Reformation Service
John 8:31 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, "I tell you the truth, 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.
Our text talks about being free. Martin Luther wanted that. I hope that the reason you leave your comfortable homes on Sunday mornings to come to this place, is because you want that too. I hope that it’s worth everything to you, in fact. Reformation Day is a good day to consider how gathering like this on these mornings relates to making you free.
To Luther, the desire to be free was worth closing himself away from 16th century Germany, becoming a monk in a monastery. There, with a heavily regimented and spiritually-directed life, maybe—he thought, he could escape the temptations of the world and avoid being sent to hell for his sins. Luther wasn’t imagining this need to be free from sin. He knew enough of the Bible to know that. Jesus says right in our text, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.
But in the monastery, Luther found he couldn’t escape the world’s temptations. They were still there. The sin was inside him (Jesus says that too). It’s an inherited condition—a person’s guilt, his inability to stop sinning. The more Luther tried not to sin, the more burdened and guilty he felt. He would confess to his superior, “What if I do resist temptation? Am I not then proud of that resisting?” (Another sin). No matter what he did, Luther still felt imperfect before the perfect God who would surly send him to hell. Looking back on this time, Luther wrote: “I lived without reproach as a monk, but my conscience was disturbed to its very depths and all I knew about myself was that I was a sinner. I could not believe that anything that I thought or did or prayed satisfied God. I did not love, nay, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners.”
Again from our text:
John 8:31 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."
Again, that’s what Luther wanted; to be spiritually free. He didn’t want to feel guilty (or be guilty) anymore. He found that freedom; but it wasn’t because of any effort to live a better life.
Jesus had said, “If you hold to my teaching…the truth will set you free.” Jesus’ teaching was available in Bibles. Therein the Spirit could instruct a person. Very few had them though. Bibles. They were costly, and rarely (if ever) in the language regular people could understand. So people weren’t really reading the Bible. And the problem is that, spiritually, a person is always being instructed by someone—either by the Spirit through the Bible or by someone else (something for you to keep in mind this morning). The Bible not being available to people in Luther’s time was big problem.
To make matters worse, the church on earth on earth had lost its way in that time. Due to its earthly-minded teaching, what people generally believed is that you had to do enough good things to make up for the bad things you’ve done. Good things were acts of penance; pilgrimages; prayers to saints (who could potentially make you better with their goodness), viewing relics (religious junk the church had collected); even purchasing indulgences (papers that announced forgiveness to people living and dead). As a monk in the monastery, Martin Luther even abused his body, hoping it would make payment for his sins. He thought of Jesus as an angry judge (certainly not anyone to whom he could turn to be made free). It’s sad to say that in that day, the church’s way of making a person spiritually free didn’t work. It’s often said that the liturgy of the church is to be credited with a lot people’s salvation because God’s Word is the basis of it (it remains so today, by the way; that’s why we continue to hold to it today). The Scripturally-based Liturgy was reliable to make people free even though the church’s teachers were peddling worthless human doctrines.
By God’s grace, Luther’s superiors at the monastery ordered him to study the Bible.
But when he did so, he noticed that the church wasn’t teaching the message of the Bible. He hadn’t known the Biblical Jesus; He’d known someone else who was called that—someone that scared him. The Bible certainly taught that people need to be freed from the spiritual bondage of sin. But it wasn’t saying that that freedom comes from penance or pilgrimages, saints or relics, or indulgences. It wasn’t to be found by traveling to the “holy” city of Rome, or joining a monastery.
“If you hold to my teaching…the truth will set you free.” That’s what Jesus says in our text. In studying the Psalms, Luther learned that God is not merely an angry judge who wants to punish people for their sins, but rather a merciful God who wants to give people His righteousness. In studying Paul’s letter to the Romans, Luther found that salvation is by God’s grace alone through faith in Christ. God gives us faith through His Word and in baptism. He preserves that faith in us as we receive the Lord’s Supper.
Luther wrote these words in a letter after making this discovery: “Therefore, my sweet brother, learn Christ and him crucified: despairing of yourself, learn to pray to him. Saying, ‘You, Lord Jesus, are my righteousness, but I am your sin; you have taken on yourself what you were not and have given me what I was not.’ Beware of aspiring to such purity that you no longer wish to appear to yourself, or to be, a sinner.”
He meant, you’re never going to be perfect and sinless no matter how hard you try. God doesn’t want us to think of ourselves as being in a position to ever be deserving of good things from Him, or to somehow save ourselves. He wants us to do exactly as Luther advised his friend: “Pray to Jesus, saying, ‘You, Lord Jesus, are my righteousness, but I am your sin; you have taken on yourself what you were not and have given me what I was not.’”
In his commentary on the book of Romans, Luther wrote, “Note well that you will really be pious and free from sin if you believe that Christ makes you free by dying for you, shedding His blood, rising from the dead, and sitting at the right hand of God.” (vol.23,p.410)
Christ has made the payment for your sins. You need only believe that to be saved.
You know the truth, and the truth has set you free.
Martin Luther couldn’t keep this to himself. As the famous seller of indulgences, Johann Tetzel was approaching the town of Wittenberg, Germany on October 31, 1517, Martin Luther walked up to door of the Castle Church and posted 95 theses against the selling of indulgences. He wanted to discuss; to debate with theologians of the University and church. But it wasn’t meant to be. Before the Holy Roman Emperor, who demanded that Luther take back what he had said in opposition to the church, Luther said the famous words: Unless I am convinced with evidence from the Holy Scriptures or with open, clear, and distinct grounds and reasoning –and my conscience is captive to the Word of God – then I cannot and will not recant, because it is neither safe nor wise to act against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me! Amen.”
Martin Luther had wanted to be free. He’d found the means of attaining—through the blood of Christ as revealed in the Holy Scriptures. Luther translated the Bible into German so that his people could know the truth, and compare the church’s teachings to the Word of God. They could hold to [Jesus’] teachings, and be his disciples, as it says in our text, knowing the truth that makes a person spiritually free.
When you are burdened by sins, robbed by Satan of the freedom that Christ has secured for you and wants you to experience for yourself, then consider Martin Luther’s strong statement on the subject:
“For if some complaint should be registered against a heart that believes in Christ, and testify against it concerning some evil deed, then the heart turns itself away, and turns to Christ, and says, ‘But he made satisfaction. He is the righteous One, and this is my defense. He died for me, He made my sin His own; and if He made my sin His own, then I do not have it, and I am free.’”
You are free. AMEN.