"Reformation Sunday"
John 8:31-36
10/29/06
Back
On this Reformation Sunday we are again given the
opportunity to rejoice and give thanks to our Lord that He has granted
that the Gospel of the forgiveness of our sins in our Savior Jesus
Christ be proclaimed in its truth and purity in the Church, that we
might be freed from our slavery to sin, death, and the devil, free to
worship God without fear, free to be the new creatures He’s made
us to be in Jesus Christ.
In a country that prides itself on how free it is
and how it believes the rest of the world should be just as free,
slavery is a foreign concept. Like the Jews in today’s text
who refused to accept that they were enslaved to anyone or anything,
it’s hard for us to accept that we too are an enslaved
people. This is no earthly enslavement, however, but an
enslavement to sin, and even the freest persons on earth are in bondage
to this tyrant, no matter how they might try to deny it. The sad
thing is that we don’t know that we’re enslaved to sin
apart from Jesus telling us that we are. And when He does tell
us, then we get angry with Him and reject it.
If I might use an analogy here... Being
enslaved to sin is like being enslaved to old age. Old age is
something we’re all enslaved to; sooner or later all of us are
going to get old (if we live long enough), and eventually we will
die. We can’t stop it, but we try to. And nobody
likes to be told that he’s old; we all want to think that we look
younger than we are. So, we try to hide our age. I
don’t think any of you came here today looking the way you did
when you got out of bed this morning. You probably looked in the
mirror like I did and said, “Ugh! What a mess!”
We look twice as old as we actually are when we first get up in the
morning (Or is that really our natural look?). So what do we
do? We shower, we style our hair, we shave, we put on deodorant
and cologne. Ladies, I’m not sure of everything you do, but
you might put on make-up, fix your hair, put on various lotions and
what-not. Look at how many commercials today advertise
age-defying remedies. What’s more, some of us go to the
gym, we diet, we exercise, and we even pick out certain types of
clothes, all in an attempt to cover up our age, to the point where we
deceive even ourselves into thinking that we have cheated old
age. For a time we think we have succeeded in freeing ourselves
from our slavery to aging, but time itself reveals that in fact we
haven’t. No matter how we try to hide it, old age always
wins in the end.
Now, that’s the way it is with sin.
It’s a condition to which we are all enslaved, and no matter how
hard we try to hide it, whether it’s by our good works or our
holy and godly living, we cannot free ourselves from it. While we
try to deceive both ourselves and others into thinking that we
don’t have this condition, Jesus says that we do, and any attempt
on our part to try to free ourselves from it only makes things
worse. It’s when we think we are most free from sin, that
we are most enslaved to it. And the more we think we are free to
sin, the more we are slaves of it.
The Lord’s Word reveals this truth to
us. Again, we could not and would not believe ourselves to be
enslaved to sin, if Jesus had not revealed this to us by His
Word. Like a doctor who tells you that your body is growing old
and wearing out, so Jesus diagnoses the illness that is the cause of
growing old, wearing out, and dying, and that is sin. The wages
of sin is death, and we all die because we are all sinners, and nothing
we can do will free us from this inevitability.
Jesus’ Word speaks the truth about us.
It says we are slaves of sin, and that we cannot free ourselves.
It tells us, too, that as slaves of sin we are under God’s wrath
and His sentence of both temporal and eternal death and
punishment. But Jesus’ Word not only tells us our problem;
it also tells us of the solution, and that is Jesus Himself. He
and He alone can and does set you free from your slavery to sin and its
consequences. He did this by putting Himself in your place,
putting Himself under the Law, putting Himself under sin, death, and
God’s wrath. Though He Himself was not a slave to sin, He
took on your sin at His Baptism and crucified it with Him on the cross,
where God’s wrath was completely poured out on Him, in order that
now, with His words of absolution, you are set free.
This is what the Office of the Keys is all
about. As our catechism reads, “The Office of the Keys is
that special authority which Christ has given to His Church on earth to
forgive the sins of repentant sinners, but to withhold forgiveness from
the unrepentant as long as they do not repent.” This
authority is given to Christ’s Church with the words that He
spoke to His disciples when on the day of His resurrection He breathed
on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive
anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they
are not forgiven.” The words of absolution that the pastor
speaks in Christ’s behalf are Christ’s words, so that when
the pastor forgives you your sins, it is just as valid and certain as
if Jesus Himself were dealing with you. These words are certain
and true, because they are the Lord’s words, and you can believe
that because they are proclaimed to you that you are free from sin and
that heaven is open to you.
Just as true as Jesus’ Word is that you by
nature are slaves to sin, so true is His Word that you are now free
from sin by way of the declaration that you are righteous before God
through faith in Jesus Christ. What does this freedom
entail? It means you are free from sin and its consequences, even
though you still sin and still grow old and die. God has washed
away your sin and clothed you with Christ in Baptism. You have
both died and risen to new life with Christ. God has transferred
you from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of His beloved
Son. You are free from sin; it was placed on Christ and atoned
for at the cross. Now you are also free from sin’s
consequences - God’s wrath, death, even aging. “But
we still grow old and die!” Yes, but that’s all
temporary and it’s going to be reversed at the
resurrection. The Bible even calls death now “sleep”
for the Christian, and Jesus promises that all who believe in Him will
never die, and that even though we die we will live. Jesus is our
Life. In His resurrection we have eternal life now and we see our
own bodily resurrection to come; Jesus is the first-fruits of the
resurrection of the dead. Just as Jesus died, so you will die,
but just as He was raised to life from the dead, so you will be raised
to life from the dead.
In Jesus you have been freed from sin, death, the
power of the devil, God’s wrath, and life under the Law along
with its condemnation and coercion. But you have also been freed
for the purpose of living under God’s grace, living as His free
people, free to live as God intended you to live in the beginning, free
to live in loving service towards one another. Jesus, the Son of
God, has made you all free sons of God in Him, so that you might live
as His free sons both before God and before your neighbor. Luther
puts it this way: “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of
all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant
of all, subject to all.” Our freedom is not a freedom to
live any way we want to, a freedom to live for ourselves, or a freedom
to go back to living in slavery to sin, but a freedom to be the new
creatures in Christ God has made us to be in our Baptism.
Now, because we fail daily at living out our
freedom, we continue to live under God’s declaration of
righteousness and His words of forgiveness. With His Word the Son
has set you free from your sin and He continues to free you from your
sin. Forgiveness is not a word that is to be heard only
once. The Reformation was about bringing this word back into the
pulpit, where the forgiveness of sins for Christ’s sake was to be
proclaimed regularly. Because we are still sinners, we are in
constant need of hearing this emancipation proclamation from our Lord
on a daily basis. And where are we to go to hear it? To the
Word of Christ. And where has God made this Word available?
In the Bible, in the sermon, in Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, in
confession and absolution, in the words of forgiveness that Christians
speak to one another. How often should you hear the Lord’s
absolution? You should hear it at least as often as you try to
defy your age, because just as you daily growing older, so you daily
revert back to your slavery under sin. But as Jeremiah says in
the book of Lamentations, “The LORD’S mercies indeed never
cease, for His compassions never fail; they are new every
morning.” God’s mercy and compassion are new to you
every day, because you’ve got more sins every day to which they
can be applied. And so God makes His Word abundantly available to
you, so that you can receive His abundant pardon and peace on a daily
basis.
Jesus says it’s those who abide in His Word
that are His true disciples. True disciples of Jesus listen to
His Word; they hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it; they do not
despise it or keep themselves from it. A person who does this has
become enslaved all over again to sin. But by abiding in
Christ’s Word we learn the truth, both about ourselves and about
our Savior. We are indeed and in truth sinners, unable to free
ourselves from our slavery to sin, death, and the devil. But we
have a Savior who with His shed blood has opened the doors of our
prison and released us, making us sons of God, and granting us
citizenship in His kingdom of grace. Jesus is the Son, the Word,
the Truth that sets you free. Hear His words of forgiveness for
yourself again today, and live under that freedom now and
forever. Amen.