Freed in the Word

Text: John 8:31-36

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

            An exceedingly common feature among people is the desire to be free. Cultures throughout the world, whether it was the ancient Greeks, or the peoples of Britain, or the Founding Fathers of the United States have all had the dream of freedom, however it’s defined in that era. We’ve also inherited that desire for freedom. In our chase after freedom, we’ve felt like it’s just there, either barely in our grasp or right at our fingertips. Some find it in financial freedom, the ability to buy or sell what we want, whatever catches our interest. They find freedom in having enough money to purchase their hopes, their aspirations, their wants. Some seek freedom in the ability to go where they want to go in that moment. Think of the thrill you get when you decide to do something on a whim, an impromptu walk in the park or an unscheduled pleasure trip somewhere you enjoy going. Some seek it in health, or holding on to youth, to not be bound by the limits of what nature would impose on us. Still others, perhaps most radically—and often destructively—look for freedom in the ability, the privilege, the right to do whatever they desire whenever they desire it, no matter what it might mean for others around them.

            But we hear today that any definition or scheme or concept of freedom drawn from fallen human minds and hearts is actually not freedom at all. When Jesus offered freedom in His Word to the Jews who had believed in Him—“You will know the truth and the truth will set you free”—they replied, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?” They defined freedom on their own genealogical and national terms. They were sons of Abraham. They had the Torah written by Moses. They were Israel—and not those lost tribes, but the descendants of the two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, that could trace their lineage back to Abraham. Of course they were free.

            But that was a false freedom, as Jesus points out. The sons of Abraham had, in fact, been enslaved many times in their national history. They were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt. They had been beset by the pagan nations around them. They were under the thumb of every empire in that part of the world through the centuries, even carried away into exile. Even when they spoke those words to Jesus, they were under the rule of the Roman Empire, their land little more than a client kingdom, a regional district under the sandal of Caesar. But Jesus delves even deeper. For it was not just about bloodlines and the history of kingdoms. There was an even more insidious and entangling slavery that He was exposing. “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.” Their deepest slavery, their deepest un-freedom was not anything as superficial as national concerns or worldly definitions of freedom. It was being bound and ruled by sin, by fallenness, by death.

            So it goes with all those human concepts concerning freedom. That most radical idea about freedom, being able to do whatever you want no matter the cost to yourself or others, is actually bondage—being enslaved to the whims of your momentary desires, the passions of your fallen nature, the drive to get more and more. Those who find so-called freedom in health, beauty, or youth will always find those things wrenched out of their hands sooner or later, and the more they struggle to hold on, the deeper their enslavement to it becomes. Those who find their freedom in the ability to go where they want will find their freedom taken away when sickness or age or injury strikes, and then despair forces heavy chains on them. Those who try to find freedom in money will always be bound to get more and more, even as it gets spent faster and faster, creating a loop of dependence, which is not anything that even resembles freedom. “The slave,” Jesus says to those who put themselves under that kind of bondage, “does not remain in the house forever.” Those things, those ideas, will use you up and throw you out.

            True freedom, though, the freedom that really sets you free and remains forever, is found elsewhere. It’s found in Jesus alone. “The Son remains forever;” Jesus continues, “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Receiving what the Son has to give—not what He demands, like all those other false messiahs, for He gives of Himself freely—receiving what He has to give is what makes you free. Being forgiven and released from the sins of your past and present means that you’re released from the house of slavery. You’re regenerated in Holy Baptism to have new desires, bigger and better and eternal hopes and wants, all given by the Holy Spirit. You’re unshackled from the idea that if you just get a little more of this or a little less of that, or try just a little harder or do more things, that you could earn your freedom. It’s already yours. Jesus has already turned the key on your chains and they’re on the floor at your feet. The cell door is open. You’re free, and free indeed.

            That’s what the Reformation was about: being set free by Jesus and His Word. It’s about His Word of forgiveness, His Word mixed with water in Baptism, His Word of Institution in the Holy Supper, His Word written in Holy Scripture, preached from pulpit and lectern, proclaimed in hymns and conversation. So what does that freedom through Jesus’ Word look like?

            As we might expect, it will fly in the face of the fallen world and its ideas about freedom. It will run counterintuitive to our natures that have been corrupted and curved in on ourselves because of the Fall of humanity. But Martin Luther summed it up nicely in his treatise named “The Freedom of a Christian” in 1520. In it he wrote, “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.” Well and good, according to our natural reason. But he continues, creating a paradox: “A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.” So we are freed, to serve one another. That means that we have the most fundamental freedom—freedom even from ourselves and our fallen inward-focused nature, freedom from the idea that through our works we can earn something from God, freedom to do things simply out of love and goodwill. We are free to serve, just as Jesus did, who Himself was the only perfectly free One before He released us. You might prickle at the idea a bit, that you’re set free to serve freely. But that’s just the old fallen flesh objecting. In Christ, this freedom is beyond what the Old Adam and the corrupted selfish world can comprehend. We don’t serve because we have to, but because our natures have now been regenerated and transformed to be more like Christ’s, so now we want to—you’re free to do it out of love, not obligation; out of freedom, not out of compulsion. That regeneration, that change, comes to us only by Jesus and His Word of what He has done and is still doing. “One thing, and one thing only,” Luther writes in The Freedom of a Christian, “is necessary for Christian life, righteousness, and freedom. That one thing is the most holy Word of God, the gospel of Christ, as Christ says…‘So if the Son makes you freed, you will be free indeed.’” That’s what we’ve heard from the mouth of Jesus Himself: “If you abide in my Word you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” And if the Son, the Truth and Word incarnate, sets you free, you will be free indeed.

            So come to the Word and be released. Taste the eternal freedom in forgiveness and life that Jesus has for you in Himself, the Word made flesh, made body and blood, given for you, in service to you, so that you would be free indeed. In the name of Jesus, who releases and redeems us. Amen.