Joh 8:31-36 – We Have Real Freedom in Christ Alone
Driving down a country road on a sunny, carefree summer day: advertisers use that idea to pitch Chicagoland's rush hour commuters. Lounging on a sugar sand beach by the turquoise ocean: that's a picture of freedom that appeals to the harried office worker. For career military folks, freedom is seen in the waving of our Stars and Stripes. Casting out that red and white bobber and hook is the picture of freedom that my grandpa loved. We each have some notion, some picture of freedom, that appeals to us.
What if someone were to forbid you from ever attaining that picture of freedom that you so long for? Imagine having your driver's license revoked. Imagine that you can never take a vacation or go fishing. Imagine our country occupied by an invading army. Why, those are fighting words for us Americans!
And perhaps that's why we Americans have that sort of uneasy frustration about life in the modern world. It always seems that our freedom is melting away like the first snow of the season. We might pursue it and maybe even catch a little of it, but pretty soon, it's pouring through our grasp. It's hard to find, hard to capture, and we can't seem to hold onto it. It's frustrating. I think this frustration is one of the most difficult things about growing old: eventually we must surrender every freedom.
The Jews of Jesus' day were no different than we are in that regard. They had their frustrations. Their country was occupied by the Romans, who oppressed them, yet they had their amazing heritage; they were the people of God, who had the Temple and God’s written Word. They were waiting year after year for the Messiah to set them free, really free, and they dreamed that the land would be restored, would be like it had been a thousand years before when David and Solomon reigned and the Israelites were influential, rich and strong. But every little glimmer of hope, every bit of progress soon seemed to slip away. And they were mortal like us. They suffered the imprisonment of an aging body and mind. Like us, they wondered, “What does this all mean?”
The German people of the 1500s, they, too, were living under the same frustrations. Their land was fractured into hundreds of tiny holdings, governed by warlords and ultimately the Holy Roman Emperor. Their society was oppressed beneath the weight of a corrupted religion, barely recognizable Christianity, that required indulgences, payments in exchange for a quick passage to eternal life instead of long centuries being purged of sin in some invented Purgatory.
Into the midst of all three of these situations came a singular individual with a promise of real freedom: “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
To this the Jews responded, “We are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?” Could they not remember that they had been slaves in Babylon, slaves of the Seleucids and, even as they spoke, under the iron hand of the Romans? No, they knew that in an earthly sense, Israel had been enslaved time and again. They were speaking of spiritual things, but they were basing their idea of freedom on their blood ancestry, on Abraham. They reckoned that the blood of Abraham set them free, but they were not listening to the truth.
The truth is Scripture alone. They were listening to Scripture plus their traditions, and they must have been sorely confused. The account of Abraham in the Bible is the tale of a real flesh and blood man, a sinner. And Abraham was buried near the oaks at Machpelah near Mamre in Hebron. Even Abraham was once a slave to the grave.
But Jesus spoke the truth. He spoke God's Word. “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
Make no mistake about it. Jesus was saying that the slavery of the Jews was to death and sin. Abraham was once a slave to sin, as were all those listening to Jesus that day, and the Germans of Luther's day, and we, too, were once enslaved. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and the wages of sin is death.
But the Son has set us free, and we are free indeed, because He is none other than the Son of God. He is the promised Messiah. He is the chosen One of God, who became the appointed sacrifice for all our sins, and not just ours but the sins of the whole world, who took the blame and punishment for our sins, who died in our place and became the slave of our grave so that we might enjoy His freedom. He has saved us not because of any righteousness in us; our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. He saved us, because He loved us even though we do not deserve it.
The name for that kind of love is grace. And that is why we say that we are saved by grace alone. If God had not sent His Son into the world to save sinners like us, we would be dead in our sins and trespasses. But God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son that whoever believes on Him should not perish but have everlasting life. So we are saved by blood but not ancestry. We are saved by the blood of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, shed for us.
And this good news was Jesus' Gospel message to the Jews that day. Some heard it by God's grace and believed. Others turned away from it as though it were foolishness. These folks were too caught up with their theories and traditions to hear the simple truth of the Gospel. They were too busy looking to dead Abraham instead of the living Lord standing right in front of their very eyes.
And this is the mysterious thing: that two people should hear the truth and one believe by God's grace and the other refuse it because of the stubbornness of his own heart in favor of some earthly fake freedom.
Yet this is the truth: “For it is by grace that you have been saved through faith and this not of yourself, it is the gift of God, lest any man should boast.” We are free by faith alone. All of Jesus' work for us on the cross, His death and resurrection – all of that is meaningless for our situation unless it is personally applied to us.
And this brings us full circle, because “faith comes by hearing the message, the message of Christ.” Faith proceeds from the truth and that truth is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And why does this make us free? It makes us free because Jesus' Word, God's Word, is true, even when we can't see how it is so.
It frees us from the shackles of sin and all the false, fading freedoms presented by this world. It frees us from the crushing confines of the grave. Most people just want the walls of life's prison to be far enough away that they don't have to think about them any more. But Jesus opens the tomb and breaks down the bars that once held us. This life is not bounded for us any more. Now we truly live, not bound, but free. Free to thank God for His great goodness toward us with every fiber of our being with every moment, for eternity. We are dead to sins, but alive, really alive, in Christ.
Yes, we are free, dear Christians. That singular man, Jesus, came into the midst of the Jews and proclaimed it. And many believed His Word and were granted forgiveness, life and salvation.
Fast forward 1,500 years, to that singular man, who came into Germany at the time of the Reformation and cleansed away the corruption covering God’s Word that men over centuries had laid upon it. That man was not Martin Luther. Luther said it was Christ who unsealed and opened this passage of Scriptures to him: “For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last,just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith.” So where is Luther's boasting? Not in himself. Luther had freedom in Christ alone.
And today, that singular man, Jesus, is our boast as well. He is with us. He is on our side. In these last days, God’s own Son has made the Father’s gracious heart known to us by water and Word. The truth is Scripture alone. We are saved by grace alone. We are free by faith alone. We live that freedom in Christ alone. To God alone be the glory. Amen.