The Word, explained according to the letter, says that a person strives and toils on a human level to keep what he considers to be law for his life. Being in bondage to the law is therefore the same as serving the law. The Scriptures give being in bondage to the law a different name; there we read about deeds of the law. Rom. 3:28. Being “in bondage to the law” is a popular, religious expression that has almost become a slogan or a derogatory term, often used in ignorance to ridicule something one doesn’t like when it pertains to Christianity. Ask one of the old Lutheran Christians what “in bondage to the law” means, and he will immediately think of an unconverted person who has been “awakened” and who toils as best he can to please God, yet without being converted. Toiling under the law never leads to salvation. These old Lutherans are correct in their understanding, for Paul says, “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law.” Therefore it is useless to struggle, for “they are being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth to be a propitiation by His blood through faith.” Vs. 24-25. We see that man is justified by faith alone, and not by works or by “laboring under the law,” as people also call it. But is this the same as what is called bondage in the “free assemblies”? No! There they call something else bondage. They say that a man who is justified by faith is in bondage to the law. He is saved through faith in the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; nevertheless, they still say that he is in bondage to the law. Is there an explanation for this in the Scriptures? I don’t think this doctrine can be defended. We are going to take a look in the epistle to the Galatians. We find that there were some people who were justified by faith but who were told, by teachers of the law, to get circumcised. In this connection Paul says, “You have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace.” They had had grace over their lives, but now they had fallen from grace because they had begun to believe in the way of the deeds of the law for justification instead of the way of faith. Paul warns them against going back and that they should rather stand fast and not be entangled again by a yoke of bondage. Gal. 5:1. “I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain.” Gal. 2:21. In other words, the Galatians had begun to reject the justification they had received by faith in Christ and had chosen the way of the law to obtain the same thing. Is this what they mean in the “free assemblies” when they speak about being in bondage to the law? Not at all! If you ask a “free” preacher what it means to be in bondage to the law, he will usually explain it in the following manner: “Well, there are some believers who strive and struggle and let their heads hang down.” Then he bends his back, lets his shoulders sag and his arms hang down and he makes a long face. This is the “free” preachers’ explanation of what it means to be in bondage to the law. Do those who are in bondage to the law in the “free assemblies” fit into what Paul says in Galatians 3:2?: “This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the preaching of faith?” Is it people who have received the Spirit by faith and who, having begun in the Spirit, are attempting to be made perfect by the flesh that are being designated as being in bondage to the law, in the “free assemblies”? Not at all! If that were the case, many of them would have to admit to being in bondage to the law themselves. However, where in the Bible shall we place the modern servants of the law? It is amazing that Paul did not discover them! He calls the Corinthians carnal and babes in Christ, but he does not say they are in bondage to the law. Do those who are justified by faith in Christ Jesus fit into Romans 7? No! Romans 7 speaks about the believers’ state on all levels, as long as they still have the least amount of self-life left. (And who is there who has been totally redeemed from his self-life?) As long as we live, we will always have to say, “Not my will, but Yours, be done!” The person who has been saved and has received a love for God’s law into his heart hates everything that is from his self-life and everything that may have its source in it. And if God should show him something in his life that is selfish, he can acknowledge it and say, “I didn’t know that this was wrong; now I see it. I did what I hate in the depths of my very being. I did what I hate, what I did not want to do, what I did not know was unjust. Thank You, God, that You have shown it to me. In Christ there is victory over these things, even redemption from it. Let me continually die to my ‘self’ as You expose my life.” Is this victory being in bondage to the law? No! Romans 7 is applicable to every believer as long as the least little shred of his self-life is left.* * * We are going to have a look at this riddle on the basis of a person’s normal experience and God’s Word. He has become for us justification and sanctification. 1 Cor. 1:30. In other words, we are being justified and sanctified by the gift, Jesus Christ, through faith. Seeing that it is a gift, it is unmerited grace and not a reward for works. In these days there are many people who have received Christ for justification, yet they have still not seen that just as they have received Him for justification, so they must also receive Him for sanctification. Therefore they can struggle in their own strength to be holy in spite of being justified by faith. They have forsaken their sin but have kept their strength, and in this strength they serve God as well as they can. This is certainly an extremely pitiful way of making progress. It is this state that is described by the popular expression “in bondage to the law.” This is very much like the struggle the “awakened ones” have in order to be justified by deeds of the law. When a person grows tired of the old nature’s struggle for holiness, he relinquishes his own strength, and he lays hold of Christ as his strength, or his sanctifier. The person says, “Formerly I struggled and slaved away, but now I have entered into a state of being liberated and have received the baptism of the Spirit.” The religious self-life would like to do what Christ has already done, both when it concerns justification and sanctification, or it struggles to earn the gift Christ, who has been given to us for these two things. However, the religious self-life, generally speaking, also struggles apart from these two things in order to do God’s will. It invents many things it wants to do for God; it thinks of many things and makes many plans. This activity of the self-life can follow a person on all levels of his Christian life:1. In the life of a person who has been “awakened.”2. In the life of a person who has been justified.3. In the life of someone who has been baptized in the Spirit.4. In the life of a person who is advancing on the way of the cross. You can find the religious manifestations of the self-life wherever you are. If there is something that is called bondage, it has to be the religious activity of the self-life wherever it is found. Paul calls it serving in the oldness of the letter in contrast to serving in the newness of spirit. Rom. 7:6. A person may have given up striving for justification and sanctification, no longer attempting to do that which Christ has done for us—he has it by faith; but in spite of it all, he can live a religious self-life to a greater or lesser degree. The religious self-life is tenacious; it can follow a person into the most refined religious forms and is able to produce all kinds of imitations of the works that God has prepared for us to walk in (Eph. 2:10) according to the newness of spirit. Jesus says: “I have finished the work which You have given Me to do.” John 17:4. Jesus did only those works which the Father had given Him to do. If we do ever so many works for God’s kingdom which God has not given us to do, then it is simply the religious self-life that is active. Preachers and others, who have been baptized in the Spirit can be chock-full of grandiose plans. They struggle with forming alliances, establishing churches, theater missions, and with all kinds of other things. Jesus finished the work that God had given Him to do. But if you investigate many a person’s life, their way is strewn with ruins of their self-life’s great religious plans. One after the other, God lets them fall into decay. Isn’t it simply bondage or human when believers are stuffed with food such as travel experiences, one’s own works, funny incidents, etc., in which are neither cross nor Spirit? Isn’t it the natural old man who is at work, slaving for God, when a person appears as a comedian on the podium so that people squeal with laughter at his jokes? Does anyone believe that God has prepared such works in Christ? If you are not in Christ with heart and mind, if God has not given the orders, then isn’t it all just bondage, despite the fact that you have been baptized in the Spirit? What cannot the religious self-life invent in order to slave under its self-imposed religion!? Some people can tear off brooches, shirt collars, take down curtains, even burn their furniture, and it can all be for the indulgence of the flesh, in spite of it having a reputation for wisdom and humility. Col. 2:16, ff. The self-life can even try to keep one of Jesus’ first commandments about denying yourself. However, it will end up in outward things. The question is not what I shall deny, but whom. Myself! My self-life! Do that, and then these outward things will correct themselves. The self-life will find a thousand ways of serving God if only it is permitted to live. In spite of having being baptized in the Spirit, a person can testify, pray, sing, and even use the gifts of the Spirit in his own spirit. This is the opposite of the newness of spirit. Therefore even this becomes bondage, for what a person does in his own spirit for God is nothing but bondage. We see that “bondage” is not just something under which people suffer who have not been set free or who have not received the baptism of the Spirit. There are also many people within the “free assemblies” who slave and struggle in their own spirit with the things that belong to the kingdom of God. The only way of getting rid of all bondage is by surrendering your life into death. You also have to die to the religious self-life. Therefore enter into the way of death, the way of the cross, on which you lose your life.Aksel Smith