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Sermon for the Festival of the Reformation
Galatians 2:16-21 + John 8:31-36
You heard Jesus say it today in the Gospel: If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. Again, He said: Whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore if the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed. This is Jesus’ promise to everyone who believes in Him, to everyone who abides in His word: Freedom. Freedom is the birthright (or the re-birthright) of every Christian. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free, Paul writes.
Freedom was also the theme of the Evangelical Reformation of the Church—“Evangelical” meaning “Gospel-centered.” (The original Lutherans didn’t call themselves Lutherans but Evangelicals. And now, frankly, both titles have been largely coopted by groups that are neither authentically Lutheran nor Evangelical.) But turning our thoughts back to the Lutherans/Evangelicals of the 16th century, the Reformation they fought for, suffered for, and carried out, by God’s grace, was all about freedom. Because, for roughly a thousand years at that point, Christians had been subjected to several kinds of spiritual slavery and tyranny, each one attacking the truth of the Word of God, each one robbing Christians of their God-given freedom.
First, and probably most egregious, was the slavery of works-righteousness, the slavery of the Law as the path to salvation, the tyranny that deprived Christians of the free forgiveness of sins and of the certainty of salvation that believers in Christ are meant to have. The promise of the Gospel, God’s promise to freely forgive sins to those who repent and believe in the Lord Jesus, was being systematically withheld from Christians across the Holy Roman Empire, being all but silenced throughout the Roman Church. Instead, sinners were taught that justification before God (that is, the reversal of our well-deserved condemnation) depended on how many good works they did, how many Our Fathers or Hail Mary’s they said, how obediently they fasted, how many prayers they prayed to the saints, how many Masses they sponsored, and, in some cases, how much money they paid to the priests and popes. Faith in Christ was good and well, but it didn’t save you. It didn’t justify you. You had to make satisfaction for your own sins, adding that to the “incomplete” atonement made by Christ. You had to earn your own part of forgiveness, either in this life, or after this life, in that imaginary place they called “purgatory.”
Oh, the teaching about purgatory was its own kind of slavery and tyranny. Christians were led to believe that their deceased loved ones were all suffering in that place of fire, and that they all had the same fire to look forward to when they died. The only little bit of hope they were given, was that if they said enough prayers, if they did enough good deeds, if they suffered enough in this life, and, again, if they paid enough money for Masses, and for the pope’s indulgences, they could shorten that time of soul-suffering in purgatory, both for their loved ones, and for themselves.
Where did the notion of purgatory even come from, since it isn’t taught in Scripture? Or prayers to Mary, for that matter? Or the invocation of the saints? None of that is found in Scripture. It was all part of another form of tyranny: the tyranny of tradition. The Roman Church of the 16th century, not unlike the Roman Church and the Eastern Church still today, did not even try to use the Scriptures as the only foundation of teaching in the Church. The Scriptures were placed beneath the oral traditions that had accumulated in the Church for many centuries, together with sayings of certain Church fathers, or decisions of certain councils or popes. Christians were enslaved to the teachings and traditions of men, some of which were useful, some of which were useless, some of which were abusive, and others of which were outright antichristian, like the teaching of purgatory, or prayers to the saints. The mantra of the Roman Church was not, “Abide in the word of Jesus and you will know the truth!” or “Search the Scriptures!” It was, “Listen to the Church, and do not question us!”
Related to this was the tyranny of the papacy itself, the tyranny of an imposed hierarchy over the parish priests and over the Christians themselves. Christians were led to believe that the bishop of Rome was not only the bishop of certain Christians in Rome, but of all Christians everywhere—the Head of the Church, the Vicar (or substitute) of Christ on earth, the “holy father” over all Christians, who had the divine right to judge all doctrine, to create new doctrines that were binding on all Christians, to impose fasting and other practices on all Christians, and, yes, to issue indulgences throughout the world and to spring souls out of purgatory—for a price.
For centuries, Christians had been trapped behind all these forms of tyranny, like prisoners behind bars, unable to change them, unable to escape, unable even to see the bars on their spiritual prison, because they had been taught that those bars weren’t bars but blessings.
But one by one, the Evangelicals began to break down those bars. A few faithful men had started rattling the bars over these and other abuses already in the 15th century, but it was Martin Luther who really got the wrecking ball rolling in 1517 with his 95 Theses, daring to challenge the pope’s authority to issue indulgences, and his audacity in selling them for money. And within about fifteen years, the freedom for which Christ had set us free was restored to those in the Church who were willing to have it.
The Reformation restored the freedom God offers from slavery to the Law and to works-righteousness. Not freedom to sin, but the freedom to hear and believe the Gospel, that is, to see all your sins placed upon Christ, the Lamb of God, who bears all their punishment in your place. Not freedom to sin, but freedom from guilt, and from a guilty conscience, because God freely forgives all who repent and believe in Jesus. Not freedom to sin, but freedom from doing works of penance, or any works at all for the purpose of earning a pardon from God. Not freedom to sin, but freedom to do good works that flow from faith and from sins forgiven.
The Reformation also restored the freedom God offers from slavery to the fear of purgatory. Because, according to Scripture, there is no such place. Either a person dies clinging to Christ Jesus in faith, in which case, his or her soul is escorted directly to Paradise with God, or a person dies in sin and impenitence, in which case, his or her soul is taken to its permanent place of suffering in hell. In either case, there is nothing the living can or should do to affect the fate of the dead, no prayers that must be said, no Masses that must be purchased, no indulgences that must be bought. We’ve been set free from that burden. Instead, the living are now freed to do what we can for the living, repenting before it’s too late, calling sinners to repentance while there is still time, calling unbelievers to faith, and tending to our own souls by faithfully using the Means of Grace, free from the delusion that we can somehow make up for our sins later on, in purgatory.
The Reformation also restored the freedom God offers from the tyranny of tradition, especially where tradition has introduced error and false teaching. That includes the false teaching that Christians can or should approach the heavenly saints for help they should be seeking from God alone. It includes the false teaching that makes popes and councils and church fathers into a new and infallible source of doctrine. It includes the false teaching that the Mass is a sacrifice that Christians must offer to God in order to atone for our sins. We’ve been set free, not to ignore doctrine, but to learn our doctrine from the inspired Scriptures themselves, which cannot err or lead us astray. We’ve been set free, not to interpret the Scriptures in a hundred different ways, as each one sees fit, which is the bane of most of so-called Protestantism, but to use Scripture to interpret Scripture, and to use the church fathers and councils, not as infallible sources, but as God-given guides along the way. We’ve been set free, not to torch everything we’ve been handed from previous generations of Christians, but to evaluate it all on the basis of Scripture, free to use what we find useful together, and free to dispose of that which does not edify, and of that which fails to teach the truth. We’ve been set free, not to dishonor or disparage the saints, but to honor them by not turning them into idols, free now to approach God the Father directly, through the mediation of Christ Jesus, our Lord, who is the one Mediator between God and man. We’ve been set free, not to abandon the Sacraments, but to use them according to Christ’s command, not as a sacrifice we offer to God to atone for our sins, but as God’s instrument for applying Christ’s already-perfectly-accomplished atonement to us, individually.
And the Reformation also restored the freedom God offers from the tyranny of a man, of a pope, and from the slavery to a manmade hierarchy. We’ve been set free, not from the Church, but from the false teaching of the Roman bishop and from the Roman Catholic Church, Inc. We’ve been set free, not from the office of the ministry or from having a pastor, but from the tyrannical ministry of distant popes and bishops. We’ve been set free, not from having a Head of the Church, but from calling any man but the Lord Jesus Christ the Church’s Head.
And so, dear Christians, dear Evangelicals, you who call yourselves Lutherans, not to honor Luther or to follow Luther, but to identify yourselves before the world as those who have been set free by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, for which Luther fought, and which Luther faithfully preached: Stand in the freedom for which Christ has set you free, and don’t let anyone move you from it. Give thanks to God, not only for Martin Luther, but for the Lutheran Confessions that he and other men wrote down, to preserve them for future generations, the Confessions that so clearly and so joyfully proclaim the truth of God’s Word, and the agreement of our doctrine with the doctrine of the universal Church from the very beginning. Resolve to read and study those Confessions more and more, even as you renew your commitment to knowing the Scriptures better and better. We may not be a big Lutheran Church, tied to the even bigger Lutheran synods. But as long as you abide in the word of Jesus, you are truly His disciples. And you will know the truth. And the truth will set you free. Amen.
