Pastor Tom Johnson, October 31, 2021
Jesus says that the truth of his Word will set people free. But those who hear it claim they have no need for liberation. They say they have never been slaves to anyone. Really? That’s quite a claim. Let’s do a quick inventory. The Hebrews spent 430 years in slavery in Egypt. A few hundred years later ten tribes are driven out of Israel and taken as slaves to Assyria. 150 years later, the Babylonians destroy Jerusalem, the temple, and take the people of the southern kingdom into exile. You’ll remember the four Hebrew slaves named Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. A few decades after that, the Persians. Later, the Greeks under Alexander the Great take over the entire region including Israel. They are followed by the Romans who are now overlords of the entire nation of Israelites. And yet they say, “We have never been slaves to anyone.”
Ludicrous. That’s what I want Jesus to say. But rather than try to win an argument. Jesus wants to win their freedom. He pushes things deeper. He goes beyond physical slavery and political captivity. He says all humanity are slaves to sin. “Everyone who commits sins is a slave to sin.” Jesus wants to reform their understanding of the plight of the human condition. He wants us to know just how bad things are. Sin is missing the mark of God’s perfect righteousness. It is not loving God with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength. It is not loving our neighbor as ourselves or as Christ has loved us. Sin is we we do and fail to do to fulfill God’s righteousness.
But, as Jesus reminds us in our Scripture, sin is also the power that wants to rule over us. You’ll remember this was God’s warning to Cain before he killed his brother Abel. “Sin is crouching at the door and its desire is to be master over you.” The United States, China, and Russia are powerful nations. But sin is the world’s superpower. Sin has gone global. It has conquered every nation, tribe, tongue, and people. Every human being is subject to this evil imperialism called sin. It is a disturbing truth. We do not sin simply because to choose to. We do harm to others, to ourselves, to our planet; and, even more disturbing, we sin against God because there is something driving us. Sin is our slave master. We also might say, “I am not a slave to sin.” It would be as ludicrous as the Israelites’ claim in our passage that they have no history of slavery.
In Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount he also reforms our understanding of sin and ourselves. He says that we are guilty of murder and adultery if we have anger and lust in our hearts. We do not even need to act on sin for it to be lurking in our hearts and poisoning our souls. It already has us captive and under its dominion. This reformation of our understanding of ourselves is the first step toward freedom. It is why the German reformer Martin Luther described the church of his day, who believed that we can earn eternal life through good works, a “Babylonian captivity.” Many believers were living and teaching a false, misleading dream—that we can be good enough, we can pray enough, we can give enough to earn God’s good graces. No, our condition is so bad and sin has such a strong hold on us that only God can break us free from its power. Only the Son of God can emancipate us from the tyranny of sin, evil, and death. Only the Word made flesh can liberate us to faithful living, love, and hope in the Good News of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.
Reforming our understanding of sin and our human condition is liberating because it also reforms our understanding of grace, forgiveness, and eternal life in Christ. We realize that we need the power of almighty God to break us free from the superpowers of sin, evil, and death. Martin Luther and those that joined his quest for the truth of the Gospel called themselves reformers because they wanted to reform our view of ourselves and reform our view of God through Scripture so that we would live out the full joy and hope of our Christian vocation. But this is not a one-time thing. We do not just reform and fine-tune our spiritual outlook once; and then we are done. No, we continue to name those areas of our lives and the life of the church where we fall short of the glory of God. You’ll remember the Berean christians in Acts chapter 17 who examined the scriptures daily to see if what the Apostle Paul was teaching was true.Long before the Reformation, sixth century theologian St. Augustine said Ecclesia semper reformanda—the church always reforming.
So we should be malleable, teachable, and maintain a growth mindset. Jesus is the capital T “Truth.” He is, as he will a few chapters later in John, “the way and the truth and the life.” He alone is the way to a saving relationship with God the Father. We are now set free from living in denial of the devastating impact of sin on our lives as individuals and as a human race. We are now liberated from selfish and meaningless living. The ransom for our emancipation has been paid for by the blood of Jesus. We have been made daughters and sons of God by grace through faith. It is a gift of God through the Person and work of Jesus Christ. We are free to serve God and our neighbor—not out of fear—not out of obligation or compulsion—but out of genuine life-transformation, gratitude, and praise.
It was a false, misleading dream
That God His Law had given
That sinners could themselves redeem
And by their works gain heaven.
The Law is but a mirror bright
To bring the inbred sin to light
That lurks within our nature.
Faith clings to Jesus' cross alone
And rests in Him unceasing;
And by its fruits true faith is known,
With love and hope increasing.
For faith alone can justify;
Works serve our neighbor and supply
The proof that faith is living.
(“Salvation unto Us Has Come” LSB 555 vv. 3 & 9)
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