Paul’s arguing, Jesus fulfills all of this. His redemptive work, His willing sacrifice shows us the path to be free from the failure and become righteous before God, not in our own strength, not in anything that we could do, not in adhering to a law or a set of ethics, or rules, or philosophies. By just realizing that He wants to set you free. You are entangled and He wants to set you free. Just believe Him. And then Paul describes what happens, like, what will happen if we would just believe Him, and it brings us to a very famous passage. And so, I quote, “whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. This Lord is the spirit, wherever the Lord’s spirit is, there is freedom.” Now, this is a famous passage of Scripture, wherever the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And so, we pass that around, all sorts of applications and I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with that. I’m just saying the context here, the freedom that were talking about here, is the freedom to open our eyes and see that we are free, and then walk into the freedom, believe that it’s done, believe that all those commandments that we can never measure up to have been fulfilled. We can’t do it, but God came, God came to fulfill that for us. In Jesus, we are free and not just free, like any time we’re visiting the Middle East and somewhere near wherever Paul was whenever he said this, like free wherever we are forever, wherever we ever may be. If there is freedom wherever the spirit of the Lord is and we turn ourselves to, Psalm 139 and read, I can never escape from Your spirit. I can never escape Your presence. If I go up to heaven You’re there. If I go to the grave, You’re there. Then we realize freedom is available now and always. What we need is eyes to see it and a willingness to live into it. And that is the good news and that is indeed good news but that’s not all the news, that’s not all the implications. So, Paul fleshes this out more. He says look, as all of us reflect the Lord’s glory with faces that are not covered with veils, we are being changed into His image with ever increasing glory. This comes from the Lord, who is the spirit. Okay, the implications of what Paul saying my brothers and sisters is that when we open up, when…when the veil is removed and we can see things as they are through like, see things the way God is seeing things and we enter into that, we give ourselves fully to that, then transformation is taking place. And that doesn’t mean transformation so we’re not so irritable. Yes, I mean all of these things but it’s way bigger than that, like okay all these little hard parts of my life will get shaved off, it’s bigger than that. We’re being changed into the image and likeness of God. Whoooo, that’s a big, that’s a big sentence. Now I’m not saying we’re being transformed into God, that one day, if we keep on this road, we’ll be God. I’m saying that a plan was always that we would be in His image, that we would be His partners, that we would collaborate, that we would be in a relationship. That it would be an adventure, that life is to be lived and this portion of our existence as humans is so short. We’re supposed to be revealing God by being transformed into His image or likeness. Christ-like, like Christ. We’re supposed to live into it. It’s supposed to transform us and as we we’re reading yesterday, that transformation should give off an aroma, the aroma of Christ wherever we go. We have been given permission to be ourselves, free, fully engaged heart, mind, and will. Walking in collaboration with God in this world.
Daily Readings and Commentary from the Daily Audio Bible