1 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. - Galations 5:1, The New International Version, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House) 1984.
Dear Friends in Christ,
It is our privilege to gather here on this Reformation Sunday celebration and pay tribute to an individual we’ve never met personally, but who, nevertheless, has had a profound impact on our lives. In fact, we could say without hesitation and without overstatement that if he had not appeared on the historical scene our lives today would be much different. We can even go a step farther: So important is this individual to us and our churchbody that we are gladly known by his name as his followers…
The individual I am talking about is well known to all of us here today. His name: Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ – who He is and what He has done for us – is the heart of this and every other Reformation celebration that is going on in Lutheran churches today.
The divinely inspired writer of our text for this morning is the Apostle Paul. The man whom, for various reasons, we as Lutherans particularly remember today with gratefulness to God is Martin Luther. These two men were separated in time by nearly 1500 years. They lived in different parts of the world. They spoke different languages. And yet, these two men shared a great similarity. Both of them knew what it meant to feel spiritually hopeless and imprisoned, and both of them discovered, by the grace of God, the meaning of true freedom in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
What was true for them is equally true for each of us. Using the experiences of these two men and on the basis of our text, we’d like to rejoice in the liberating effect of the Gospel message as we consider
OUR FREEDOM IN CHRIST
Listen again to the words of Paul: "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then and do not be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." A little background information to these words may prove helpful…
After being called by God in a dramatic fashion (recall his conversion on the road to Damascus), the Apostle Paul became a great missionary. He went from town to town in different parts of the world starting Christian congregations. Each town and each situation was different. He spent more time in some places than others. But his method of operation was pretty much the same each place: He preached, he taught, he established a congregation – and then he moved on to the next place. Yet, even after moving on, he continued to be their spiritual father and instructor. This he did through epistles, or letters, many of which we have recorded for us in the New Testament.
Unfortunately, what often happened after Paul moved on was that other "religious" people moved in, and they often confused these new Christians with different brands of false teaching. Such was the case in the Galatian congregation. The group that was troubling them was known as the "Judaizers." And what the Judaizers were telling these new Christians is that faith in Jesus Christ as Savior was not enough for salvation. They said that in addition to believing in Christ, a person had to strictly comply with all the Old Testament rules and regulations that applied to worshiping God. God had indeed given these rules and regulations to Old Testament Israel, but for a two-fold and limited purpose. First, these "ceremonial laws" kept Israel separate from all the other nations around them, because this was the nation that, from a human standpoint, was to produce the Savior of the world. Secondly, many of these regulations somehow pointed to and taught about the redemptive work of the Savior who was to come. Again, these laws were temporary. Once the Savior arrived on the scene, they were no longer necessary.
But that’s not what the Judaizers were saying. In effect, they were saying that you had to earn your way into heaven doing all the right stuff and making all the right moves. And that did two things for the Galatians. First, it took the joy out of their faith and made their spiritual life a burden. God became the demanding and hard-to-please Big Task-master in the Sky instead of a loving Heavenly Father. Secondly, they could no longer ever be sure if they were going to heaven, because how can one know if he or she has ever done enough? Paul knew from his own past experience the futility, uncertainty and hopelessness of trying to earn God’s favor through his own work-righteousness…
So he emphatically reminds the Galatians that this is not the way it is. Rather "it is for freedom" – the freedom of knowing salvation is ours because our sins are forgiven – "that Christ has set us free." In other words, Jesus Christ has liberated us from having to earn our salvation. Somebody did keep all of God’s laws, but it wasn’t us because we couldn’t possibly do so. It was the God-Man Jesus Christ. He kept all of God’s laws perfectly as our substitute. Having done that He then suffered on Calvary’s cross the punishment that we as law-breakers and sinners deserve – again as our substitute. And here is the good news (the "Gospel"): Everything Jesus did gets credited to the account of those who trust Him alone for their salvation. The assurance of knowing where we are going is the Christian’s freedom in Christ.
Paul goes on to say that anything besides that pure, free Gospel message is to place oneself under a "yoke of slavery." And that is very descriptive terminology, because the person who operates under a system of earning their way to heaven places a burden upon themselves that no human being can bear… So Paul tells them to "stand firm" in holding on to faith alone in Jesus Christ as the only way to eternal life. Paul wants them to know that Jesus Christ is not just some sort of down payment for salvation (to which they contribute the rest), but the full payment…
1500 years later in a different time and place, a man named Martin Luther struggled with the same error that was being taught by the Judaizers of his day (although they didn’t go by that name). Hounded by his sins and a lack of inner rest for his soul, he tried to make peace with God by joining a monastery. There he could avoid sin. There he could do the right things. Maybe that would make God happy, so he thought. Did it work? Listen to his own words as we find them in his writings:
I was a good monk, and kept the rules of my order so strictly that I can claim: If ever a man got to heaven through monasticism, I was indeed that man… And yet my conscience was never peaceful… The more I tried to remedy my condition, through more abject confession and rigorous penance, the more troubled my conscience became. I soon became terrified of my own sin. The whole world seemed right except me. I felt I was alone as the object of God’s wrath, and that I was the most miserable of men… Finally, my misery became intolerable. I seemed to be suffering the pains of eternal torment every hour, every minute, every second. The whole realm of hell seemed to exist within my soul; I felt as if I were inwardly being reduced to ashes. I could see no escape; I was pinned down by my own guilt.
How do you understand this? Are these the words of a man who was too hard on himself? A man who was perhaps overly sensitive and just needed to lighten up? Was Luther a man who spent too much time alone thinking about his sins? No. They are simply the words of a man – any man – who feels the crushing hopelessness and despair of trying to earn his way into heaven. He could never do enough. Heaven was unattainable. There was no escape. He was a slave to sin, death and hell…
… Until Luther understood that "it is for freedom that Christ has set us free." After fourteen years as a monk, his spirit under constant torment, Luther found peace through his study of Paul’s letter to the Romans. A recurring phrase in the Book of Romans is "the righteousness of God." Luther had always understood this to mean the righteousness that God demanded of him in the sense of doing all the right things in order to get to heaven. Now he was led to understand that it was something completely different, that God’s righteousness is itself a gift of God given to those who trust in Jesus Christ as their Savior. Listen again to his own words…
In 1519, I turned my mind to trying to understand the epistle of Paul to the Romans. I was filled with a great desire to enter the mind of Paul, but was held up by one word: "righteousness." He says the righteousness of God is revealed in the Gospel. I hated that phrase "righteousness of God," which I had been taught to interpret as the "justice" of God, whereby he punishes sinners… I was obsessed with the same sense that, although my life as a monk was beyond reproach, I was in the eyes of God a sinner. Despite all the efforts I made to be good, my conscience could never be appeased. I did not love, but hated this God who punishes… At last, as I meditated night and day, God came to my rescue. He guided me to look at the context of Paul’s phrase: "the righteous shall live by faith." Suddenly, I began to grasp that this righteousness of God is a gift of God, through faith. As this truth dawned, I felt I was born again, and entering the very gates of paradise. Then and there the whole face of Scripture changed. Now, in the same degree that I had hated the phrase "the righteousness of God," I loved the phrase – it seemed the sweetest and most joyful phrase ever written.
Was Luther "born again" when he understood the Gospel? Perhaps a better phrase would be "unburdened" or "liberated." Luther was awakened to this glorious truth: "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free." And from that time on, Luther "stood firm" and did not let himself be "burdened by a yoke of slavery." Like the Apostle Paul before him, he continued to work hard to live a God-pleasing life. But now the motivation was entirely different. Living for God was something that he wanted to do out of love for what God had done for him in Jesus Christ; not something that he felt compelled to do to earn God’s favor…
The message is the same for Christians through all the ages, and that most certainly includes us. Jesus Christ has set us free. What does that mean practically? It means that when we or our loved ones who believe in Christ die, the next stop is heaven. Jesus Christ has set us free from wondering where we will spend our forevermore. And when we keep in mind that the 70, 80, 90 or however many years the Lord gives us on earth is just a minute blip on the radar screen of eternity, that is something to get excited about…
Practically speaking, our freedom in Christ also means freedom from fear of the future and worry. God in His great love for us has met our greatest need, the forgiveness of sins. Does it not stand to reason that this great love will continue throughout our lives, and encompass every aspect of our lives? He says it will, and it does. So the real question in light of this is: why do we spend so much time worrying?
Practically speaking, our freedom in Christ is the freedom to live without conforming to the world’s standards. We live in a world of stress and strain and striving and competition to measure up with the Jones’s next door. It is refreshing for us as Christians to know that the only One whom we seek to please is our Lord, and that He has given us guidelines on how to do so in His Word. We are free to live a meaningful, devoted life while so many others in this world go chasing after the wind…
We could go on, but you get the point. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.
That is also why an event that will take place this afternoon is so puzzling, and because of the great potential for confusion, something I feel compelled to pass on to you…
Perhaps you have heard that sometime today representatives of the Lutheran World Federation (of which we in the WELS are not a part) and the Roman Catholic Church will meet in Augsburg, Germany [click here for the WELS news article]. There they will sign a joint document declaring that after almost 500 years of separation they are now in agreement on the chief teaching of Scripture – salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. By this action they are essentially declaring the events that culminated in the Lutheran Reformation were all one big misunderstanding. There will be new words and new exercises in semantics and a great show of external unity, but in truth, the Roman Church is making no concessions. For those who go along with this, it is nothing less than a return to the yoke of slavery that Martin Luther once lived with…
We might put it this way. On what is called "the Reformation wall" in a town in Switzerland, these words are inscribed: "Post tenebras, lux." In Latin this means: "After darkness, light." It referred to the fact that after centuries of darkness, the light of the Gospel reappeared. What is happening today could be viewed as just the opposite. After light, darkness. Or as Paul put it, a return to the yoke of slavery for those involved in this "historic" event. I do not mention these things for the sake of "bashing" either the Roman Catholic Church or liberal Lutheranism, but to simply make us aware once again of how much we in the Wisconsin Synod march to the beat of a different drummer…
And with the Reformation Day prayer that God will always keep us steadfast in His word. Therefore, we bring our thoughts to a close today with grateful hearts for that key Reformation figure, Jesus Christ, and the freedom we have in Him alone as our Savior. Freedom from the yoke of the law… freedom from fear of the future, now and forever… freedom to live meaningful and purposeful lives… this is our glorious freedom in Christ. Amen.