True Liberty

What is the last thing you would let God see?

There is a man in this passage who had the opposite problem. Moses came down from the mountain with his face shining and did not know it, and the people were afraid to come near him, so he put a veil on. Then he took it off whenever he went in to speak with God, and put it back on to come out. Exodus records the routine without comment. Paul, centuries later, reads it as a picture with a sad edge: the veil went on partly because the shining was fading, and Moses was covering a glory on its way out.

That is what Paul has in view when he writes this. The veil is still there, he says, but it has moved. It lies on the heart of anyone reading the old covenant without Christ, and it comes off at one specific point: when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away. Then the line people quote. Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Read in context, this is not permission to do as you please. It is the end of covering up. And the next verse says what happens to an uncovered face: we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image.

Moses veiled a fading glory. What Paul is describing runs the other way, from glory to glory, and it works by being looked at.

So: what are you still wearing in front of God, and what do you imagine it is protecting?

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 50 is Knowing the Address (Micah 5:2).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna