2 Corinthians 3:17

2 Corinthians 3:17

Spiritual Liberty.

These words form the climax of the argument contained in the whole of the chapter. Through the chapter Paul puts law and gospel side by side. He shows us that there was a glory attached to the legal dispensation, but that the glory of the gospel far exceeds it in many respects. He notes first that it transcends the law in glory, in that the literal knowledge of the law, as engraven on stone, had no power whatever to affect the heart of the man who read it. The tables of stone had no quickening power in them, but when the law gives place to the gospel, no one can receive it without having wrought, at once, an inward transformation. (2) The Apostle goes further in the seventh verse, for he shows the superiority of the gospel over the law in that, whilst the law was simply a ministry of condemnation, the gospel is a ministry of life. (3) He proceeds a step further, and shows that the gospel has an exceeding glory over the law, in that, while the latter was only temporary, the gospel is for ever. (4) And yet once more the gospel exceeds the law in the matter of its perspicuity. The law was obscure, and the revelation made to man through Moses was dim and indistinct. "Now," says the Apostle, "there is an efficiency in the gospel which the law does not possess. The law found man in bondage, and left him so, only sealing the cords of his captivity; but when the gospel comes it snaps all fetters and leads the man at once into perfect liberty, for where the Spirit of the Lord is that is, where the gospel of Christ is where the law of the Spirit of life is there is liberty. Freedom follows the footsteps of the gospel.

I. This is true among the nations of the earth. Although the liberty mentioned here does not primarily refer to political, or religious, or national liberty, yet, at the same time, national liberty is the inseparable companion of the gospel. Wherever the gospel of the grace of God has free way is preached and accepted there you always find political liberty following in its wake. Liberty is the attendant angel of the gospel. Let God's truth lay hold of any land, and despotism dies. The gospel creates an atmosphere that suffocates a despot; and where it is free it exercises an influence under which slavery of every description is certain to wither.

II. Our text is true in regard to ecclesiasticism. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." Once have the gospel in the heart, and there is a grand rebellion against all the despotism of ecclesiasticism.

III. Our text is specially true in the experience of the individual believer. There is liberty (1) from the bondage of sin, (2) from the entanglements of ceremonialism, (3) liberty of character, (4) liberty in service, (5) liberty in all that the Bible contains.

A. G. Brown, Penny Pulpit,No. 974.

I. I do not find, anywhere in the Bible, that we are warned against too much liberty. In fact, it is almost always those who have felt themselves too shut up and confined, who break out into carelessness of conduct; just as the stopped river, bursting its barrier, runs into the more violent stream. And yet some people seem to me to be afraid of a free gospel. The freeman of the Lord walks in the day. His former sins do not trouble him. They were cancelled the first time he brought them to Christ, and God never rewrites one cancelled line. He has to do with nothing but the sins of the day.

II. The Christian has the commandment of God in his mind, and it is his delight to study and to keep it. But far more than the command, he has the whole will of God. He has studied the commands till he has reached to the spirit of the commands. He has gathered the mind of God. He knows, by a kind of blessed, spiritual intuition, what the will of God would be on any given subject, and he follows it. It is a very grand feeling to be doing God's will. This is what Christ was doing all the time He was on earth. It is the Spirit of the Lord, and "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."

III. Is not the Christian free of the New Jerusalem? And how should things on the surface of this little world bind him? He is on the wing for eternity. These things cannot hold him. He can go down into deep, secret places. His mind is dealing with the mind of eternity. He is free to all the promises of the Lord, for he has the mind of Christ.

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,4th series, p. 61.

References: 2 Corinthians 3:17. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. i., No. 9; Good Words,vol. iii., pp. 633, 634; Homilist,2nd series, vol. iii., p. 467; Church of England Pulpit,vol. xx., p. 149; J. E. C. Welldon, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxxv., p. 392; A. Murray, The Fruits of the Spirit,p. 124.