Truly Free
2 Corinthians 3:7-4:7[1]
I would say that our notions of freedom in this country are defined more
by our secular values than they are by our faith. We believe, as the
Declaration of Independence so eloquently puts it, that we are all “endowed” by
our Creator “with certain unalienable Rights,” including “Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness.” That was a truly revolutionary idea about freedom in
that day. It was based, however, not on biblical teaching, but on the best
political philosophy of the time. And while I agree with it, I would also point
out that in 1776, that statement only applied to men who owned a certain amount
of property. It wasn’t really a statement about how all people equally
deserve to be free. It was a response to the tyranny of the day, but we’re
still trying to work out what that means for all people.
For most of the history of the world, “common people” have lived in fear
of “powers that be,” whether secular or spiritual. Kings ruled absolutely. What
they said was the law of the land. Whether or not it was true or right didn’t
really matter. Tyranny was simply the way things were. People have also lived
in fear of spiritual powers they don’t understand and can’t control. In ancient
times, the “gods” were no better than the rulers. They could be just as fickle
and cruel. I think some of mythology was just projecting the unpredictability
of life onto spiritual powers. At least that way people could make sense of their
hardships. The “gods” or the “demons” were responsible. In response most people
turned to various means from astrology to magic to try to fend off the troubles
of life. It was, at best, a feeble attempt.
Many people through the ages have feared death above all else. Without
the light that dawned on that first Easter morning, people live in fear of
death. They’ve had all kinds of beliefs about death throughout history. Some
saw death as a kind of shadowy place, where you were only a “ghost” of your
former self. Some saw death as the doorway to hell, where everybody would spend
the afterlife being punished for everything you did wrong in this life. Even
those who worshipped the one true and living God feared death, because they saw
the grave as a place where they would not only be cut off from the joys of life
but also cut off from God.
As we’ve been discussing the last few weeks, St. Paul insists that
Jesus’ death and resurrection sets us free from all that. As we’ve seen, Paul proclaimed
that Jesus’ death on the cross has broken the power of all that threatens the
meaningfulness of our lives. That’s because he willingly submitted himself to
the “powers” of evil, and when they did their worst to him, they effectively
“spent” their power. But Paul goes beyond that. He says that Jesus also broke the
power of sin and death when God raised him from the dead. As we heard in our
lesson from last week, Paul declared that “Just as everyone dies because [of]
Adam, [because of] Christ everyone will be given new life (1 Cor 15:22, NLT).
That first Easter morning revealed a power at work in this world greater
than sin or death. Jesus’ resurrection pointed to the power of God’s
life-giving Word, the same Word he spoke over the darkness in the beginning, “let
there be light!”, creating all life out of the vast nothingness. And in Jesus,
God revealed that his Word still has the power to bring life out of death. As
we discussed last week, Paul was ultimately pointing us to the hope that we
will all live in God’s (re)new(ed) creation after Jesus has returned to “make
all things new.” But more than that, St. Paul was convinced that through Jesus’
resurrection, God began the process of making a whole new creation right here
and right now in the midst of this world.[2] The
life that God effectively “injected” into this world by raising Jesus from the
dead is like a transfusion spreading through all things and everyone.
That’s why St. Paul could say in our lesson for this week that we’re all in the process of being transformed to become “more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image” (2 Cor 3:18, NLT). Because we have all seen the light of the “glory of God … in the face of Jesus Christ” and we now “have this light shining in our hearts” (2 Cor 4:6-7), it’s as if God’s new work of creation is already working in our lives. So it is that Paul could say later in 2 Corinthians that “if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Cor 5:17, NIV).[3]
What does all that Paul has to say about Jesus’ death and resurrection mean
for us on this day? I may be wrong about this, but we don’t seem to fear sin or
death all that much. That’s one reason why the traditional gospel tends to fall
on deaf ears in our world. But I would say that sin still brings its own sting.
We just have a way of denying it, or avoiding it, or rationalizing it away. I
would also say that while we might no longer subscribe to ancient
superstitions, death is still a very real enemy. We can see that power at work
every time anyone anywhere abuses their power to harm or even kill innocent
people. It happens all the time in our world. We just choose not to look. I
would say that we still need freedom from sin and death, we just don’t see it
that way.
So how then do we in the 21st Century frame the good news that in Jesus Christ we are truly free? The biblical view of freedom is first and foremost that we are free to live in the way that God intended for us when he created everything very good (Gen 1:31). Paul says it this way in our lesson for today: “For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. (2 Cor 3:17, NLT). And in his mind, the Spirit of the Lord is at work throughout God’s creation, especially wher there is faith in Jesus Christ. The way we see that freedom is in the Spirit enabling us to become more like Jesus, aligning our lives with God’s purposes and ways.[4] Through Jesus and through the Spirit, God is setting us free to let go our selfish and self-centered efforts at justifying the meaning of our lives, by having the right title, or living in the right neighborhood, or knowing all the right people. That way of trying to find meaning in life still brings its own “sting.”[5]
Jesus sets us free to obey God, following his example of what it means
to be fully human by surrendering fully to God’s will (1 Pet 2:16). That means
we’re free to give without any thought of what we may get in return, which is
the essence of how Jesus lived, and the essence of how Jesus taught those who
would follow him to live (Lk 6:35). Because of Jesus, we’re free to serve
others, sharing food with the hungry, compassion with the outcasts, and shelter
with the refugees (Mt 25:35). You may see where I’m going with this: living in
a way that’s truly free means loving without constraints.[6] We’re truly free when we love God with all our hearts, tearing down the shrines
to false gods that we’ve all built. And we’re truly free when we love our
neighbors as ourselves. All our neighbors. True freedom, from the perspective
of our faith, is not found in rights or resources, not in privileges or buying
power, not in influence or success or wealth. Regardless of who the powers that
provoke our fear may be in our day and time, the promise of the Gospel is that true
freedom is found in a life defined by love (Gal 5:13). Love for God and love
for others. When our lives are defined by love for God and love for others,
then we are truly free.
[1] ©
Alan Brehm 2025. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/2/2025 for Hickman
Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2] Cf.
Viktor Paul Furnish, Theology and Ethics in Paul, 126: “while the
salvation which God effects is first of all an object of hope, God’s power is
nevertheless already effective for men [sic] in Christ. … Salvation, then, is
not unambiguously ‘future,’ and it is not only a ‘hope.’ Even in the present
age the ‘first fruits’ of salvation may be savored and the authenticity of hope
confirmed.”
[3] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.1:311, where he connects 2 Cor 5:17
with the complete “alteration” of the “human situation,” of “our whole
existence,” through Jesus’ death and resurrection. This not only means the
reconciliation of those who are “in Christ” with God, it also means “the reconciliation
of the world with God”! Barth speaks of this “alteration” throughout the Dogmatics,
but especially so in volume four, where he relates it not only to those who are
in Christ, but to all humanity. Cf. also Jürgen Moltmann, Ethics of Hope,
55, where he says that in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ “the eschatological
turn of the world begins, from transience to non-transience, from the night
of the world to the morning of God’s new day and to the new creation of all
things” (emphasis original
[4] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation, 271,
where he argues that since in the Bible (not just the New Testament!) “‘Lord’
is the name for the experience of liberation and for free life, then the name
is misunderstood and brought into disrepute if it is interpreted in terms of
masculine notions of rule.” He also insists that “living freedom and free life
can endure only in justice and righteousness. In justice, human freedom
ministers to life—the life shared by all living beings. In justice, human life
struggles for the freedom of everything that lives, and resists oppression.”
[5] Cf. A. C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: a commentary on
the Greek text, 1301: “it is sin, the human turning away from God to become
centered upon the self, that has turned death into such deadly poison, so that
it hurts and kills like a sting.”
[6] I
would suggest that this idea of freedom to love is a central theme in Jürgen Moltmann’s
understanding of the Christian life in his works. See for example, The
Church in the Power of the Spirit: he begins with the idea that Jesus
establishes the freedom of God’s kingdom by sacrificing himself for others
(117), by breaking the powers of oppression through the resurrection (98-99),
and by assuring us that we are accepted by God, and therefore enabling us to
accept others (188-89). On this basis Moltmann understands the freedom of God’s
kingdom as that which enables us to serve one another in the effort to bring
freedom to others (84, 195, 278, 283-84, 292). He construes the Christian life
under the concept of “friendship” which Jesus models and we are called to
emulate as those who are “open for
others” and who “love in freedom” (121, 316).
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