No longer slaves
31 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’
33 They answered him, ‘We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?’
34 Jesus replied, ‘Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. 35 Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
John 8:31–36 (NIVUK)
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. As we commemorate the Reformation today, we remember that the Christian Church has always been involved in a battle for the truth and the freedom it gives us.
The Reformation, which of course was initiated by our man, Dr Martin Luther, was an attempt to return the Church to the truth of the gospel. It was an attempt to free the Church from its self-imposed slavery. Luther’s realisation was not popular with everyone, of course, particularly those that were doing quite well in this captivity. The last thing they wanted was a departure from the structure that they could control and influence to suit themselves.
The Church’s self-captivity was not new—think about the Pharisees of Jesus’ day, the Israelites of the Old Testament—and it’s also not just a thing of the past. Without realising it, we are constantly making ourselves captive to all kinds of things, both as a church and as individuals. We make ourselves captive to people, ideas, or desires. In short, as Jesus puts it, we enslave ourselves to sin.
So, just as the Reformation was an attempt to return to the truth of the gospel, we need constant reminding and continual help to return to the freedom that Christ offers us.
Lord, sanctify us in your truth.
Your word is truth.
Amen.
Freedom in truth
31 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’
John 8:31, 32 (NIVUK)
In any situation where there isn’t truth to stand on—no facts, no objectivity—we are only left with guessing and uncertainty. Being in that place is stressful and exhausting. Where there is no truth, there is no freedom from our uncertainty and doubt.
When I think about uncertainty and guessing, the first thing that comes to mind for me is farming. In my time among you, I’ve had to learn a lot about farming and rural life. I grew up mostly in suburbs, so being in this community has given me a chance to see life from a whole new perspective. For me, a sunny day is a good day. When a farmer sees the forecast for an 80% chance of 1–5mm of rain, particularly in a year of so-called “green drought”, that is incredibly stressful and frustrating.
We live in the Green Triangle which is of course known for its dependable rainfall, but even in a place like this, we can never be certain that the weather will do what we expect it to. There is no truth when it comes to weather forecasting, but only uncertainty and educated guessing. It’s only when we check the rain gauge after the fact when we know the truth of what has occurred that day.
Truth frees us from uncertainty, doubt, and confusion. We can forward-plan with certainty, clarity, and confidence that our plans will not go to waste like a crop can in the wrong conditions.
Jesus says that the truth sets us free. What truth is he talking about, and how do we find it?
“If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth…” We find this freeing truth when we hold to Jesus’ teaching. Another translation uses the words, “abide in my word”. To abide in Jesus’ word means to listen to it, digest it, reflect on it, speak it, live it.
We don’t stand over the Word and shake it until it does what we want it to. We sit under it and allow it to do its work. The Word is doing the action here, not us. That’s what has the power to do things when we gather in His name on a Sunday morning—the Word does the work. Most of our worship time is God serving us through His Word.
When we neglect the objective truth of the Word, there can only be two kinds of truth—my truth and your truth. If we don’t place the Word, the truth, at the centre of our lives, we put ourselves there instead.
There is freedom in truth, but what are we free from?
Freedom from slavery to sin
33 They answered him, ‘We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?’
34 Jesus replied, ‘Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.
John 8:33, 34 (NIVUK)
“We live in Australia. We come from Christian families. We’re proper Lutherans with German heritage. We’ve never been slaves of anyone!”
We might think we’re free people living in a “free country” (whatever that really means), but Jesus has news for us today. He says that we are all slaves to sin. The tricky thing about sin is that it disguises itself. This is why that, when the world departs from the truth of the gospel, the only place it can land is in sin. The world calls evil, good, and good, evil.
It’s tempting, then, to think that since we know the truth, we won’t make that mistake. We’re good Lutherans—we’ve never been slaves of anyone!
One of the greatest characteristics of Lutheran theology is its earthiness. It calls a spade a spade. The cross is rugged and rough, and it does the job it needs to. People followed Luther out of the Church partly because they could see that the piety and ritual (a.k.a. “bells and smells”) were preventing people from meeting the real, earthy Jesus.
Some of the reformers took this to the extreme and removed all art and colour from their church buildings, but Luther maintained that art and colour (and even some bells and smells) can aid people’s worship and prayer. They can give us something to focus on, they can teach us things about the faith, and they are a part of God’s creation to marvel at.
The problem we have is that we can make ourselves slaves to pretty much anything. We have our own ideas about how things should be done, not realising that we are trapping ourselves and making ourselves captive to those ideas, at the expense of being open to the truth as God reveals it.
Even when it comes to the issue of ordination in the LCA, there is always a danger that we think that our own interpretation of the word is the word. We make our understanding of the truth into the truth, limiting ourselves to our own minds. Even if our understanding is revealed to us by the Sprit and consistent with God’s will, we can be sinful in the way we relate with people that don’t see it that way. Sin can disguise itself as good, even when it comes to biblical debate.
Theology has always been tested and debated in the Christian Church, but there is a difference between healthy debate and harmful debate. Harmful debate occurs where both sides are absolutely convinced that their view is truth. Healthy debate occurs when both sides are convicted of their view based on sound reasoning but are willing to be corrected by the truth. That’s the kind of debate Luther probably wanted so that the church would be reformed rather than divided, but whether he did that any favours is another thing.
This is a good prayer for the LCA right now: for healthy, constructive, and truth-seeking debate. When that occurs, we are no longer slaves to sin but people who are free in the truth.
So, as people who are freed from slavery to sin by the truth of the gospel, where does that leave us? What does that make us?
Freedom as God’s children
35 Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
John 8:31, 32 (NIVUK)
If we are people who have been set free from slavery to sin, what do we then become? St Paul says in Romans 6:18 that we become slaves to righteousness. Jesus describes it with different words, but they make the same point.
The human heart was created to latch onto God as our Creator and heavenly Father, just as a son or daughter has a certain bond especially with their mother that will always exist. In our slavery to sin, our hearts latch onto sin rather than God. In that sense, human beings are always slaves in the sense that we look to something or someone for our life’s direction and our sense of identity. It’s just a matter of whether we are latched onto sin or to God and His righteousness.
When we are latched onto God, Jesus chooses to describe this as being a son rather than a slave. A slave’s role in the family is temporary and based on practical needs or how well they perform their tasks.
A son’s role in the family is certain and unchangeable. Even if children break rules and misbehave, they don’t lose their place in the family. There might be some discipline if the wrongdoing was intentional, but they remain a part of the family. You might call that forgiveness.
This is what we mean when we talk about Baptism as adoption into God’s family. He welcomes us as a son, not because we’re all male but because we share the status of sonship and are entitled to the inheritance of His kingdom.
Children are obedient to parents who love them. It doesn’t mean all children with loving parents are perfect, and it certainly doesn’t mean that loving parents are perfect. But it does mean that when we fall into sin, there is always love to return to.
We are obedient to God not because He forces us to be, or because we are afraid that He’ll smite us, but because we can see on the cross how much He loves us. We know that we can always return to the grace of our baptism, and that He is always more ready to forgive than we are to ask for it.
We are not God’s slaves, obeying His every command because our life depends on it. We are His children who have a place in His house because of His grace alone.
Conclusion
God’s truth gives us peace, He frees us from slavery to sin, and we are members of His family. May that freedom be yours today and, with the help of the Holy Spirit, may you continually return to the freedom we have in Christ. Amen.
