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Sermon for the Festival of the Reformation
Galatians 2:16-21 + John 8:31-36
Today we’re celebrating the Reformation here in our beautiful church building. A few weeks ago, some of your fellow members and I celebrated it in a member’s living room on the other side of the country. But it’s a single celebration, among Christians who believe and confess the same truth of the Gospel, who share the same power of the Spirit, and the same Christian love for one another, and who are all determined to hold fast to the Word of God, and, thereby, to grow in faith and in knowledge, together.
As you know, we celebrate the Reformation, not as a way to “new Christianity,” but as the way back to true Christianity. How dare I say that? How dare we call the Christianity of the early Lutheran Church “true” Christianity, implying that there was something false about the Christianity being practiced by the Roman Church of that era? It goes back to what Jesus told us in today’s Gospel, You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. As we apply the Gospel to the Reformation, we’ll see that the Reformation itself was about truth and about freedom.
In the Gospel from John 8, Jesus said to those Jews who had believed him, “If you remain in my word, you are truly my disciples.” Who, then, are the true disciples of Jesus? Answer: The ones who remain in His word. Who remain in His word. What does that mean? What is “the word” of Jesus? It includes everything, really. Everything Jesus said. Everything Jesus taught. And how do we know what He said and taught? From the Holy-Spirit-inspired Scriptures that God has preserved for us throughout all these centuries in the four Gospels. In fact, the word of Jesus includes also those Holy-Spirit-inspired Scriptures of the Old Testament, and the rest of the Holy-Spirit-inspired words of the New Testament, which we generally call the “epistles.” In short, the word of Jesus is the Bible itself, the Holy Scriptures. Other men have said and written and taught lots of good things over the centuries, based on the word of Jesus. Some have said and written and taught false things, not based on the word of Jesus. We can read and evaluate the writings of any men, but it’s not by following what other men say and teach that makes us or marks us as truly Jesus disciples. If you remain in My word, you are truly My disciples.
Yes, but, how do you know that you’re understanding Jesus’ word correctly? Don’t you have to rely on what someone else tells you about them? Don’t you need the witness of the leaders of the Church and the traditions that the Church has commanded you to follow? We honor the witness of the Church. That is, we “give weight” to it. We value it. But, if we compare the witness of the Church over the millennia with the word of Jesus in Holy Scripture, we find that many new things were added by men, such as purgatory or prayers to the saints, that do not come at all from the Spirit-inspired word of Jesus, and we find teachings, like offering the Mass as an atoning sacrifice for the living and the dead, that directly contradict the word of Jesus. Men, popes, and councils have erred, have made errors. But, thankfully, Jesus never once said, “If you remain in the traditions of the Church, you are truly My disciples.” He never said, “All who submit to the Church’s decrees are truly My disciples.” No, He said, “If you remain in My word, you are truly My disciples.”
What does it mean to “remain in” His word? It means to know it—everything God says in His holy Word—to know it, in context, to believe it, and to steadfastly hold onto it, to hold onto it, even when powerful men try to move you away from it, when powerful leaders in the Church tell you you have no right or ability to understand Jesus’ words rightly, that the interpretation of this or that gathering or synod of the Church is infallible, even when hundreds of years of tradition try to convince you that the Church herself is just as good a source of truth as the inspired word of Jesus.
But with so many different voices, and denominations each claiming to be telling the truth, what Jesus’ word really means, who is to know? If Jesus keeps His word, then you have your answer: If you remain in My word, you are truly My disciples. And you will know the truth. This leads to one of the most basic Lutheran principles of Bible interpretation. Let Scripture interpret Scripture. Or, put another way, let the Holy Spirit be His own interpreter. That may require study. That may require effort. But the truth can be known.
I think I’ve told you this before. Years ago, when I was struggling to understand the truth about the article of justification, and to determine whether or not UOJ was true, as all the Lutheran synods were teaching, it wasn’t easy. Practically all the Lutheran churches in America insisted that UOJ was true, that it had always been taught by the Christian Church and, specifically, by the Lutheran Church, and that it had to be believed. That’s not as much pressure as Martin Luther experienced 500 years ago, facing the whole Holy Roman Empire, but it was still a lot of pressure. I studied this church father and that church father and found plenty of support there. But you know what finally gave me peace? The only thing that gave me peace and that convinced me of the truth? It was just going through the word of Jesus, passage by passage, that talked about justification. And after being immersed in the word of Jesus, looking at all the passages together, the truth became clear. I knew the truth, just as you have known it.
And that truth, that sinners are justified by faith alone in Christ Jesus, is the other main theme of the Reformation. It was a Reformation about truth, and about freedom, which is directly related to the sinner’s justification.
You will know the truth, Jesus said, and the truth will set you free! The problem was, the unbelieving Jews, the ones who had, up until this point, rejected Jesus’ word as truth, the ones who stood on the traditions of the Jewish Church even more than they stood on the inspired Scriptures, didn’t think, didn’t realize they needed to be set free. The Jews answered him, “We are Abraham’s seed and have never been enslaved to anyone. How can you say, ‘You will become free’?” The Jews of Jesus’ day had that idea in common with many Jews still today, that, because they were physically descended from Abraham, they were and must always remain the chosen people of God, enslaved to no one, always acceptable in God’s sight because of who their ancestor was, and because of how obedient they were to the Law of Moses. They concluded that for those two reasons, because of their ancestry and because of their obedience to the Law, they were and would always be free.
Then along comes Jesus and bursts their bubble. He answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave of sin. Now, even the self-righteous Pharisees didn’t go around claiming that they never sinned. It takes a special kind of self-delusion for anyone to say, “I don’t sin. I’m sinless and perfect in every way.” But here, Jesus lays down the hard truth: If you commit sin, then you are a slave. A slave of sin, without the ability to work your way out of that slavery, without the free will to choose your way out of that slavery. Slaves don’t have free will to stop being slave, do they? Your ancestry doesn’t help you, if you practice sin. Your obedience doesn’t free you, if you also disobey, at times, if you also sin. There’s only one way to escape this slavery of sin. Now, a slave does not remain in the house forever. In other words, you Jews who practice sin, and put your confidence in your ancestry, or in your obedience, even now you’re only in God’s house as slaves, slaves who will eventually be sent away from God’s house entirely. But a son remains forever. Therefore, if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. Free, not to be dismissed from God’s house, but to remain in God’s house forever, not as slaves, but as sons. The Son of God, Jesus Christ, is only one who can free you from the slavery to sin, who can give you the right to become free children of God, who have a permanent place in His home.
He does that “setting free” in two ways. He does it, first, by forgiving us our sins, by setting us free from the guilt of those sins that we commit, when He calls us to repent of our sins and to believe in Him, who has promised to set us free. That’s what justification is, God setting us free, Jesus setting us free from having to pay for our sins, from having to suffer for our sins, from having to work off or make atonement for our sins. He Himself is the Atoner, the Sacrifice of atonement, the Reconciler. His blood was the full price of our freedom. Faith in Him is the means by which He applies that atoning price to our account and sets us free.
But for all who have been set free from the slavery to sin, who have been justified and forgiven and made children of God, permanent members of His household, and heirs of eternal life, Christ’s act of setting us free, of justifying us, is also the beginning of something else. It’s the beginning of a new life of freedom. It’s the beginning of a new kind of obedience, not as slaves to sin anymore, but as slaves to righteousness—an entirely different kind of slavery, a good kind, even as Christ Himself was a willing “slave” or “servant” of His Father in heaven. By setting us free from sin through the forgiveness of sins, through the washing of Holy Baptism, He has freed us to become imitators of Him, the true Servant of God, as He both calls and enables us to walk in step with the Holy Spirit. We call this the freedom of “sanctification.” It’s an ongoing process as we are renewed, day after day, in the image of Christ, as the Holy Spirit guides us and pulls us along toward doing and thinking what is righteous, and good, and loving. It’s not a freedom to go on living in sin. It’s a freedom to serve God in righteousness and holiness that begins here and now, and that will be completed when we reach our heavenly home.
These two issues—the source of truth and our ability to know it; and freedom from sin, what it is and how to achieve it—were at the center of the Lutheran Reformation, and they remain central issues still today. The Roman Church and the Eastern Church, and many who call themselves Lutheran, would have you look to Church Councils and Church Fathers and synods as a source of truth alongside the Word of God. Other churches would have you look inward, at your feelings and opinions about things. Still others would have you look for direct revelation from the Holy Spirit. And many of those same churches would have you seek freedom from sin in your own good works, in your own obedience, or, in the case of the synods, in an imaginary justification of the whole world. But here we are, along with still many in the world, left standing alongside Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms in 1521, pressured on all sides to give in: “Unless I am convinced by the testimony of Scripture and plain reason… my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand; I can do no other. God help me. Amen.”
Be content to keep standing here beside Luther, especially on these issues of truth and freedom. It may seem lonely at times, and it will continue to require many sacrifices, on your part and mine, to remain in Jesus’ word, no matter what anyone else demands, and to embrace the freedom of justification by faith alone, no matter what anyone else teaches. Jesus calls these sacrifices “bearing the cross.” And if our dear Lord was willing to bear the cross of shame, suffering, and death for our sins, to free us from slavery, to grant us eternal joy and eternal life, how could we shrink back from bearing the cross that comes from faithfulness to Him? Remain in His Word. Remain in the freedom that comes from the truth. And let us all give thanks to God for bringing us back to true Christianity, and to this blessed fellowship with one another. Amen.
