The Son Sets You Free

A Sermon on John 8:31-36

In an old “Peanuts” comic strip, there was a conversation between Lucy and Charlie Brown. Lucy was in a philosophical mood. She says, “Life is like a deck chair on a cruise ship. Some people place their chairs looking forward, so that they can see where they are going. Some place them looking back, so that they can see where they have been. That’s how people are.” Charlie Brown replied, “I can’t even get my chair unfolded!”

Today, we look back at Martin Luther and the Reformation. We look back so that we can appreciate what we have today. We also look forward to the future in faith. We rejoice that we are free to worship God with joy and gladness. We are free to leave the past behind and look forward in faith.

Today, our Lord Jesus talks about freedom. Jesus says, “If you abide in my Word, you are truly my disciples. Then, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” When the people in the crowd heard this, they were highly offended. They thought they didn’t need to be made free. They weren’t slaves to anyone. They had all the freedom they needed. But, Jesus plainly says, “I tell you the truth, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.”

To be honest, we also don’t like hearing this. No one likes to be reminded that we are slaves to sin. We would rather deny that sin has such a firm grip upon us. However, the truth is we are trapped in the worst kind of slavery, which we can never break.

We are addicted to sin. Like an alcoholic, we are trapped, boxed in, and stuck in our old ways. Our sinful desires continually lead us astray. The temptations we face are just too powerful. It is too easy for us to sin and fall away from God. In spite of our firm resolve to change our ways, our bondage to sin is never quite broken. And our denial that we are slaves is just further proof we are hopelessly trapped. We cannot do anything to free ourselves.

In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther found himself in a church that had an elaborate system for offering people personal freedom. Freedom could be obtained if you confessed all of your sins to a priest, and then did a series of good works that would make satisfaction for your guilt. In this way, you could secure for yourself the forgiveness of sins.

However, one big problem was that even while you were doing these good works of satisfaction, you were already committing new sins, which now had to be confessed and paid for. You soon found yourself on an endless treadmill of guilt and condemnation.

As an Augustinian monk, Luther tried to find spiritual peace by observing all the rules and regulations of monastic life. He did everything required. But the more works Luther did, the less freedom he experienced.

The church of Luther’s day had made the forgiveness of sins an endless series of hoops you had to jump through. And you could never be sure if you had jumped through enough hoops to satisfy God. You can never be certain if your sins really were forgiven or not. You were kind of stuck in your guilt and moral failings.

What Jesus says today brings us sweet relief. He says, “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Here is our hope! The Son of God does what we could never do on our own. He sets us free from our guilt and failures. He releases us from the condemnation of the law.

Paul says, “For there is no distinction: For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by God’s grace as a free gift. This comes only through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God the Father put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.”

You can’t free yourself. Only the Son of God has the power and authority to set you free. The Son of God wins this freedom by becoming a slave in our place. He humbles himself and becomes our servant. He becomes a slave to sin as he dies on the cross. He enters our slavery as he bears our burden and suffers that punishment we merit. He is the “propitiation by blood.”

This means that Jesus paid the price for our rebellion against God. He made satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. He shed his blood for us on Good Friday. Therefore, the price has been paid in full. There is no need for us to add anything. “It is finished,” our Lord cried out from the cross.

You can’t free yourself. Only Jesus can set you free. This is exactly what Martin Luther discovered. We are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. We are saved by faith, apart from any works of satisfaction. Christ has paid the price. You are set free from sin and guilt. And if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed!

Salvation is a gift of God’s undeserved grace. We receive this gift by faith. We are justified by faith apart from works of the law. We put our faith in our Lord’s work of atonement and we discover that we are now set free. Listen: Christ has made propitiation by his blood. You are forgiven! You are now set free to live for God. Your sins are forgiven and gone forever.

Luther summarizes this so well when he says in his Small Catechism, “I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord. He has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil. Not with gold or silver, but with his holy, precious blood and with his innocent suffering and death, so that I may be his own and live under him in his kingdom and serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as he is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity. This is most certainly true.”

That is the very core and center of the entire Bible. This is God’s message to all people: Jesus Christ has rescued us from our slavery to sin. The power of death and the devil has been broken forever. Our Lord shed his holy and precious blood so that we might be his own forever. We now belong to him. We live under Christ in his kingdom of grace. This is what Luther discovered in the Bible.

Now, here is something else Martin Luther discovered through his study of the Scriptures. Even though we are truly forgiven and set free, we still have our sinful nature to contend with. Even though we are Christians, we still are sinners. We are saints and sinners at the same time. However, our addiction to sin has been broken, and our job now is to be true disciples of Christ with the help of the Holy Spirit.

You might say, we are “recovering sinners” who seek to hang on to our newfound “sobriety.” We repent where necessary and resolve to amend what is wrong in our life through the power of God. We seek to abide in the Word of Christ and stay sober. We are disciples of the risen Lord who follow his way and rejoice in his truth. We now want to “serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness.”

Finally, here is also another dimension to our freedom that we don’t appreciate enough. For some reason, we have a hard time applying this truth to ourselves. Here is something every one of us struggles with. We know that God has forgiven us. For the sake of Christ, God has forgiven all your sins and he remembers them no more. They are forgiven and forgotten, thrown into the depths of the sea. We all know that.

But somehow or another, we still have a hard time forgiving ourselves. We still think about the past and it bothers us greatly. We continue to blame ourselves for all of those mistakes and failures from years ago. The past haunts us. We continue to feel guilty. We just cannot forgive ourselves for all of those bad things we have done. We feel trapped. We keep looking back and we remember our sins all the time. We just can’t let it go.

But listen: “If the Son of God sets you free, you will be free indeed.” If you know the truth of God’s Word, that truth will set you free. And here is God’s truth: You can forgive yourself. God himself sets you free. Enter that freedom Christ has won for you. Leave the past behind and forget about it. God has forgiven your sins; you can forgive yourself, too.

Today, Jesus declares, “Don’t live in the past anymore. Move forward in faith. Look to the future in faith and stop looking back. Today is the day of your salvation. Today, you are set free!” Jesus says, “Continue to abide in my Word. I will help you to be my disciple. I will empower you with my Holy Spirit. Live now in my truth. Always remember that the Father loves you deeply. You are a redeemed child of God. Rejoice and give thanks! Let God’s truth set your heart at rest. Be filled with peace and quietness. Live now in grace and serve others in love. And I will be with you always, to the very end of the age.” Amen!