[John 8:31-36] So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” 33They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?”
34Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. 35The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. 36So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
The Way to Freedom
Once every four years, Reformation Sunday takes place shortly before a presidential election. This time of year, at best, there is much thought about core principals – freedom, liberty, justice – and their opposites – injustice, slavery, oppression.
These issues were not unfamiliar to the political landscape of first century Judea in the time of Jesus. God’s people lived in a nation ruled by another and hoped for freedom. It was on their mind all the time. Yet it is never what Jesus talked about.
Jesus, the Son of God made man, instead talks about a different, much truer, and more-necessary-to-address version of these issues – true freedom and slavery, true justice and injustice.
What are the concerns of freedom and justice, or injustice, on your mind? And can you think about what Jesus is talking about instead, even during an election year?
You are not first and foremost citizens of a nation. You are not first and foremost political beings who are freed or oppressed, or empowered, by laws and rulers. You are not first and foremost economic beings, freed or oppressed by finances and goods.
These things matter, but they have their place. They are not infinite. Their time is limited. These are important temporal issues.
You are a creature of God – first and foremost. You are a being created by God, in His image, as a moral creature – a creature that is accountable to right and wrong – and you therefore have issues that last forever. Eternal issues.
Eternal issues continue to affect you, for better or worse, even after you die, forever. As a created human being, you last forever, for better or worse, free or slave – eternal life or eternal death.
Jesus speaks of these eternal things which affect you most both right now and forever. He says, “Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever.” And, “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
So what is freedom? Is freedom the absence of commandments or rules? Is it self-determination? Following my desires? Is oppression having a Ruler who tells me who I am, what I am, and what I’m to do?
The truth is, we all have a ruler. The absence of commandments or rules is only freedom like a bridge free of a guard rail. The possibility of falling rules over me. Whereas the rule of a guardrail gives me the freedom of safety.
Self-determination is free like being lost in the woods is free. No one telling you where to go or how you must get there. Free and lost, on your own.
Freedom to follow my desires makes me a slave to what those desires or appetites are, which are often not good, and desire always increases its demands.
Freedom which casts off God and His commandments is slavery. That’s sin, the true slavery. And the worst slavery is that slavery of casting God from His throne and putting myself in His place – the slavery of being my own God, my own Lord, and my own Savior.
So, what is true freedom? True freedom for a creature is being a creature. Living within our limitations as creatures and having God as our God. The true freedom is to have our Creator as our Lord – and to have His Son as our Savior.
At the core of Christianity – and the core of the Lutheran Reformation – is the answer to this question: How am I, a sinner, set right with God and made His again? How am I delivered from sin’s slavery and restored to freedom and life with God?
Yet, in every age, temporal issues – often, temporal politics – get in the way of the answer.
The Israelites Jesus was speaking to in our Gospel were off focus. The issue of Roman rule over their nation became the thing that their relationship with God was all about. So they lashed out and said, “We’re not anyone’s slave!”, and therefore missed Jesus’ point.
In sixteenth-century Europe, for those in power, a big purpose of the Church was unity in the empire –to keep the peoples united, and thereby their armies united, against outside forces. The truth of Scripture was not their top concern if it disrupted that political unity.
Today, in this nation, the Christian faith is commandeered by political movements – of both varieties, in different ways – and the purpose of Christianity and the Church seems to become that of making our country a good place to live.
But this isn’t the purpose of our Christian faith. Even if anyone fully accomplished it, it still wouldn’t free a single soul from slavery nor set any person right with God.
The freedom Jesus brought us come by His death and resurrection in the place of sinners and by what the Bible calls “justification by faith, not by works.”
Jesus, who by nature is free – holy, not a sinner, the Son of God – carried the sins of all mankind on the cross and made your sin His own. He is holy and righteous, but died as a slave to sin in your place.
Jesus’ death on the cross made “propitiation” for our sins – it was a self-giving offering and sacrifice that appeased God’s wrath, paid our debt, and satisfied the requirement of justice against our sins.
“For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith.” [Romans 3:22-26]
To be righteous, justified, set right with God, is alone by faith in what Jesus has fully done for your salvation.
“By works of the law no human being will be justified in His sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin” – the ten commandments show our slavery to sin – “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law” – and all Scripture, the “Law and the Prophets”, testify to this – “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe… For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” [Romans 3:20-28]
“Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt. But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness, just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works: ‘Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, And whose sins are covered; Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin.’” [Romans 4:3-8]
This Biblical teaching, that you are counted righteous to God by faith in what Jesus has done for you and not by your own works – “just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness” – is the word and truth Jesus came for that frees you from sin’s slavery, because you are forgiven, and delivers you back to God to have Him as your Lord.
My sinful nature which wants me to be my own Lord and Savior – and one side of politics concerned with achieving social justice – and another side of politics concerned with preserving western culture – and those whose main concern is building a moral society – none of these have much use for this core doctrine of the Christian faith that sinners are made right with God by faith alone in Jesus apart from their works.
Liberal and conservative, justification by faith is the teaching that is not useful for temporal concerns. So, it goes by the wayside or, at times, is even hated. This is what happens in the church on this side of heaven again and again.
The continued purpose of the Lutheran Reformation is to put the justification of the sinner by faith alone in Jesus – this eternal concern – at the forefront.
Even in election years – and other years – and on Sunday mornings – and Monday through Saturday – faith in Jesus Christ for eternal salvation is the issue of the day for each of you. For you, and for your neighbor who doesn’t yet know or understand what Jesus has done for them. And for those who need consolation.
This one issue is what makes the difference for you and them for the better, forever. Amen.
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