Freedom. It’s right up there with the most powerful and emotive words in the English language today. It’s the most fundamental word in human rights: freedom of thought, conscience and religion; freedom of association, freedom from tyranny. We are born free and we have rights and freedoms.

Freedom is a powerful thread in the Bible – the Exodus motif is everywhere. Men and women are not to be slaves. People should not live under tyranny and every revolutionary knows it, and so should every Pharaoh. God is a liberating God, He is the one who sets His people free.

And for the Christian there are few rallying cries that move the heart as the cry, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free” or “If the Son sets you free you will be free indeed.” Jesus was clear in reading from Isaiah 61 that a core part of his mission was to ‘proclaim freedom for the captives‘.

So what does it mean for a Christian to be free to have true liberty? And is it really glorious (Romans 8:21)? And if it is glorious do we live as if it was? After all Paul says all of creation longs for the day when they will experience the freedom we enjoy.

There is freedom from slavery to sin (Romans 6). This is true and that is glorious but it feels slightly complicated every time I, do in fact, sin again. Here am I free to serve in ‘the new way of the Spirit’ but on more than once occasion making choices that look very much like ‘old ways.’ I am also free from the law of sin and death and yet one day I will, no doubt, die. So I trust that I will only die the first death and not the second one.

Don’t get me wrong, these are glorious freedoms but freedom from sin can be a messy business and it’s quite possible that the process by which I step into freedom from death could be too.

But there is another freedom that Paul puts at the heart of the Christian experience and that is something Christians should celebrate every time they get together and encourage each other in all the times in between. It is the sort of thing that when it lives both as the foundation of our convictions and at the forefront of our minds can help us live not as slaves to sin but as slaves of righteousness. For though we are indeed free we are also bound by our freedom to the one who bought us and brought us out of captivity.

In 2 Corinthians 3 Paul contrasts the ministry of death, which is a pretty strong term to use of the ministry of Moses. Especially when you think about how glorious it was, as Paul notes. But that glory has faded as to be no glory at all because a far greater glory has now come. It’s hard to see the light of a candle when you’re staring at the light of the sun.

The glory of Moses was temporary, but this new glory is not. The first will fade, the latter will not. To live under the law of Moses is to have a veil over your heart. To live under the law of sin is to have a death sentence over your life. Christ removes the veil and the sentence.

We turn to the Lord (2 Cor 3:16). The Lord removes the veil (2 Cor 3:15). So what happens now?

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.

There is the freedom we now have and must employ to the fullest extent. We are free to behold the Lord.

Jesus is the image of God. Christ is glorious. He has set us free from death by dying for us. He has set us free by becoming sin for us. He has conquered both by rising from the dead. We turn to him in repentance and faith. He unveils our face. This is the gospel.

As we behold the light that is true light, the life that is true life, the love that is true love then this light, life and love shines in our hearts and changes us – from the inside out.

Do you want to be free from sin in the choosing of it, the living under it, the fear of it? Behold Christ. Do you want to have hope that goes beyond this life into eternity. Behold Christ. Do you want step out of darkness and live in marvellous light? Behold Christ.

You are free to do so, even those who are blinded can turn to the Lord and receive sight. Now behold Jesus.