If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

John 8:36

When the Spirit's seal of adoption is impressed upon the heart, there is a loosening of the bonds of legality in which so many of God's children are held.  How jealous is the Holy Ghost of the glory and enjoyment of our Sonship!  Listen to His language:  'As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.  For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.  The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.'  (Romans 8:14-16)

Do you ask, my reader, what is a legal spirit from which the Spirit of adoption frees us?  I answer, it is that bondage which springs from looking within yourself for evidences, for comfort, and for motives which only can be found in looking to Jesus.  It is that spirit of legality which prompts you to be incessantly poring over your works, instead of dealing simply and solely with the finished work of Christ.  That is a spirit of bondage which makes a Christ of duties and labours and sacrifices, of tears and confessions and faith, rather than directly and supremely dealing with Him 'who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.'  (1 Corinthians 1:30)

Beloved, your works, your doing, your sacrifices, as means of comfort and as grounds of hope, are nothing but filthy rags, the bones of the skeleton, the chaff which the wind scatters.  Why have you not joy and peace and hope in believing?  Simply because, unsuspected by yourself, you are putting your own work in the place of Christ's work.  Oh that you may be led to cast yourself more entirely upon the atoning sacrifice of Jesus; to believe that God looks not at a single work you do as justifying you in His sight, but that He looks only to the divine, sacrificial, flawless, perfect work of His beloved Son!  If He is pleased to accept you in His Son, are you not satisfied so to be accepted?  If the blood and righteousness of Emmanuel are enough for God, are they not enough also for you?  Away, then, with your fears and distrust and bondage, and enter fully into Christ!  Then shall you exclaim, 'Thou hast loosed my bonds.'

Excerpt from 'Help Heavenward' by Octavius Winslow

http://fsiarchive1.familyradio.org/mp3/hymnal/not_what_my_hands_have_done.mp3