Why is their freedom in the Spirit's presence? Because God ¹is not only Spirit but He is also love. Therefore, where the Spirit is present, love is also.
How are these connected?
As bearers of God's image we are created for love - because God is love. In order to experience His love, God knew we must be like Him to fully experience Him as love and to freely function as God designed us to.
When we are in God's presence His love fills us up and frees us from always trying to gain or win love from God and others through our actions i.e. good behavior.
Not only does God not demand from us certain actions in order to win His love, He also knew we could never do enough to win it. So He made a way to remove the barrier between us created by our ³rebellious distrust so He could pour out His love on us freely again. This was made possible through the efforts of Christ - efforts driven by Christ's perfect ³trust in the Father of love.
Whenever we are in the presence of God, we are also in the presence of infinite ²love. This love energizes us to do (obey) and be who we are designed to be. His love results in our wanting to live for Him vs our feeling pressured to, so we might avoid rejection. There is no risk of rejection when love is completely secured for us by the perfect actions of another - i.e. Christ's.
Obedience that springs forth from love is not action we have to take, as a legal requirement, but action we want to take. Obedience occurs supernaturally, freely and organically. Our "wanter" (will) is awakened toward our Creator in response to His love for us. A love fully secured for us by Christ's efforts alone, not ours.
His love stirs us to our true potential—to become again what we were created to be - as bearers of His image - through God's Spirit of infinite love.
This happens when we are in the presence of God in all His love. To be all we were created to be is not only what we desire, but His love also gives us the power to do it - i.e., where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
Nothing good happens in us or through us apart from the Spirit (love) of God.
And we have God's Spirit only because we are in Christ. But also because we are in Christ we have His Spirit i.e. this is true for every one of His children with no exceptions.
For a further discussion on glory, and how it ties into the above, I offer the following:
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¹In fact, some argue (and I agree) that the Spirit issues forth from the perfect love between the Father and Son. For more on this click here and here.
²We are energized in the presence of any love but most fully when in the presence of the infinite love of God, who the very Source of love.
³the opposite of our rebellious distrust that alienates us from the Father.
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Grace to you
Jim Deal