The Glad Tidings

In Love with Bondage

“Now that ye have come to know God, or rather to be known of God, how turn ye back again to the weak and beggarly rudiments, whereunto ye desire to be in bondage over again?” Is it not strange that men should be in love with chains? Christ has proclaimed “liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound” (Isaiah 61:1), saying to the prisoners, “Go forth,” and to them that are in darkness, “Show yourselves” (Isaiah 49:9); yet men who have heard these words, and have come forth, and have seen the light of “the Sun of Righteousness,” and have tasted the sweets of liberty, actually turn round and go back into their prison, submit to be bound with their old chains, even fondling them, and labor away at the hard treadmill of sin. Who has not had something of that experience? It is no fancy picture. It is a fact that men can come to love the most revolting things, even death itself; for Wisdom says, “All they that hate Me love death.” Proverbs 8:36. In the Epistle to the Galatians we have a vivid picture of human experience. GTI 175.1