Reformation
October 30, 2005
Rev. Dr. Kenneth Wieting
Text: John 8:31-38
JESUS SAID…“IF YOU ABIDE IN MY WORD, YOU ARE TRULY MY DISCIPLES … YOU WILL KNOW THE TRUTH, AND THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE.”
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ - the giver of true freedom.
Free rides aren’t free – someone has to pay.
Free love isn’t free – the chains of brokenness and heartache that follow after enslave millions.
Free thinking isn’t free – mankind thinks the same tired, self-idolizing thoughts of bygone generations. BUT IF THE SON SETS YOU FREE, YOU WILL BE FREE INDEED.
Greek society often debated the subject of freedom, politically and individually. They valued freedom from tyrants and freedom from external foes. They also recognized how easily extreme freedom can turn into extreme slavery (Plato Ep8, 354e). Protecting law was seen as necessary for real freedom. Without law freedom would degenerate to the whim of an individual or the mood of the moment. The stoics taught that freedom was control over external threats by conscious and deliberate control of one’s own soul. Freedom was seen as internally taking charge of matters to gain life and happiness.
Jesus and His apostles do not agree with that view of freedom. They taught that even by retreating inwardly man is not free. They taught that man’s existence is not threatened so much by things on the outside as by self-lordship on the inside. To take one’s life in hand as the stoics encouraged was really to grab on to a sinking ship. For the soul that sins will die, no matter how free thinking or self-reliant it imagines itself to be.
Jesus and His apostles rather used the word freedom to mean freedom from sin (Rom. 6:18-23/John 8:31-36) and freedom from the law (Rom 7 & 8/Gal 2:4; 4:21-31; 5:1, 1 3) and freedom from death (Rom. 6:21; 8:21). TRULY, TRULY, I SAY TO YOU, EVERYONE WHO COMMITS SIN IS A SLAVE TO SIN. THE SLAVE DOES NOT REMAIN IN THE HOUSE FOREVER; THE SON REMAINS FOREVER. SO IF THE SON SETS YOU FREE, YOU WILL BE FREE INDEED.
Martin Luther entered the monastery in hopes of finding freedom from sin and from God’s judgment. Floundering in his sins he sought freedom by attempting to follow Jesus as an example of holiness. He remained isolated in his cell and fasted for days at a time. He beat himself with a whip. He lied naked on the monastery’s frigid floor until his health was severely threatened. He prayed and prayed and prayed. Yet the more he sought to be a slave to good works the more he saw that sin still bound his heart and mind. The more He sought to please God perfectly the more clearly he saw his imperfect fear and love and trust in God.
EVERYONE WHO COMMITS SIN IS A SLAVE TO SIN, said Jesus. That includes you and me. Through his study of God’s law, Luther saw that we truly are dead in our trespasses and sins. Because of sin freedom is not the same as doing what we want to do when we want to do it! In fact, true freedom is often doing what we don’t want to do when we don’t want to do it! Yet it is not the stoic idea of marshalling our inner strength to overcome outer threats. Nor is it the medieval idea of doing enough outward penance to overcome our inner failings.
IF YOU REMAIN IN MY WORD YOU…WILL KNOW THE TRUTH AND THE TRUTH WILL MAKE YOU FREE. Beloved, true freedom in this dying world comes from God’s Word. We really do need to be set free again this morning and every morning. We really do need to be set free again today and each week by the risen Christ in worship. That freedom comes only from God’s Word. That’s why Satan constantly and cleverly offers false freedom and happiness apart from remaining in God’s Word. He dresses up slavery to look and feel like liberty.
Whether we feel like it or not we are in bondage to sin. Whether the world acknowledges it or not it is in bondage to death. Our sin carries falsehood and death within it. God calls out to wake us up from our self-deception even as he called out to wake Luther up. He warns us through strikes of lightning. He warns us through hurricanes and earthquakes. He warns us through sickness and death all around and within. He warns us through those who love us. He seeks to cut open our dull hearts with the sword of His law. As St. Paul wrote, the law speaks so “that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world held accountable to God.”
Luther was not paranoid or psychotic. He was a man whose mouth God stopped. He was a man who then saw himself as accountable to God. This view is becoming more and more scandalous in our post-modern society where everyone has their own truth. If Luther had lived in our culture and believed its lies, the Reformation would never have happened.
Luther was a sinner just like you, just like me, who finally and fully saw that “by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” He was a monk who despite following all the self-help steps of his day saw that “there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
When God shut his mouth by showing him the fullness of his accountability to God, then God opened his mouth by showing him something else. IF YOU ABIDE IN MY WORD…YOU WILL KNOW THE TRUTH AND THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE. Luther continued to abide in the Word of God. He studied it in Hebrew. He studied it in Greek. He studied it in Latin. The truth that God led him to rediscover was a truth that had been clouded over with centuries of false teaching about indulgences and works righteousness and misuse of the mass.
The full and liberating truth that God led Luther to proclaim includes more than the fact that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”. It also includes the fact that all “are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.”
Dear Christians, this is the truth that caused the Reformation! Here is freedom from the condemning law! Here is freedom from sin! Here is freedom from death! “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law…the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.”
You are justified (made perfectly right with God) by his grace as a gift. Jesus once said that whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will not enter it. Children are so good at receiving gifts! Through them Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God cannot be earned. The kingdom of God cannot be bargained for. The kingdom of God cannot be figured out and gained through penance or indulgences. The kingdom of God cannot be gained through a treasury of other peoples merits for all fall short of the glory of God. The kingdom of God can only be received as a gift of God’s grace.
That gift of God’s grace comes through the blood of Christ. As St. Paul said; “whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.” Your real freedom then is bloody. Your real freedom is due to the life of the one man sacrificed for all others. That’s what the word “propitiation” means. It is a sacrifice, a bloody offering that satisfies the righteous wrath of God. That’s why Luther considered the crucifix such a beautiful Gospel sight. In Christ’s blood is freedom from sin and death. In His sacrifice is freedom from the law. The righteous judgment that Luther was rightly terrified of and that we sinners deserve fell on Jesus Christ. “The righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law.”
The rediscovery and clear proclamation of this truth is what caused the Reformation. It is the truth by which God always reforms His Church. This is also what caused your new life of faith in Holy Baptism and keeps it alive. To set you free Jesus became the most shackled man in human history! Every sin of every enslaved heart was chained to Him, including yours, past, present and future. The Holy Lamb of God suffered in your prison house of sin as your substitute. God justifies you freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. It is His gift to you! You are justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law.
You are therefore free from all sin of your past! You are therefore free from all sin of your past! You might remember it, but God does not. As He promised the New Covenant through Jeremiah, God said, “I will forgive their iniquity and their sin I will remember no more.” Your sin He remembers no more in Christ.
You are therefore totally free to stop remembering past sins as if they are still hanging over your head. You are free to stop following some self-help spiritual program to become more righteous. Jesus has enough righteousness for the whole world and He’s given it to you as a gift. For His sake you are righteous son and no longer a slave to sin. For Scripture says, “All who have been baptized into Christ are dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (Rom. 6:12).
You are free to open your mouth to confess your sins because God cleanses you from all unrighteousness in Christ. You are free to let God lead you by the hand and not be chained to the false freedoms of the world. You are free to abide in the Word of God and not to be chained to your feelings. You are even free not to fear though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea. THE SLAVE DOES NOT REMAIN IN THE HOUSE FOREVER BUT THE SON REMAINS FOREVER. The freedom Jesus gives you reaches beyond the grave. The prison house of death could not hold Him. The enemy of death cannot hold you. There is so much more to life than what you can see and feel. In Christ you are free. IF THE SON SETS YOU FREE YOU WILL BE FREE INDEED! AMEN.
Rev. Dr. Kenneth Wieting
Text: John 8:31-38
JESUS SAID…“IF YOU ABIDE IN MY WORD, YOU ARE TRULY MY DISCIPLES … YOU WILL KNOW THE TRUTH, AND THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE.”
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ - the giver of true freedom.
Free rides aren’t free – someone has to pay.
Free love isn’t free – the chains of brokenness and heartache that follow after enslave millions.
Free thinking isn’t free – mankind thinks the same tired, self-idolizing thoughts of bygone generations. BUT IF THE SON SETS YOU FREE, YOU WILL BE FREE INDEED.
Greek society often debated the subject of freedom, politically and individually. They valued freedom from tyrants and freedom from external foes. They also recognized how easily extreme freedom can turn into extreme slavery (Plato Ep8, 354e). Protecting law was seen as necessary for real freedom. Without law freedom would degenerate to the whim of an individual or the mood of the moment. The stoics taught that freedom was control over external threats by conscious and deliberate control of one’s own soul. Freedom was seen as internally taking charge of matters to gain life and happiness.
Jesus and His apostles do not agree with that view of freedom. They taught that even by retreating inwardly man is not free. They taught that man’s existence is not threatened so much by things on the outside as by self-lordship on the inside. To take one’s life in hand as the stoics encouraged was really to grab on to a sinking ship. For the soul that sins will die, no matter how free thinking or self-reliant it imagines itself to be.
Jesus and His apostles rather used the word freedom to mean freedom from sin (Rom. 6:18-23/John 8:31-36) and freedom from the law (Rom 7 & 8/Gal 2:4; 4:21-31; 5:1, 1 3) and freedom from death (Rom. 6:21; 8:21). TRULY, TRULY, I SAY TO YOU, EVERYONE WHO COMMITS SIN IS A SLAVE TO SIN. THE SLAVE DOES NOT REMAIN IN THE HOUSE FOREVER; THE SON REMAINS FOREVER. SO IF THE SON SETS YOU FREE, YOU WILL BE FREE INDEED.
Martin Luther entered the monastery in hopes of finding freedom from sin and from God’s judgment. Floundering in his sins he sought freedom by attempting to follow Jesus as an example of holiness. He remained isolated in his cell and fasted for days at a time. He beat himself with a whip. He lied naked on the monastery’s frigid floor until his health was severely threatened. He prayed and prayed and prayed. Yet the more he sought to be a slave to good works the more he saw that sin still bound his heart and mind. The more He sought to please God perfectly the more clearly he saw his imperfect fear and love and trust in God.
EVERYONE WHO COMMITS SIN IS A SLAVE TO SIN, said Jesus. That includes you and me. Through his study of God’s law, Luther saw that we truly are dead in our trespasses and sins. Because of sin freedom is not the same as doing what we want to do when we want to do it! In fact, true freedom is often doing what we don’t want to do when we don’t want to do it! Yet it is not the stoic idea of marshalling our inner strength to overcome outer threats. Nor is it the medieval idea of doing enough outward penance to overcome our inner failings.
IF YOU REMAIN IN MY WORD YOU…WILL KNOW THE TRUTH AND THE TRUTH WILL MAKE YOU FREE. Beloved, true freedom in this dying world comes from God’s Word. We really do need to be set free again this morning and every morning. We really do need to be set free again today and each week by the risen Christ in worship. That freedom comes only from God’s Word. That’s why Satan constantly and cleverly offers false freedom and happiness apart from remaining in God’s Word. He dresses up slavery to look and feel like liberty.
Whether we feel like it or not we are in bondage to sin. Whether the world acknowledges it or not it is in bondage to death. Our sin carries falsehood and death within it. God calls out to wake us up from our self-deception even as he called out to wake Luther up. He warns us through strikes of lightning. He warns us through hurricanes and earthquakes. He warns us through sickness and death all around and within. He warns us through those who love us. He seeks to cut open our dull hearts with the sword of His law. As St. Paul wrote, the law speaks so “that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world held accountable to God.”
Luther was not paranoid or psychotic. He was a man whose mouth God stopped. He was a man who then saw himself as accountable to God. This view is becoming more and more scandalous in our post-modern society where everyone has their own truth. If Luther had lived in our culture and believed its lies, the Reformation would never have happened.
Luther was a sinner just like you, just like me, who finally and fully saw that “by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” He was a monk who despite following all the self-help steps of his day saw that “there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
When God shut his mouth by showing him the fullness of his accountability to God, then God opened his mouth by showing him something else. IF YOU ABIDE IN MY WORD…YOU WILL KNOW THE TRUTH AND THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE. Luther continued to abide in the Word of God. He studied it in Hebrew. He studied it in Greek. He studied it in Latin. The truth that God led him to rediscover was a truth that had been clouded over with centuries of false teaching about indulgences and works righteousness and misuse of the mass.
The full and liberating truth that God led Luther to proclaim includes more than the fact that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”. It also includes the fact that all “are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.”
Dear Christians, this is the truth that caused the Reformation! Here is freedom from the condemning law! Here is freedom from sin! Here is freedom from death! “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law…the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.”
You are justified (made perfectly right with God) by his grace as a gift. Jesus once said that whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will not enter it. Children are so good at receiving gifts! Through them Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God cannot be earned. The kingdom of God cannot be bargained for. The kingdom of God cannot be figured out and gained through penance or indulgences. The kingdom of God cannot be gained through a treasury of other peoples merits for all fall short of the glory of God. The kingdom of God can only be received as a gift of God’s grace.
That gift of God’s grace comes through the blood of Christ. As St. Paul said; “whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.” Your real freedom then is bloody. Your real freedom is due to the life of the one man sacrificed for all others. That’s what the word “propitiation” means. It is a sacrifice, a bloody offering that satisfies the righteous wrath of God. That’s why Luther considered the crucifix such a beautiful Gospel sight. In Christ’s blood is freedom from sin and death. In His sacrifice is freedom from the law. The righteous judgment that Luther was rightly terrified of and that we sinners deserve fell on Jesus Christ. “The righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law.”
The rediscovery and clear proclamation of this truth is what caused the Reformation. It is the truth by which God always reforms His Church. This is also what caused your new life of faith in Holy Baptism and keeps it alive. To set you free Jesus became the most shackled man in human history! Every sin of every enslaved heart was chained to Him, including yours, past, present and future. The Holy Lamb of God suffered in your prison house of sin as your substitute. God justifies you freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. It is His gift to you! You are justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law.
You are therefore free from all sin of your past! You are therefore free from all sin of your past! You might remember it, but God does not. As He promised the New Covenant through Jeremiah, God said, “I will forgive their iniquity and their sin I will remember no more.” Your sin He remembers no more in Christ.
You are therefore totally free to stop remembering past sins as if they are still hanging over your head. You are free to stop following some self-help spiritual program to become more righteous. Jesus has enough righteousness for the whole world and He’s given it to you as a gift. For His sake you are righteous son and no longer a slave to sin. For Scripture says, “All who have been baptized into Christ are dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (Rom. 6:12).
You are free to open your mouth to confess your sins because God cleanses you from all unrighteousness in Christ. You are free to let God lead you by the hand and not be chained to the false freedoms of the world. You are free to abide in the Word of God and not to be chained to your feelings. You are even free not to fear though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea. THE SLAVE DOES NOT REMAIN IN THE HOUSE FOREVER BUT THE SON REMAINS FOREVER. The freedom Jesus gives you reaches beyond the grave. The prison house of death could not hold Him. The enemy of death cannot hold you. There is so much more to life than what you can see and feel. In Christ you are free. IF THE SON SETS YOU FREE YOU WILL BE FREE INDEED! AMEN.
posted by Luther Memorial Chapel at
10/31/2005
