Glorious Freedom!.... 2 Corinthians 3
Are you comfortable with your faith with respect to what you do, how you talk, how you engage with others? What about when you are by yourself, all alone, no-one watching? Do you still feel comfortable with your belief system, your faith, who you are? What about when you are around other Christians, do you feel better or worse within yourself? Do you find it easier to spend time with Christians or non-Christians? Perhaps you find some Christians too restrictive in their belief system and the self- imposed rules they seem to put on themselves and you have every reason to believe that they really want those rules to apply to you.
Paul is making a point here to these Corinthians about what true freedom is within the context of glory.
2 things to consider. Firstly, the Corinthians were not very holy. Temple prostitution was a part of the culture within the city. Corinth was a port city and so travelers would come and go and enjoy themselves in all the ways that were on offer. This affected the church. Paul’s first letter had to deal with the culture of flagrant immorality. As such, Paul could have gone down the road of legislating a type of Christian morality for the church. He did address the bigger issues in the church I.E stop lawyering up and taking each other to court before secular judges, no sex outside of marriage (which he did say), no getting drunk, or indulging in eating too much (gluttony, which is what they were doing at the Lord’s table – if you can imagine that). But with respect to what true freedom is, true identity as a Christian, he didn’t say that these things needed to be maintained in order to be saved. Behaving themselves in Christ was more about their witness in the community.
Paul was an ex-Pharisee, which meant he was a guardian, or keeper of the Mosaic Law, before becoming a Christian. He said that that life did not save him, but he certainly knew the Law well. He hypocritically thought he couldn’t break it. In fact, outwardly he was right. He said with regards to the Law, blameless. Others observing him couldn’t put anything on him. He followed the outward obedience of the Law perfectly.
It’s to this point that Paul wanted us to consider the second thing - what the covenant and glory meant in the Mosaic law and what the New Covenant in Christ and glory means in the New Covenant. What we have in Christ.
Paul told the Corinthians that the outward things people see should be evidence of glory reflected, not glory earned. How did he do this? He compared what happened to Moses with our experience as believers in Christ. He talked about Moses when he received the 2 tablets of stone on Mt Sinai. Moses saw the back of God – God wrote His commandments on 2 stones (10 of them). Moses’ face shone. He had to be veiled – Moses was reflecting God’s glory, but after a while the glory faded.
Paul said, like Moses’ face slowly losing glory, the law written on the 2 stones were letters of death/Paul even called it – the Old Covenant – a Ministry of Death – verse 7. Why? Because the letter – those words – the covenant kills.
How? It shows up what we do wrong and there is no way out of it; we all blow it. Therefore, we all die. Paul said elsewhere, we are dead in sin. That’s what the Old Testament Mosaic Law does. It shows up God’s standards and reflects them back to us. We eventually die.
Moses’ face was a literal, living example of that. The glory of the Lord didn’t last. Even Moses couldn’t keep the glory. Sin was working out in him – the glory faded. It didn’t last. In the same way Christians who try to keep the law outwardly actually display a ministry of death. Even their faith is a shame because it’s one of outward observance, rather than a glorious reflection of God’s grace.
Paul said that ministry was brought to an end. Rather than the law being written on tablets of stone and dying, it was now written on the tablets of the human heart (verse 3). This brings life. Paul said this is the thing that, by the Spirit, brings life.
This now is a ministry a righteousness that far exceeds the glory of Moses, why? - because Christ gives it and takes away the veil. This is life, true life, not rules and regulations, but life in the Spirit. Paul said this is what the Jews needed. They needed the veil taken away. As true today as it was in Paul’s day.
We are all of unveiled face. Paul said, “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” (Verses 17, 18)
What it means. He told us practically, in another letter to the Galatians, that the rules of the Law are useless: do not touch, taste, handle – perishing with the use, when you do them. In fact, he said for the Christian, “all things are possible, but not all things are profitable.” You have the freedom to do things, but that freedom may have some consequences for you. You are free to drink alcohol, but if you are given to it, you reap the consequences of that. It doesn’t mean you lose your salvation, unless you continually grieve the Spirit and harden your heart – “no drunkard shall enter the kingdom of heaven,” Paul said. It means when someone says to the Holy Spirit, I want the alcoholic spirit more than You. The Christian may fall, but they don’t stay down. The Holy Spirit always keeps us in a place of grace, healing and forgiveness.
This is the glorious freedom Paul spoke about, and it allows us to endure even the harshest situations in this life, and there is a wonderful example in Acts. Stephen, after telling a crowd of Jews that were hard to Christ, that they always grieved God’s work and turned away from Christ, was dragged outside and they picked up stones to kill him. In that situation, it says Stephen’s face shone. This was a literal example of what Moses had, only here Stephen was about to be in the Lord’s glorious presence forever. He saw heaven before getting there. “But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God." (Acts 7:55, 56)
This is glorious freedom. The question I want to bring back to you is, do you have that? With what you say or do, regardless of who is around you, do you know this glorious freedom? Not outwardly being a nice Christian person. The reality is, none of us are nice, but in Christ we are righteous, holy forgiven, made glorious. (Romans 8:30) “And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” In a word, ‘free’. Only in Christ.