Article 1. The liberty which Christ has purchased for believers under the gospel consists in their freedom from the guilt of sin, the condemning wrath of God, and the curse of the law, their rescue from this present evil world, bondage to Satan, and dominion of sin, and their deliverance from the evil of afflictions, the sting of death, the victory of the grave, and everlasting damnation. Moreover, their freedom consists positively in their free access to God and in their yielding obedience to Him, not out of slavish fear, but from a child-like love and willing mind. All these freedoms were in substance common also to believers in Old Testament times.
Article 2. God alone is Lord of the conscience and has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men that are at all contrary to or not contained in His Word. Therefore, to believe such doctrines or obey such commands out of conscience is to betray true liberty of conscience, and the requiring of an implicit faith or an absolute and blind obedience in respect to any authority other than God alone is to destroy liberty of conscience and reason also.
Article 3. They who on pretense of Christian liberty practice any sin or cherish any sinful lust do thereby destroy the end of Christian liberty, which is that we, being delivered out of the hands of all our enemies, may serve the Lord without fear in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our lives.
Article 2. God alone is Lord of the conscience and has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men that are at all contrary to or not contained in His Word. Therefore, to believe such doctrines or obey such commands out of conscience is to betray true liberty of conscience, and the requiring of an implicit faith or an absolute and blind obedience in respect to any authority other than God alone is to destroy liberty of conscience and reason also.
Article 3. They who on pretense of Christian liberty practice any sin or cherish any sinful lust do thereby destroy the end of Christian liberty, which is that we, being delivered out of the hands of all our enemies, may serve the Lord without fear in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our lives.
Q. What are good works?
A. Those only which are done by a true faith, according to God’s law, and are referred only to His glory, and not those which are imagined by us as seeming to be right and good, or which are delivered and commanded by men.
An Orthodox Catechism, Question 96.
