Pentecost 22 (Reformation) John 8:31-36
October 27, 2013
Fellow disciples of Jesus Christ,
Few subjects arouse morepassion and debate than the subject of freedom. Nations fight valiantly to gain and defend their freedom. Every prisoner dreamsof being free and every debtor looks for the day when they’ll be debt free.
Freedom was the desire in the heart of MartinLuther, too. His question was, "How can a sinner become rightbefore God and enjoy the freedom of having his pleasure?"He devoted his life to findingthe answer; but the more he tried to break free from God’s condemnation over sin, the deeper his heart sank into the solitaryconfinement of guilt and depression. He surrendered to the fact thathis soul – every soul – is in bondage to thepower of sin, a bondage so powerful no one can escape from it.
Jesus spoke of freedom in theseverses of John's gospel, too.Not asa dream or an achievement, butas a gift he freely gives. Many sinners then and now thrill to hear the good news. But shocking as it may sound, many wanted no part of this freedom because they would not accept the fact thatthey were in bondage. They imagined they were already free. And that is the worst bondage.
Like Martin Luther, you and I want to be freeto enjoy God's pleasure, too, andlike Martin Luther, wethrill to hear Jesus tell us that we are free. Now he wants us toKNOW WHAT IT MEANS TO BE FREE!
- The Son sets us free
Several years ago I read about a woman whoturned herself into the police for a murder shehad taken part in 26 years earlier. The investigationhad become a cold case, so she’dactually "gotten away withmurder". Yet a quarter of a century later she walked into a police station and admitted her crime. Whenasked why she gave up her freedom to go to jail, she commented: "I wasn’t free. I’vealready been in prison all these years."
That story is a testimony to the power of a God-given conscience. No matter how free a personappears to be on the outside, the guilt of sin hasthe heart in bars and chains. Weknow what we've done; worse yet, we suspect that Godknows, too. Likethe woman who lived as a fugitive allthose years, every sinner lives in hidingfrom the judgment of God. And call it what you will - that is not freedom.God’sinvestigation is neverclosed, and one day sinners will be forced to "turn ourselves in" to him at death to continue our sentence in hell.
Martin Luther knew just how that woman felt whenhe entered a monastery.There he went into hiding, hoping toclear his conscience and find freedom from God’s sentence of hellbefore he had to meet his Judge face-to-face. Yet all his prayers,fasts, andself-inflicted punishments only made him realize how impossible it is to escape from guilt.Once a sin is committed, it is history, and historycannot be changed. No matter how pious and serioushe tried to be, the fact of sin inthe past could not be undone. And he kept adding more sins every day!Instead of findingfreedom, the chains of guilt tightenedaround his soul. A sinner can offer Godnothing that is pure and holy because italways comes from an unclean heart. What arrogance, what an insult to God’s holiness, to imaginesthat anyone couldever pay the damages with a few years of good behavior! No one can ever be free from God’s judgment!
No one, that is, except those whom God sets free.Jesus made this astounding claim: "If you hold tomyteaching, you are really my disciples. Then youwill know the truth, and the truth will set youfree." Martin Luther's problemwasn’t that freedom was beyond his reach.Jesus’ teaching, the Bible,was open before him constantly. The problem, as it was for so many of his day and still is today, is that he wasn't holdingto Jesus'teaching. He washolding to his own reasoning and the reasoning of others who werejust as much in bondage to guilt as he was. So God drew Luther’s burdened, bruised, and beaten conscience to look only at HisWord, and that Word brought Jesus to Luther and brought Luther to Jesus.
"If you hold to my teaching” - literally“If you REMAIN in the word which is mine”… “you will know thetruth". And this is the truth:only God can setus free from the punishment due us for our sins,and this freedom comes through Christ alone. This isn’t just an “emancipation proclamation” from God, like a master who decides to sethis slaves free. This is an act of justice. It was earned for us when God’s own Son made himself a slave to our sin and turned himself into pay our death penaltyin hell by suffering sin’s curse for us. Jesus set us free from the consuming fire of God’s eternal wrath by enduring his wrath in our place.He set us free from livingour lives in hiding, just waiting for the inevitable day when we must turn ourselves in.
2 The Son keeps us free
“You will KNOW the truth.” There are two words in Greek for “to know”. One word means to know the facts about something. The other word means to experience those facts for yourself. For instance, a man knows the facts that giving birth to a child is painful. But a woman knows by experience that it is painful. That’s the word Jesus used. “As my word, the truth, remains in you, you will know by experience what it means to be free.”
Youwant to be free. So do I. We want to be free from shame and guilt and the painful reminders of sins long ago. We’ve tried hiding it, denying it, justifying it, minimizing it, working it off, promising ourselves it won’t happen again, yet our sinful nature is a slave and keeps bowing to the devil’s will. We want to be free from the slavery of sin that continues to wrestle for control of our lips, our eyes, our ears, our hands and feet to think, say, and do what we know God condemns. Who will deliver us from this body of death? Only Jesus. He made us believers –disciples – through his Word in baptism. He continues to lead us and hold us as his disciples through his Word. As you remain in Jesus’ teaching youknow by experience the truth of what it means to be free. You personallyexperience the peace and joy of sin’s forgiven, freedom from the fear of death, and the triumphant will to say “no” to sin’s power in the face of temptation.You are free to live each day in the certainty of God’s love for you!
The story is told of a man who came to a frozen river and had to get to the other side. In fear he got down on his stomach and began to crawl across, trying desperately to spread out his weight and not crack the ice. Every time the ice shifted, as frozen waters commonly do, he thought for sure he would plunge into the frigid depths. Soon he heard the sound of whistling. He carefully turned to look behind him only to see a team of horses pulling a heavily loaded sleigh onto the ice. The driver kept right on whistling merrily all the way to the other side and disappeared through the trees. Sheepishly the man got up and finished his crossing confidently.
That’s the certainty Martin Luther lived all the rest of his life.He knew by experience what it means to be free because he knew exactly what God told him in his Word. He knew theTruth the same way you and I know it – through Jesus’ teaching. That’s how the Son set Luther free. That’s how the Son sets us free. In the Son’s teaching is where we need to remain. And we will be free indeed! Amen.