Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our
Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Are you afraid? Are you very, very
afraid? Many of our fears develop out of ignorance. Out of a lack of
information. They arise because we don’t have adequate knowledge about
someone or something. Since we’re unsure about them, or the
potential consequences of dealing with them, we keep our distance.
Sometimes this caution is healthy and helpful, protecting us from harm and
danger in situations we haven’t faced before. This can be wise until we
have the opportunity to find out more and make a better judgment about how to
proceed. Other times, we simply don’t want to pursue the truth, and so we
let our ignorance develop into assumptions or prejudices.
When we do make the effort to discover
the truth, however, often we discover that our initial fears were
unfounded. It was simply our lack of knowledge that caused us to remain
captive to these fears.
Discovering the truth, then, moved us from a
state of bondage to a state of freedom—of new-found confidence. Perhaps
even to happiness and a boldness to find out even more. To grow less and
less fearful.
Some might think it ironic that the motto of
the Central Intelligence Agency is taken from the Bible. In fact, it comes
from our Gospel lesson for today. That motto is, “The Truth Will Set You
Free.” Whoever selected this motto may or may not have been a Christian,
but he recognized a fundamental fact: There is a tremendous power in the
truth. In matters of national security, knowing the truth about our
adversaries can help us focus resources and prepare to meet challenges.
This fact applies to us in other aspects of
life as well. Knowing the truth removes fear. It breaks the bonds
which keep us captive. It is a freeing power that lets us breathe a deep
sigh of relief and move ahead with confidence.
Today’s Gospel lesson speaks of Bondage,
Truth, and Freedom. It shows the distinction between Law and Gospel, and
it clearly demonstrates the difference between a worldly perspective and a
heavenly viewpoint. We celebrate the Reformation of the Christian Church
today. We remember the actions of those brave and inspired men who helped
spark the development of what has become known as Lutheran doctrine.
We can be thankful that God brought the truth
to them. We can be thankful that this truth has been faithfully handed
down to us through nearly five centuries. We can breathe a sigh of relief
that it has led us, and those who share this faith, out of bondage to fear and
uncertainty.
We can further rejoice that it has led us into
freedom and confidence in that truth which knows we are made God’s beloved
children—not by our own struggles and works and merits, but solely by the gift
of faith in God’s redeeming work in Christ, and for His sake alone.
As Jesus speaks to the Jews in our lesson
today, it becomes apparent that He is dealing with those who had initially
believed in Him, but were now falling away. Perhaps they were looking for
a different sort of Messiah—one to triumph over their worldly oppressors rather
than their eternal enemies. Perhaps they couldn’t handle His claims to be
the Son of God. Perhaps His message that they were sinful and needed to
repent offended them.
For whatever reason they were now rejecting
Him, Jesus makes it clear that only by holding faithfully to His teaching would
they belong to Him, would they truly be His followers. If they did so,
they would be blessed to know the truth, and be set free. Their response
shows all too well that they did not understand His message of divine truth at
all, for they replied not only with a worldly focus, but dishonestly.
Never in bondage, they said? Even in a
worldly sense, this was patently false. The Egyptians, Assyrians,
Babylonians, Persians, Medes, and Greeks had all had their turns as the masters
over God’s chosen people.
Even now, the Romans ruled Palestine, and a
despised non-Israelite figurehead king, Herod, shared responsibility for
governing their land. But Jesus looks beyond their prideful claims of
ancestry and false freedom, to the enemy which had held them and all people
captive since that fateful day in Eden:
“I tell you the truth,” Jesus said. “Everyone who sins is a slave to sin.”[1]
Sounds like you and me, doesn’t it? Paul writes in today’s Epistle lesson
a phrase we have heard often and should continually take to heart: “There
is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”[2]
And this lack of difference is not only between believers and unbelievers.
Paul is pointing out that no matter how we may
classify people as good or bad, better or worse, in God’s eyes all mankind
could be considered unholy, unrighteous, damnable sinners who deserve nothing but
death and eternal punishment. You and I have no more a valid claim on
being forgiven and allowed to live than the most notorious criminal, the
cruelest dictator, the most immoral and evil person. As one of the rites
of confession reads, “we confess that we are in bondage to sin, and cannot free
ourselves.”
Whether our bondage to sin puts long or short
chains on us, or burdens us with heavy or light yokes, we are still
slaves. We would still only be second-class, temporary members of God’s
household. When our time in servitude was over, we would be cast out,
discarded, banished with no birthright and no inheritance.
In large part, it was through reading the book
of Romans that Martin Luther was led to the theological discoveries which
helped trigger the Reformation. Like the people of Israel in their early
times, the Church had in its early centuries been largely faithful to the
Lord’s direction. Like Abraham’s offspring, it had overcome numerous
threats and obstacles to become His chosen instrument of light to all nations,
leading many in the way of salvation.
Yet over the centuries, like those Israelites,
the Church had drifted away. Men began to rely on their own judgment,
their own guidelines, their own interpretation of God’s will, rather than going
to the source of all knowledge and truth itself.
What had started out as Christ’s own pure
bride, married to the perfect truth of the Word made flesh, the Church had
become a perverse harlot, ruled by fleshly powers who claimed their own word to
be the truth. In their quest for power, fame, and glory, they had imposed
rules and rites so complex and precise and rigid as to make a Pharisee blush.
Even a faithful follower such as this
Wittenburg monk, who conscientiously tried to conform to all the Church’s
guidelines, was driven to despair. He literally beat himself up over his
sin, and lived in terror and agony. Luther was convinced of his own
perpetual damnation to the point of being angry with God for making his life in
the Church so hopeless. But it was not God who had made Martin’s life so
hopeless. It was Luther himself.
In trying to please God through the
performance of works, through the keeping of the Law, Luther recognized his own
weakness and unrighteousness and sinfulness. So it is for us as
well. Among the truths that Jesus spoke, and that Paul wrote, and that
Luther discovered, we have this: That everyone who sins, every one of us,
is a slave to sin. That through the law we become conscious of that
sin. We realize that we can do nothing of ourselves but remain silent in
the presence of the holy and perfect God to whom we are accountable. We
have fallen short of His glory, and our sentence for this shortfall is our
death.
The Jews to whom Jesus was speaking this day
chose to remain under the Old Covenant. They put their reliance for their
righteousness and salvation on their ancestry and their imperfect conformance
to the Law.
But Jesus was speaking of a New
Covenant. Not the broken covenant of works, which was not kept by Israel
or by any of us. Rather, this New Covenant would be one in which God
would imprint His will in men’s minds and hearts through the working of the
Holy Spirit. And whether we are the greatest or the least, we will know
the Lord, we will know the truth, and He “will forgive [our] wickedness and
remember [our] sin no more.”[3]
When this wickedness is forgiven, and this sin
remembered no more, we become righteous in God’s sight. Not righteous
because we ourselves are blameless, but a righteousness which originates in God
Himself. Righteousness which comes to us—in the phrase of the
Reformation—by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
Grace alone
because it is God’s free and generous gift to undeserving sinners. Faith
alone because we cannot gain it by works or spiritual struggles. Christ
alone because only He was the perfect sacrifice of atonement, whose blood
redeemed your sorry selves from the debtor’s prison of eternal hell. By
His suffering and death, you have been justified. By His feeling the
wrathful punishment of God’s divine justice against all that is sinful and
unholy, you are declared “not guilty”, freed from your death sentence.
Jesus said that those who hold to His teaching
would be His disciples—that is, those who are placed under His discipline, His
guidance. And His teaching is this: that He was the incarnate Son
of God, and that He would die for the sins of the whole world. That He
would rise again on the third day, and that we should love and serve God and
our neighbor until He returns again in glory.
How much more blessed it is to remain under
the easy yoke of Christ than the unbearable burden of sin and the devil’s
accusations! Jesus, in the words of a hymn, “breaks the cruel oppressor’s
rod, and sets the prisoner free.”
We can only be made free by the truth, the
certainty that Jesus is the long-promised Messiah, and that His life and death
and resurrection provide the means for the forgiveness of sins, reconciliation
to God, and the assurance of salvation. To know the truth is to know the
Son.
THE SON, IS THE TRUTH WHO SETS US FREE FROM BONDAGE TO SIN.
In your baptism, you were not only washed
clean of sin and made a child of God from that day forth. For the power
of the Word and the water instantly corroded, dissolved, and broke the chains
of sin’s bondage under which so much of humanity continues to dwell.
Yet we live in liberty, rejoicing in the
Gospel of Christ even while seeking all the more to be obedient to God and to
show love to our neighbors. As Luther wrote:
“We must distinguish between the Christian life lived in faith and that
lived in love. Faith is queen over all laws; the Christian means to be
justified through grace alone, and so he is free from all laws. But in
the other area, that of love, the Christian is subject to all laws, bears the
Law and the burdens of the Law according to the old man, seeks to serve and to
promote the good of his neighbor.” [4]
Furthermore, Luther wrote:
“A Christian is a free lord of all and subject to no one. A
Christian is a ministering servant of all and subject to everyone.” [5]
We have been freed of our sins and the
condemnation of death and eternal punishment, and granted our liberty in
Christ, the Son and the truth who has set us and all Christians free. In
the Reformation, the Church likewise was freed of the shackles of man-made law
and regulation. It was given once more to spreading the Gospel message of
forgiveness of sins and life everlasting, by grace through faith in the merits
of Christ alone, without any worthiness on our parts. We go forth from
this day forward, redeemed and justified, with the mission our Lord has given
us all.
A final quote from the blessed Reformer:
“The greatest of all services to my fellow man is to free him from
sins, to liberate him from the devil and hell. But how is this
done? Through the Gospel, by…telling him that he should cling to the
works of Christ and firmly believe that Christ’s righteousness is his, and his
sins are Christ’s. This, I say, is the greatest service I can render my
fellow man.” [6]
God has given us our freedom in Christ, the
Son and the truth, the way and the life. May He keep His Church in
faithful and loving bondage only to His truth, free to love and serve Him and
His people, according to His Word.
In the Way, and the Truth, and the Life, Jesus
Christ: Amen.
[1]
John 8:34, NIV
[2]
Romans 3:22b-23, NIV
[3]
Jeremiah 31:34b, NIV
[4]
Luther’s Works, Weimar Edition, Volume 26, page 17
[5]
Luther’s Works, Erlangen Edition, Volume 27, page 176
[6]
Luther’s Works, St. Louis Edition, Volume 11, page 747
