§549By freeing some individuals from the earthly evils of hunger, injustice, illness and death,274 Jesus performed messianic signs. Nevertheless he did not come to abolish all evils here below,275 but to free men from the gravest slavery, sin, which thwarts them in their vocation as God's sons and causes all forms of human bondage.276

§588Jesus scandalized the Pharisees by eating with tax collectors and sinners as familiarly as with themselves.364 Against those among them "who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others", Jesus affirmed: "I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."365 He went further by proclaiming before the Pharisees that, since sin is universal, t…

§613Christ's death is both the Paschal sacrifice that accomplishes the definitive redemption of men, through "the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world",439 and the sacrifice of the New Covenant, which restores man to communion with God by reconciling him to God through the "blood of the covenant, which was poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins".440

Jesus Christ was not a mere man, begotten from Joseph in the ordinary course of nature, but was very God, begotten of the Father most high, and very man, born of the Virgin. 1. But again, those who assert that He was simply a mere man, begotten by Joseph, remaining in the bondage of the old disobedience, are in a state of death having been not as yet joined to the Word of God t…

I am the light of the world. Christ's declaration that he is the light of the world means that apart from him all is darkness. Those who follow him shall not walk in darkness. The truth shall make you free — Calvin shows that this freedom is from the bondage of sin, which is the worst slavery. If the Son makes you free, you are free indeed. Christ's claim "Before Abraham was, I…

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love. Christian freedom does not mean license to sin. It means freedom from the curse of the law, from the wrath of God, from sin, death, and the p…

Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death? A. That I am not my own, but belong — body and soul, in life and in death — to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father i…

In this matter we teach that there is a threefold condition or state of man. Man in his first estate before the fall was endowed with free will, so that he could either remain in goodness or decline to evil. However, he declined to evil, and has involved himself and the entire human race in sin, as has been said already. Man in his second estate, after the fall, is not deprived…

The Formula affirms that in spiritual matters — conversion and saving faith — the unregenerate human will has no power to cooperate with or prepare itself for grace. The Holy Spirit alone works faith through the Word. It denies both the Pelagian and semi-Pelagian positions that the natural will can initiate or assist in conversion. After regeneration, the renewed will cooperate…

We will that the church of Christ resume her native right of internal government, rejecting all human legislation and creeds that are not based upon the authority of Scripture. The Gospel of Christ is free, and no humanly-devised standards should bind the conscience or restrict the liberties of the people of God.

Paul declares that "the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." Ambrose argues that this identification of the Spirit with the Lord proves His full divinity. The freedom the Spirit gives is not political but spiritual — freedom from sin, from the law of death, and from slavery to the passions. This is the freedom for which Christ set us free,…