Romans 3:19-28
Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For “no human being will be justified in his sight” by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.
But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.
Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.
John 8:31-36
Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?”
Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”
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If you listened to any pop radio in the early 1990’s, or if you ever watched the television show, “Party of Five,” then you might recognize the following lyrics from the Wisconsin-based band, the BoDeans:
Everybody wants to live
How they wanna live
And everybody wants to love
Like they wanna love
And everybody wants to be
Closer to free
These lyrics might aren’t exactly great poetry. But they sum up the yearnings of a generation: we all want to be free. Our human souls long for it.
We spend our lives chasing freedom.
Toddlers learn to run away from their parents, chasing their freedom; we burn our mortgages when we pay off our homes, celebrating our financial freedom; we chase diets and sign up for gym memberships and buy special moisturizers to try free ourselves from aging.
Everybody wants to be closer to free. Everybody thinks they can achieve freedom by their own striving. And nobody every really wants to admit that they aren’t free.
Jesus said to those who had believed in him, "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." They answered him, "We have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, 'You will be made free'?"
This is what we do, isn’t it? We want our freedom, but we definitely resist admitting that we need it. Or that we need someone else to give it to us.
To be set free…means admitting we are held captive
To be healed...means admitting we are broken
To be forgiven...means admitting we are sinners
To be made righteous...means admitting we are wrong
It is sometimes so hard to receive the grace that Jesus offers; all the good things Jesus brings: because it means acknowledging things about ourselves that we don’t like. But Jesus answers us, "Very truly, I tell you, everyone is a slave to the sin and brokenness of this world.”
It’s true, isn’t it? Even if we don’t want to admit it out loud. Each of us is bound by something. Each of us wants to be closer to free.
So that's the question for us in today's gospel: In your own life, what binds you? What captivity are you afraid or ashamed to admit?
Are you bound by fear that you are unworthy of God’s forgiveness?
Are you bound by the feeling that your world keeps on spinning at an accelerating rate and the fear that if you stop to breathe for only a moment, your world will spin out of control?
Are you bound by anxiety over your adequacy as a parent or partner, or by a fear that you will fail the ones you love?
Are you bound by uncertainty about your future? By a constant and nagging sense of worry? By anger or envy? By a fear of death?
The world tries to promise you that it has solutions for all of these things. It tries to assure you that you can take destiny into your hands and work to make yourself closer to free.
Buy a car, and drive away from your problems!
Upgrade your phone, and let technology fix your life!
Call the number on your screen for a free trial!
Remodel your living room and you will be free from anxiety and clutter!
Any one of these things might very well offer you the illusion of freedom.
They might make you feel closer to free.
But Jesus offers us something better. He says, “When I make you free, you will be free indeed.” Jesus offers us the chance to be perfectly free.
This is the story of our namesake, Martin Luther.
It was a thunderstorm that first set things in motion.
The year was 1505, and Martin Luther was a university student, studying law. On his trip back to the university after a visit home, he was caught in a terrible thunderstorm. He was pummeled by wind and rain, and then, with a terrifying flash, a lightning bolt crashed down beside him. In utter fear and desperation for his life, he cried out to St. Anna, promising that he would forsake his law career and become a monk if God would but spare his life from this storm.
Surviving the storm with his life intact, Luther made good on his vow, and, much to his parents’ disappointment, he left law school, sold his books, and entered into the life of an Augustinian monk.
Luther threw himself headlong into the requirements of the monastic life: prayer, fasting, spiritual reflection, and confession. But Luther was a man plagued by constant fear and doubt over his own salvation. He was so gravely insecure about the future of his own soul that he carried every monastic spiritual practice to the extreme. He felt utterly compelled to confess everything he had ever done, spending hours with his confessor, up to six hours at a time! He would desperately detail every sin that he saw in himself, and was tormented by fear that God would yet find his efforts inadequate and throw him into the depths of hell.
Luther later wrote, “I was myself more than once driven to the very depths of despair so that I wished I had never been created. Love God? I hated him!...I lost touch with Christ the Savior and Comforter, and made of him the jailor and hangman of my poor soul.”
Luther was a man who was bound by his own fear of God’s wrath and his own inadequacy, who was striving and failing to make himself free. He was a man who desperately needed to be rescued by the freedom offered by Christ.
It wasn’t until nearly a decade later that he was finally convinced that Christ could make him free. in 1515, Luther had received his doctorate and was preparing a series of university lectures on Paul’s letter to the Romans. He came across the passage from Romans 3 that we read this morning, a passage he had likely read many times before. But on this occasion, it was if a light bulb went on over his head when he read “The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ [is] for all who believe; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.”
These words were freedom for Luther. His soul, which had been held captive by fear and despair, was now comforted by the truth of the gospel: By Christ’s death and resurrection, he was made free from sin and death, not by his own efforts, but by God’s grace. Luther came face-to-face with the freeing truth that salvation wasn’t a matter of his own spiritual aptitude, nor was it a zero-sum game of sin and confession. Righteousness was his, because God gave it to him as a gift. A lasting gift; something simply to be received, in faith.
Or put even more simply, in Jesus’ own words, “Continue in my word, for if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”
Luther’s story is also our story. We are all bound and we are all made free. But our true freedom, our lasting freedom, our perfect freedom is not to be found in anything that this world offers. Our freedom is in Christ, who came to earth to be our liberator.
Early in Luke’s gospel, Jesus stands up in the synagogue and reads from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor...
And this is exactly what Jesus spends the rest of his ministry doing. Setting people free from their ailments. Releasing people from love of money and possessions into lives of generosity. Offering liberating words of forgiveness. Dying and rising that we might be liberated from death itself.
Christ is our freedom, and he sets us free to seek holy freedom for all people and all creation.
Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, says “You were called to freedom, [siblings in Christ]; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Galatians 5:13-14)
Similarly Luther, in his treastise, On the Freedom of a Christian, says: “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”
Luther came to understand that continuing in the freedom of Christ meant following Jesus in the work of liberation, in setting free all that was held captive around him. This is why he nailed 95 demands to the church door, why he stood up at hearing after hearing, why he wrote treatises and confessions and catechisms: that the church might model Christ’s gift of holy freedom, where all could come and praise and participate together, as a priesthood of all believers, where God's grace was freely preached and given, where the Bible was in the language of the people and where people were free to explore their faith apart from the constraints of church dogma.
God’s grace was freedom for Luther. It is freedom for us, too. And it is freedom that binds us to the needs of the world.
Our freedom in Christ binds us to the needs of our neighbors. It binds us to the groaning of creation. This freedom opens our eyes to the suffering and captivity in our world. It calls us to work for justice and peace across lines of class, race, gender, religion, nation, politics - whatever it is that has divided us, whatever is causing people and creation to suffer.
We have been set free in Christ, to live by God’s grace and not by our own striving. We have been set free in Christ, to live out our faith in lives of grace and service to others. This might sound like a paradox. But Lutherans love our paradoxes.
God’s grace is free, given before we could ever have a chance to win it.
God’s grace is free, binding us together with all those whom God loves.
This is our good news today, siblings in Christ.
Christ offers perfect freedom for your bound and despairing souls. Christ has already redeemed you and set you free. There is nothing in this world that can determine or diminish your worth, because you are already made righteous, you are already saved, you already have infinite and immense value. God’s grace has freely chosen you.
And through you, God is bringing grace and freedom to others. You are set free that you might set others free with this good news of Christ’s free and abundant love.
Children of God, called and beloved, hold fast today to your faith and step out of your bondage. Feel God’s new life in your bones. Breathe the free air of your salvation. Follow the Spirit as she blows freely through the world. And hear Christ’s words of promise for you, today and always: “The Son has made you free, and you are free indeed!”