FREEDOM FROM SIN AND DEATH

The grace of Christ brings the freedom of God to all people. Christian liberty is the result of an historic event, an ongoing event – the victorious death and resurrection of Jesus – and of union with Christ in the sacrament of Baptism, normally through a public commitment of faith, symbolised and enacted in the rite of purifying water called baptism (which means bath, a cleansing refreshment and new birth through the “Spirit” ). The Christian believer is free in the sense that, in Christ, he or she has received the powers of living from now on in the intimacy of the Father, without being impeded by the bonds of Sin, Death and the Law. St. Paul and St. John are the chief heralds of Christian liberty.

Christ liberates us mainly in six ways:

• freedom from sin and death
• freedom from slavery to ourselves and falsehood
• freedom from slavery to wealth
• freedom from the law
• freedom from slavery to human respect and fear
• freedom from slavery to sensual lust.