesus did! He said, No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself (John 10:18).
His Resurrection. Other religions of the world (including Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Animism, Shintoism, Taoism, etc.) were founded by men who were, unlike Christ, sinful men. These founders are all in their graves, defeated by man’s last enemy. Christ alone rose from the grave and defeated death.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights…”. Note that Jefferson used the term created, he did not say evolved (which would imply evolutionary dog-eat-dog survival of the fittest, Darwinian style); thus our freedoms are not granted by government, but by God. The purpose of our Christian-based government is to protect those rights and freedoms.

The supreme test of any article proposed to be adopted into the new Constitution, was biblical scrutiny, that is, whether the proposed article was rooted in the truth of the Bible.

In fact, the very essence of our U.S. Constitution’s system of checks and balances – legislative, executive, judicial- was derived from the Bible (Isaiah 33:22), of which the centerpiece, from Genesis through Revelation, is Jesus Christ.

Note: quote sources upon request; many from the book America – A Call To Greatness.