Freedom in Christ: A Reformation Day Meditation on John 8 and Romans 3

Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him,

If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;

 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

 

They answered him, We be Abraham's seed,

and were never in bondage to any man:

how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?

 

Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you,

Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.

And the servant abideth not in the house for ever:

but the Son abideth ever.

If the Son therefore shall make you free,

ye shall be free indeed.

 

In John 8, Jesus was teaching the Jews who followed Him that they were not as free as they thought themselves to be.  In a practical sense, the Jews were not free from Roman authority, as they were a conquered and occupied land by the time of Jesus’ Advent.  The regular people were not free of the capricious tyranny of their religious leaders, who endlessly made up new laws and promulgated them as the oracles of God, all while fleecing the people of their money and patronage.  Yet it was not these practical enslavements Jesus was speaking to them about, but a spiritual reality that anyone who is born in sin, lives in sin, and dies in sin, is not free, but a slave of the sin they commit.  Every person who submits themselves to sin becomes its servant, and Jesus taught them directly that no servant of sin abides in the Kingdom of God forever.  On the contrary, Jesus as the only begotten Son of God, was truly free and abides in the house of the Lord forever; therefore, if the Son was to make the people free, they would be restored to freedom before God and able to dwell with God in His Kingdom unto ages of ages without end.

 

As with so many things, this spiritual reality is greater than the physical manifestations of tyranny in the world.  No tyrant or human trafficker will live forever, and no unfortunate slave of their evil will suffer forever in their chains.  The human experience of evil tyranny in this world is bounded by the human lifespan, and thus the machinations of evil people and the suffering of the innocent under their rule, is definitionally transitory.  But the spirit of men will live forever, and it passes from this world into the realm of eternity on the day of one’s death.  At that moment, the soul will stand before God as the creature before its Creator, and give an account of all that has been done in their life to that point.  St. Paul in our epistle reading for today from Romans 3 makes clear that no one will stand justified before God on their own merits, because no one has lived a life of perfection before the holy and just Law of God.  Thus the promise Jesus made to the Jews was their only hope:  that if the Son of God as the Incarnate Word of the Father would set them free, then they would be absolved of their sins and welcomed into His Kingdom.

 

And yet, God is both Just and Merciful, Righteous and Gracious; He cannot be what He is not, and He cannot violate Himself as the ground of all reality and existence.  What was due by men by the curse of the Law before God, had to be paid if man could be forgiven—an infinite debt for every soul, paid by the only One who could do so.  No man could atone for his own sins, except to take his just place in hell for all eternity, and neither could he atone for the sins of others.  Only God could pour out a sacrifice of infinite worth to pay an infinite debt, and liberate the souls of men from the curse of their own depravity.  This is what St. Paul calls Propitiation:  that Jesus Christ took the place of fallen men on the Cross, and that His sacrifice as both fully God and fully Man was satisfaction before the Judgement Seat of the Father.  In Christ alone was the satisfaction of every man’s sins, and in Christ alone would the sentence of man’s fall be reversed.  In Christ alone was freedom from sin, death, hell, and the power of the devil—a victory no man could win for himself or his loved ones.  While transient tyrannies of this world may come and go, the eternal tyranny of man’s soul was set free by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, so that all who would abide in Him by Faith would receive His saving Grace forevermore.

 

To what purpose, then, are we set free?  Freedom before God in Jesus Christ is not the libertarian ideal of modern politics, nor the Epicurean dream of self-satisfaction in whatever hedonistic desire may dominate a man’s mind.  To be free of the slavery of evil, is to rise into the freedom of the good—to be an adopted child of God, daily conformed to His image, and sent out to live according to His Word, Wisdom, and Will.  In Christ we are made free, not to follow our own desires and passions into the bleak darkness of our former slavery, but to rise into His righteousness, justice, truth, and mercy.  We are freed from the devil not that we would serve him again, but that we would become in fullness what we were created to be, reflecting in the uniqueness of our person the glories of Almighty God.  Rather than abolishing the Law of God, the Gospel of Jesus Christ affirms it by the shedding of His blood and the Propitiation He has made in our place.  We are not saved from sin so that sin would abound in us, but that we might be motivated with a new heart and a new Spirit to emulate the Love and Truth and Righteousness that our Savior first gave to us.  We are free, once more, to seek the Good, unchained from the slavery of evil.

 

On this Reformation Day, we are called to remember that there is salvation in no other name given under heaven, but by Jesus Christ.  Our freedom from the darkness is not won by the efforts of any mere, fallen mortal, but by the Only Begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.  It is the Word of Jesus that comes to us by the power of His Holy Spirit, that we might repent, believe, and live in His Word, raised out of our darkness and into His marvelous Light.  In Christ alone we stand today in His grace, despite the transient vagaries of this world’s evils, its tyrants, and its machinations, knowing that our redemption passes from this world to the next, where no evil can abide forever.  In Christ alone we are raised to a new life, which seeks not our own pleasures and desires, but works in the love of God and of our neighbors as Christ first loved us.  In Christ alone we are now free to live as the children of God He has made us to be, that we might sing His praises unto all ages without end.  Soli Deo Gloria!  Amen.