Paul is writing to the church in the city of Corinth because he’s heard there’s a group of Jewish believers who are emphasizing strict obedience to all the laws of Moses to the Gentile believers. There’s an aspect of trusting in your obedience to earn your salvation in this thinking. Paul shows us the difference between the old covenant grounded in the laws of Moses, the ones engraved in letters in stone that brought condemnation and still came with glory, and the new covenant in Jesus and what he accomplished that’s even more glorious. The glory found in the old covenant is muted, Paul uses the example of Moses wearing a veil when he came down from Mount Sinai after spending time in the presence of God, his face shining with God’s glory, frightens the people. Now in new covenant times, the glory shines bright as it’s unveiled, bringing righteousness. Paul writes, “For what was glorious has no glory now in comparison with the surpassing glory.” God gave Israel the law to shape his people and point them to the coming Messiah, and now Jesus has come. Paul writes, “And if what was transitory came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts!” Paul keeps our focus on Jesus, not Moses.
Paul’s mission is to point people to Jesus, “whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” Paul is talking about freedom from the power of sin, freedom Jesus has accomplished for us in his death and resurrection. The glory revealed as Jesus takes away the chains of sin that bind our hearts and souls to the curse that comes with sin: separation from God and death. We experience freedom from trying to earn our salvation through perfect obedience to the law, which as Scripture clearly shows us, is impossible for us. This is why Paul keeps calling us to turn to Jesus who has completely fulfilled the law. When we accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour, when we believe in him and place all our faith and trust in Jesus, his perfect obedience covers us and we’re made righteous in and through Jesus. Jesus gives us his Spirit which is transforming us more and more into his image, filling us with his glory!
The Law is a gift from God, but it reveals our sin and brokenness and need for a Messiah. We know that sin creates brokenness, it points us away from God and Jesus, and silences the voice of the Holy Spirit within us. Sin wraps us in powerful chains. These chains can wrap us tightly in hopelessness and despair. These chains look differently for each of us; they can look like deliberate sin choices, like addiction, destructive and spiritually unhealthy ways of thinking, the actions of others towards us, or our past of brokenness and/or abuse. We don’t choose these chains, often they slowly and silently wrap themselves around our hearts and souls, weaving their ways around us tighter and tighter until it feels like we’ll never escape them, that all hope is lost.
Addiction is a powerful chain, and in my personal birth family, we’ve wrestled with the chains of addiction. As one family member says, “You don’t begin something thinking that it’s more powerful than I am and it’s going to make me submit to its will rather than me controlling it.” Everyone has their own story of that road into addiction. Our youth group in Allendale served regularly at a homeless shelter serving dinner. We would sit with some of those who came and ask them how we could pray for them. One man shared how he had been a successful doctor, but the stress of trying to save people’s lives every day got to him and he began using prescription drugs to handle the stress. He became addicted and this affected both his marriage and his job and he lost both, as well as his house and belongings. This led him to the streets and the shelter in order to survive. Drugs were the only way he felt he could survive each day and his inability to say no to the drugs took away all his hope. His addiction was rooted in the inability to defeat death and illness, in his own realization that he wasn’t God. The chains of addiction were painfully wrapped tightly around his mind and heart.
In another situation, I walked alongside a person who struggled with unhealthy ways of thinking that impacted her relationships with others. There were feelings of entitlement and yet feeling that she wasn’t respected. This created conflict within the church and her family. People were afraid of her, which created more hurt and brokenness. Yet when you asked people how they saw her, they all commented about how much they appreciated all she did, even while being afraid of her anger. Over time, as conflict grew, she would go to another church where the same patterns happened and she would end up back in our church again. This created depression, pain, and more striking out. At the heart of her struggle was the inability to trust others, which lead her to push against the church leadership, revealing a lack of trust in God. The chains of her unhealthy ways of thinking were so strong!
My call into ministry came through walking alongside people who were living rough lives caught in these types of chains and ended up at a Christian community center that reached out to those on the streets and in hard situations. Satan is creative in how he can trap us. The majority of those we walked alongside with wanted nothing more than to be free of their addictions or destructive relationships. They were all looking for happiness, peace, or hope and when it proved hard to find or keep, they turned to other behaviors and substances to take away the pain, taking those chains back on again. Slavery can become normal. We see this in the wilderness when Israel’s discouraged at how hard things are and complain how back in Egypt they had watermelon to eat and water to drink; slavery is easier in some ways than freedom.
Yet there are always those who hunger deeply for freedom, and in my experience, at some point end up turning to Jesus to see if freedom is possible. Often, they are drawn to the law parts, hoping that obedience will make them free; it’s not until they hear Jesus’ invitation in Matthew 11, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light,” that they learn to rest in Jesus, to trust that he’s done the law for them, calling them to rest in him, to lean on his strength rather than their own.
In John 8:31–36 Jesus talks to the Jews who had believed him, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?” Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” When we believe in Jesus, we’re set free from our sin and made righteous before God, but that doesn’t mean we’re fully healed, that our addictions, ways of thinking and behaving, our bitterness and consequences of our past disappear. It does mean that we’re at the beginning of a journey of renewal, trusting that Jesus places people with skills of healing, counselling, encouragement, and equipping in our lives. There are those in our church family to help pick us up again when we stumble, reminding us that we’re deeply loved and forgiven by Jesus. Our chains are heavy and not easy to carry, especially when they’re placed there by others. Freedom is hard, which is why we’re called as the family of God to be there for and with each other, working with the Holy Spirit to be transformed.
Paul writes in Galatians 5:13–15; 22–23, “You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other…. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” True freedom leads us to freedom that begins to shape us into a new person shaped by the Holy Spirit. This will happen over time; hope and the experience of Jesus’ love will come, bringing trust in Jesus, which brings strength. Even though we may fall again and again, we know that we can overcome the chains that hold us down because our strength and freedom is found in Jesus.
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