“Let me take occasion from this doctrine to invite all to the service of God. He is the best, most kind and gracious Master that ever was.
To all those that serve Him He gives perfect liberty, and more than that, He makes His servants His children: all that serve Him, He adopts them and gives them a right to the glorious privileges of the sons of God.
He calls them no more servants, but He calls them children; for He manifests Himself to them, makes them His intimate friends, His heirs and joint-heirs with His Son.
He unbosoms His love to them and embraces them in His arms, and dwells in their souls and makes His abode with them, and gives Himself to them to be their father and their portion. They shall not serve Him for nothing.
In this life He will frequently refresh them with the spiritual dews of heaven. He will shine upon them with beams of light and love. But hereafter He will make them perfectly happy, and that forevermore.
Was there ever so good a Master? Is not this better than to serve Satan, to be the devil’s drudge, and to be rewarded with nothing but misery at last? Is such a liberty as this far preferable to the devil’s dungeon service and slavery?
O then, be invited to cast away his chains, throw off his yoke, and resolve to walk at liberty. Arise out of the dark dungeon, shake thyself from the dust, and Christ shall give thee light.”
–Jonathan Edwards “Christian Liberty: A Sermon on James 1:25,” in Sermons and Discourses 1720-1723, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 10, Ed. Wilson H. Kimnach (New Haven: Yale, 1992), 630. Edwards was 18 years old when he preached this sermon. It may be read here in its entirety.
