Throughout history, human beings have fought for freedom and equality and, in different ways, struggled against slavery. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, enshrines a range of fundamental rights and freedoms: freedom of thought, conscience and religion; freedom of opinion and expression; freedom of peaceful assembly and association; the right to freely choose one’s work; the right to participate in the cultural life of society and to share in scientific advancement, among many others.

During my years studying international law and later working in legal practice, I regarded these rights and freedoms as an unquestionable and fundamental foundation of human society. As a lawyer and human-rights advocate, I would probably have continued to understand humanity’s longing for freedom primarily in these terms—if I had not one day encountered these words from the Apostle Paul:

“I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty… I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”

“Ah, so that is what it means,” I thought. “This is what true freedom looks like.”

Perhaps the fullness of a human life is not ultimately determined by external circumstances, but by our inner orientation: by what guides us, by our relationship with God, and by whether we seek to live according to His commandments.

A person whose spirit is united with the source of inexhaustible strength and grace need not be enslaved by the things that frighten us and from which the Universal Declaration of Human Rights seeks to protect us. External freedom remains precious and indispensable. But there is another freedom that no law can grant and no political system can guarantee: freedom of the spirit.

This may also explain why people throughout history have fought so desperately for freedom. Human beings were created by God to be free. Yet we often fail to understand that our deepest task is not merely to secure physical freedom, but to discover freedom within ourselves.

And how do we reach it?

Perhaps the first step is to look beyond external forms of oppression and recognize the slavery within—the slavery of sin.

How unfree we become when we are consumed by envy, anger or resentment. And how light the heart can suddenly feel when we admire rather than envy, return good for evil, and forgive.

If we truly want to become free, perhaps we should spend less time searching for someone to blame and more time learning to forgive those who have hurt us, whoever they may be. Instead of envying what others possess, we can learn to share what we have.

In other words, freedom begins with the difficult work of cultivating the heart.

We have to turn over its soil, uproot what has taken hold there, and drive out the greatest slave-master of all: pride. Only then, perhaps, can peace begin to enter the heart. And with that peace comes the One who has everything in abundance—the One who can strengthen us and grant us a freedom that no external circumstance can take away.

It is then that we may finally understand, by contrast, how heavy the yoke of sin really is—and how light the yoke of the Lord can be.

Perhaps this is the paradox of freedom: we spend much of our lives trying to remove the chains placed upon us by others, while the most important chains may be the ones we have allowed to grow within ourselves.

True freedom begins when we learn to let them go.