The Westminster Confession of Faith Chapter 20: Of Christian Liberty, and Liberty of Conscience Sr. High Sunday School Lesson

Lesson Objectives

- That the students would comprehend the liberty Christ has purchased for His own.

- That the students would know which aspects of God’s law are abrogated in Christ.

- That the students would see the beauty and benefits of Christian liberty.

- That the students would be able to define the conscience biblically.

- That the students would recognize and submit to the true Lord of the conscience.

- That the students would be more vigilant in avoiding backsliding into sin.

- That the students would understand submission to authority in relation to conscience.

- That the students would be able to apply principles of conscience to everyday situations.

Introduction

Freedom is one of our strongest innate desires. We all want to be autonomous in some way. We want to be our own rulers, the masters of our own destiny. This desire can manifest in positive ways: we love to be given responsibility and rise to the occasion. We can be creative and inventive when we put our minds to it. However, freedom can also be abused. It can especially be twisted when our own wills and convictions bump up against an authority placed over us, and our inner rebellion crawls its way out of our hearts. You probably feel it with your parents, with teachers and supervisors, and often especially with God’s law, even if we fail to realize it at first.

We can see this desire for freedom in others, too, especially in this country. Every day we encounter people striving to be free in some way or another. What are some of the first words that come to mind when you think of the United States? My guess is freedom is at the top of the list. Even our national anthem calls it “The land of the free.” America is a nation built on the blood of people who fought and died so that we might enjoy certain rights and liberties as citizens of the United States. In a similar way, this morning we are going to talk about the rights and liberties that we have as citizens of the kingdom of God, the freedoms we have as children adopted into God’s covenant people, and how our liberty in Christ to serve Him affects our daily lives.

Before we look at our chapter, I want to look at our nation again. Because at the individual level, since freedom is such a huge part of our culture, we seem to have this underlying American ethic of, “I’m going to do what I want, when I want. Who do you think you are you to judge me for it?” Think of some of the messages you hear all the time: does anyone know Burger King’s motto? “Have it your way.” What about Sprite? “Obey your thirst.” Or we can think of the chants of those wrongly claiming a right to abortion: “my body, my choice.” These sayings are simply evidence of conflicting moral compasses without a true north. We need a perfect standard of righteousness to guide and direct us, otherwise we end up exactly where we are in our culture today: every man doing what is right in his own eyes (Judg. 21:25)[1]. This notion of autonomy and freedom is a value deeply engrained in our culture, but it’s more than that, it’s rooted in who we are as human beings.

This fundamental desire to be free makes sense biblically for two reasons: first, one of man’s God-given responsibilities in creation was to have dominion over the earth and its creatures. God made Adam to rule, he gave him freedom and responsibility. But on the other hand, we must remember that in the garden Adam was not the sovereign ruler; he was created to be in submission to God’s ultimate authority. He was created to rule, yet also to be ruled.

Despite having everything Adam needed to live in communion with God, we all know the story of Genesis 3. When Adam sinned and rebelled against God’s authority, something drastic changed. Adam, and consequently all of us, lost our liberty. In Adam’s transgression we all died spiritually and became slaves to sin. We were placed under its power and the just wrath of God towards it. The joy and the freedom which God designed for Adam and Eve under His sovereign rule in Eden was perverted. Ever since that day, people have desired to be free from God’s rule, and to live for themselves. This is why throughout history you see one tragedy after another where people reject God and pursue their own desires, desperately trying to accomplish their own wills according to their own definition of right and wrong. Sadly, we think that’s freedom.

In contrast, what I want to argue in the little time we have together is that everything we just talked about, this desire to have autonomy, this “freedom” to do what we want, to “have it your way,” is not true liberty. With this mindset, what the world doesn’t realize, and what we might miss is that we are never truly free. In our natural, sinful state we are free to do what we want, but we will never want God. What the world will tell you is liberty is simply bondage to sin. As Paul explains in Romans 6, we are all either slaves to sin, or slaves to righteousness. We either serve our own ends, unable to do anything pleasing in God’s sight; or we belong to God in Christ, and are free to serve Him alone.

Lesson Outline

Paragraph I

I. The Christian is Freed from:

A. The penalties and power of sin

1. “Whatever our liberties are, they are liberties owed to Christ”[2]

2. Beattie: Christian liberty “consists, first of all, in [believers] being freed from the guilt of sin, and from the condemning wrath of God.”[3]

a. Read and explain 1 Thess. 1:10

3. Gal. 1:4 – Christ delivers us from the present evil age according to the Father’s will.

B. The evils of affliction

1. By the work of Christ our Mediator we no longer suffer the penal aspects of affliction

a. Have volunteer read: Ps. 119:68,71

b. Summarize: Rom. 8:28-39

c. Return to Ps. 119 – we endure affliction patiently, trusting our heavenly Father.

1) End with examples in their lives of hard providences.

C. The yoke of the ceremonial law

1. Read and explain Gal. 5:1-6

II. The Christian is Freed to:

A. Serve the Lord in love

1. Transition with and complete Gal. 5:1-6

2. “Believers…serve God from a generous principle of love, and with a willing mind.”[4]

a. 2 Cor. 3:13 – Freedom and fruit in the Holy Spirit

B. Draw near to God

1. “Christian liberty embraces the fact that believers have freedom of access to God through Jesus Christ. The unbeliever has not this precious privilege.”[5]

a. Read and explain Rom. 5:1-2

C. Eternal Life

1. 1 Cor. 15:50-58 – death has lost its sting!

2. To those free in Christ, “the grave is not a prison, but a bed of rest.”[6]

Paragraphs II-IV

III. The Christian Conscience is Bound to God, and must:

A. Acknowledge the Lord of the conscience

1. Jas. 4:12 – God is the only Lord of the conscience.

a. “God has given only one, and that a perfect, rule of faith and practice in spiritual matters in the inspired Scriptures.”[7]

2. As a result, “the Christian man is free from the doctrines and commandments of men.”[8]

B. Deny the license to sin

1. “To assert that men have a right to think and act as they please, without respect to the moral law, and without being responsible to God, would be atheistical.”[9]

C. Establish God-ordained authority

1. In the state

2. In the church

3. In the family

IV. Application and Conclusion

A. Taxes & masks

1. Matt. 22:15-22 – proper submission to civil authority

B. Worship

1. RPW application – “especially in worship and doctrine we must not only avoid that which is contrary to the Word of God, but even that which is additional to its instruction.”[10]

C. Social Media

1. What do we do with a modern example?

a. Apply principles of sexual immorality, gossip, others to test our consciences.

b. Introduce hypothetical situations between peers, then parents.

D. Recap & Wrap

1. Reiterate main points of first two sections (freedom from/to)

2. Demonstrate prevalence in daily life

3. Conclude with significance and necessity of understanding this beautiful truth.

Lesson Worksheet Questions:

With your assigned small group, answer the following questions and be prepared to share your group’s responses with the class:

1. Name 3 benefits of Christian liberty and give a brief (1-2 sentence) explanation for each:

2. Explain the conscience as you now understand it.

3. If a peer tried to forbid you from listening to a certain genre of music, how should you respond?

a. What might you say if the reverse occurred, and they tried to convince you to listen to something you are convicted is wrong?

b. What if your parents forbid that same genre?

4. Give two other examples where you might need to exercise liberty of conscience:

Works Consulted and Commended

Beattie, Francis R. The Presbyterian Standards: An Exposition of the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms. Greenville: Southern Presbyterian Press, n.d.

Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Edited by John T. McNeill. Translated by Ford Lewis Battles. The Library of Christian Classics. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011.

Hodge, Archibald A. The Westminster Confession: A Commentary. 7th ed. Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1992.

Shaw, Robert. The Reformed Faith: An Exposition of the Westminster Confession of Faith. 4th ed. Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 1992.

Smith, Morton H. Harmony of the Westminster Confession and Catechisms. 7th ed. Taylors, SC: Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, 2002.

Van Dixhoorn, Chad. Confessing the Faith: A Reader’s Guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith. 5th ed. Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2022.

Westminster Assembly. The Westminster Confession of Faith: Edinburgh Edition. Philadelphia: William S. Young, 1851.

[1] Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture citations are from the ESV.

[2] Chad Van Dixhoorn, Confessing the Faith: A Reader’s Guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith, 5th ed. (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2022), 260.

[3] Francis R. Beattie, The Presbyterian Standards: An Exposition of the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms (Greenville: Southern Presbyterian Press, 1997), 253.

[4] Robert Shaw, The Reformed Faith: An Exposition of the Westminster Confession of Faith, 4th ed. (Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 1992), 203.

[5] Beattie, The Presbyterian Standards, 254.

[6] Shaw, The Reformed Faith, 203.

[7] Archibald A. Hodge, The Westminster Confession: A Commentary, 8th ed. (Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1992), 266.

[8] Beattie, The Presbyterian Standards, 255.

[9] Shaw, The Reformed Faith, 209.

[10] Van Dixhoorn, Confessing the Faith, 266.