Reformation Sunday

John 8:31-36 - Reformation Sunday - October 26, 2014
Jesus Sets Us Free

Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you remain in My word, you are truly My disciples. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s seed, and have never been enslaved. How can You say, ‘You will be made free’?”

Jesus answered them, “Amen amen I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And a slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. Therefore if the Son frees you, you shall certainly be free.”

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When Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by executive order in 1863, the opponents of slavery rejoiced.  Though the war was not yet over, they had won the day.  They had fought against the institution of slavery for so long and finally the institution was crumbling.  Those who had been held against their will and forced to labor under a heavy burden were pronounced free to reap the fair value of their work.  No longer would they be held captive, but would work for wages as free agents.  No longer would they be bred like cattle so that their sons and daughters could be sold and forced to work for someone else’s profit.  They were free and so were their children. 

So what did they do?  Did they all draft up resumes and get well-paying jobs?  Did they begin to open up their own businesses and pull themselves up by their bootstraps?  No!  Most of them continued to work for their former masters.  That’s all they knew.  Sadly, the legal declaration of their freedom achieved very little in reality.

While the abolitionists and politicians in the North applauded themselves for their moral victory, the former slaves of the South saw very little of that victory for many years to come.  They still lived and worked like slaves, under the oversight of the men and women who previously owned them.  And the children they bore found themselves just as stuck in the poverty and dependence that their parents had known for generations, since they got paid so little for their work. 

Obviously much more cultural transformation and even further legislation were needed to correct the evil of American slavery.  And in many cases it did eventually come.  But this sad historical reality serves as an example of a spiritual lesson:

What is it that sets us free from our sin
and from the tyranny of the law that condemns us?  

Does God simply decree to all the angels in heaven and to the devil below that we are no longer slaves to the sin into which we were born, and that we are free from the judgment of the law?  And then while the battle continues to rage where we live, where sin and death continue to reign in our mortal bodies, and as we continue to work as slaves to fulfill the law, does God sit in some distant place congratulating himself for having loosed our chains?  No!  Our redemption must be published.  And it is.  More than that, our oppressors must be stripped of their power and publicly shamed.  And they are.  We must be brought out of our bondage and into a new place where we are no longer compelled to live in sin, or to work for wages under the harsh demands of the law.  And we are. 

This place that God brings us is to himself.  He brings us to himself by teaching us his word.  He forgives us our sins and covers us with the righteousness of Christ who obeyed the law for us.  He shows us his favor toward us by giving us life for death.  He makes us, who were slaves to sin, into children of God.  He looses our chains by taking them off of us.  And then he wraps them around sin, death, and the devil instead.  And once he has bound these enemies of ours, he throws them into depths of the sea.  He raises us to honor and gives us wealth beyond measure so that we become the masters of the law that previously owned us.  We owe the law nothing.  It can do us no harm.  Now the law must obey us.  We put the law to work by using it to serve our neighbor and to give glory to God.  We don’t do it for wages.  We do it as free lords and masters who already own all things. 

The American slaves were set free.  But they still continued to do all the things that slaves do.   The Emancipation Proclamation was for most people a mere legal fiction.  It called all slaves free, legally, but had no real power to make it so. 

We are set free from sin.  But do we continue to live in the same manner as slaves?  Do we continue to obey our fleshly desires that have brought us condemnation and death?  Do we continue to submit to the law in order to earn God’s blessings like slaves?  Or are we truly freed from our former master?  Are we truly free to live new lives that are pleasing and acceptable to our Redeemer God?  And are we free to do so with a good conscience, knowing that our many sins cannot accuse or claim us anymore? 

Certainly the latter is the truth.  And this truth is what sets us free. 

Our justification is not a legal fiction.  It isn’t something that God says, but that has no real bearing on our day-to-day life.  It effects and changes our day-to-day life, because it gives us eternal life, a life that we possess right now by faith.  When God says what he says, he accomplishes what he means to accomplish.  His word is efficacious.  So when God says that we are righteous in his sight, and that all our sins are completely washed away by Jesus’ blood, the word he here speaks actually makes us righteous, it actually removes our sin from us.  It determines reality.  We might not feel or notice the change.  But God does.  We will continue to struggle against sinful desires and fall into the same vices and doubts that enslave the rest of mankind by nature.  We will still hear the thundering of the law condemn what we see and feel in our hearts.  But God speaks a better word, a word that silences the law. 

And God speaks not just something that we wish were true.  He doesn’t speak something that he pretends is true.  No!  He speaks according to reality.  Our sin is paid for.  The law is fulfilled.  He declares us righteous, because he no longer looks at us according to what we have done or what we deserve.  He looks at us and sees what Christ has done, what Christ deserves. 

God is just.  In order to deal with sin, he cannot simply declare that sin no longer matters.  That would not be just.  To end our enslavement, he cannot simply declare that we are free by some sort of executive order.  That would not actually free us from anything.  And yet he who is just is also the one who justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.  He truly sets us free.  And this is because Jesus is the propitiation for our sins.  This means that Jesus satisfied God’s wrath by joining us in our bondage and submitting to the law like a slave in our place.  And having done so perfectly, he suffered for our sins as our Substitute.  And so for his sake, God who is justly displeased with sin is nonetheless merciful to sinners.  He frees us from guilt.  He gives us freedom to live under his grace. 

Sin is real.  So is Christ.  Our guilt is not just a feeling.  It is a pronouncement from God – a verdict of judgment against our sin that God’s law thunders.  When we feel our guilt, this is not a psychological phenomenon.  Rather, we are simply feeling the reality that God’s verdict is true.  God presses his law upon us so that we might know our slavery and feel our need for redemption.  But in the face of what we feel, we must listen to what God says about this verdict.  He says that “he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). 

God made Christ to be our sin by declaring the verdict against him in our place.  This means that even when we feel the sting of the law, even when we feel the reality of guilt, the gospel speaks a greater reality – that the judgment of the law has been removed from us and has been spoken against Jesus as he suffered the punishment we deserved.  He felt it.  He alone felt the reality of God’s righteous wrath.  God is just.  And he meted out his justice by taking it out on his only-begotten Son in our place.  He is the propitiation for our sin.  This means he propitiated God – he laid aside God’s wrath by enduring all of it himself.  For his sake, God is not angry at us, but is merciful and kind. 

And conversely, the perfectly free life that the Son lived – the life in which he freely loved God and kept his word, the life in which he freely loved his neighbor and served him completely – this life is declared ours; this righteousness is our verdict.  This is justification.  It is not a process.  It is a verdict.  God says it.  He imputes your sin to Christ and imputes his obedience to you.  The Son makes you free.  When you remain in his word, it is this pronouncement, this verdict, this declaration in which you abide, that makes you disciples of Jesus, and that sets you eternally free. 

That is why we teach what Christ would have us teach.  It is a better speech than the Emancipation Proclamation, because it actually creates the faith by which we receive the fulfilled reality.  The Emancipation Proclamation produced high hopes that dwindled into disappointment as racism and poverty continued.  But God’s proclamation that we are righteous in his sight produces a hope that cannot be disappointed — because although we continue to live as sinners, God’s word continues to declare us righteous for Jesus’ sake. 

Today we celebrate the Lutheran Reformation, when this gospel was brought to light again through the faithful preaching of God’s servant Martin Luther.  It had been shrouded in darkness for generations.  Luther was taught that he had to earn God’s grace.  The Roman Catholic Church then, as it still does today, taught that the call of the gospel meant that we are called from slavery to working for wages.  They taught, and still teach, that grace is a gift that enables us to earn God’s favor by fulfilling our duties through free will.  The Roman Catholic doctrine of grace claims that the gospel sets us free.  But then it demands that former slaves who are set free must work for the same old masters that demand perfect obedience and that require us to earn God’s good favor.  But this is not true.  It is false.  This does not set free.  It enslaves.  It denies to the conscience the peace that Jesus died and rose to win. 

When we speak of freedom as children of God, we’re not talking about working for wages as free agents with free will – pulling ourselves up by our sanctified bootstraps.  No, we’re talking about a status that God gives us by grace alone.  We are free indeed.  His word makes us holy by setting us apart with Christ our Lord, so that we have his righteousness and not our own.  Grace does not grow by our participation.  We receive it freely.  It is God’s favor.  And by faith’s anticipation, we enjoy the freedom that will be fully realized in paradise.  We enjoy it to in part by freely giving ourselves to one another, knowing that no wages are needed and no shackle needs yet to be broken. 

We celebrate the Reformation because this faith of ours is something to openly defend and proclaim.  It is not private, this faith of ours.  It is public.  God makes it public by declaring to all creation that we are free indeed.  There is no underground railroad to heaven.  We are not secretly whisked away from slavery under the noses of our oppressors – that is, while sin has us marked and the law weighs us down.  No, it is public.  We dine at the feast of salvation in the sight of the whole world.  It is a table set before us in the presence of our enemies, as our favorite Psalm teaches.  This means that our enemies – our sin that seeks to define us, and the law that will always accuse us – must watch as we are led on an open road to eternal life through the blood of Christ. 

We are led in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.  This means that we don’t hide from the law.  We stand righteous by faith in God’s public declaration.  We are free.  The Son has set us free.  He’s by our side upon the plain with his good gifts and Spirit.  That is, he is with us through his word and sacraments.  We make use of them.  We go to church.  We listen.  We are his disciples because what he teaches us is no hopeful fiction.  It is not what God wants to be true.  It is not what we must imagine is true.  Our faith receives what is true.  And just as surely as God’s word applies only to sinners who find no worthiness in themselves today, so surely will God’s word bring us to perfect perfection on the Day of Christ Jesus when all things will be placed under our feet forever. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.