Are you
free? It sounds like a silly question
probably. Of course you are free. We live in the land of the free and the home
of the brave. We got things like the
ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union).
We’ve got the Bill of Rights. We
are a democracy and we are free!
But Jesus says that you are not free. Actually, he said it first to the Jews who
had believed in him according to the gospel of John. He said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are
really my disciples. Then, you will know
the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Jesus explains what he means by the truth—the freeing truth, “Very truly
I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” The truth is: if you have ever sinned, then
you are not free according to Jesus Christ.
You are a slave. A slave to your
sin.
No matter when you were born of
where. No matter your background or your
color or your political leanings, you are a slave to sin. This is the truth that Jesus is speaking
of. But let’s be honest: just knowing
this truth doesn’t in itself set you free, does it. Just knowing this doesn't really change
anything. Yes, we are all sinners. Yes, none of us can be perfect. We all fall short of the glory of God. Simply knowing this does not set you free.
You understand this I am sure. How many of you watch the biggest loser while
chowing down on a tub of ice cream on the couch? You could explain exactly what is necessary
to lose weight according to the show: eat healthy and exercise a lot. You probably realize that sitting on the
couch and eating ice cream is going to put on weight rather than help you lose
it. And yet, still, this knowledge doesn’t
give you the motivation to start doing those workout videos in the closet or
start using the dusty home gyms hidden safely away in your basement. Watching the show doesn't give you freedom
from the guilt or freedom from type 2 diabetes.
You know the truth, but that doesn’t give you the freedom to lose the
weight you want to lose. Just like the
apostle Paul so famously said, "The good things we want to do we don't do,
and the bad things we don't want to do are the things we do."
Hearing that you are a slave to sin
is the first step, but it’s not everything.
The first step of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) is, “We admitted we were
powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.” That first step is a big deal because,
without that honesty, it is very difficult to find freedom from such a powerful
addiction. And lots of people have done
that first step. They've come to a
meeting, received their surrender coin, seen the promise of freedom just around
the corner and, yet, they are still slaves to alcohol to this day. Knowing the truth of our condition can only
get us so far. Lots of Christians
understand that they are sinners which is obviously very important, but just
knowing that you are a sinner doesn’t give you freedom from sin. There must be more.
Let me take a quick break here and
try to illustrate what it means to be a slave.
Every once in awhile I have dreams--really weird and scary dreams. The worst kind for me is when I am not
prepared. For instance, I will be the
lead in a musical and it's opening night and the performance is thirty minutes
away, but I don't know any of my lines and I can't find a script and everyone
is completely upset because I don't have my costume on. I feel a horrible sense of guilt, frustration
and panic because I am trapped in this experience and can't escape the upcoming
reality that I'm about to be totally embarrassed by not being prepared. The thing is, if you've ever had a dream like
this, you seldom realize it's a dream; instead you just feel trapped. No way out until whatever it is finally wakes
you up. You see, in my personal life I
am always prepared (or at least I try to be) so I don't know what it feels like
to have this type of thing happen to me.
I've never felt as helpless and trapped like a slave as I have in a few
dreams.
Jesus tells us how to find freedom,
“Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the
family, but a son belongs to it forever.
So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” You must be set free by the Son, the Son of
God in fact, who we will find out is Jesus Christ himself.
In the movie, The Mission” Mendoza,
a former slaver of the Indian tribes of the area, kills his brother in his
madness and finds himself in jail. A
kind priest visits him and struggles to keep Mendoza from committing suicide
from the despair and guilt he is feeling.
You see, the problem is that Mendoza can't believe God would forgive him
for murder when he can't even forgive himself.
Finally, the priest convinces Mendoza to carry a huge package behind him
up this dangerous mountain path as penance.
This package is tied around Mendoza with ropes and is full of helmets
and shields and swords and equipment weighing a lot. The movie shows scene after scene of this
man, Mendoza, pulling this heavy load up this mountain through his blood, sweat
and tears.
Finally, they make it up the mountain and there, standing
before them, are the Indian natives whom this man, Mendoza, previously sold
into slavery. When these natives see
Mendoza, they run to him with a knife, pull back his head with a handful of his
hair and place the sharp blade on his throat.
Because of the lives Mendoza stole, it appears that they will take his
life and, to be honest, it is what Mendoza has wanted the whole time anyway. It is what he deserves. Surprisingly, the man holding the knife
slices through Mendoza's rope and tosses the huge heavy package back down the
mountain. Mendoza begins to cry and the
whole village surrounds him. When you
are a slave to your sin, you cannot find freedom yourself. Not through penance or through feeling guilty
enough. Not through hard work or just
pretending whatever happened doesn't matter.
You must be set free by someone who has the authority, the power and the
compassion to free you.
In the book of Jeremiah, God
complains about how his people continue to break the covenant He made with
them. "they broke my covenant
though I was a husband to them," he says.
He sends Jeremiah, the prophet, to call them back to repentance, they
are slaves to their sin just like us! So
finally, God says, "Enough!" Since they continue to fall short, God
needs to do something new. He must free
them from their slavery himself.
"This is the new covenant I will make with the house of Israel,"
declares the Lord, "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their
hearts. I will be their God and they
will be my people. No longer will a man
teach his neighbor, or a man his brother saying, "Know the Lord"
because they will all know me from the least of them to the greatest. For I will forgive their wickedness and will
remember their sins no more." God
isn't basing this new covenant on the goodness of the Israelites, but on the
goodness of himself as God. He is the
only one who has the power, the authority and the compassion to forgive and set
them free from their bondage and so God does it. He gives them their freedom. But we are not Jews and this promise in
Jeremiah, while descriptive of the kind of God we have, is not for us. It is, at best, a possibility.
But in the book of Romans, we finally
hear a promise that is not just for Jews but also for non-Jews like us. This was the promise that inspired Martin
Luther so famously back in the 16th century when the Reformation of the church
began. You see, Martin Luther understood
that first part of the truth Jesus mentioned, about being a sinner. Luther would beat himself silly as a monk in
the monastery because he realized his utter depravity before God. Nothing he could do could make it
better. But then, one day, while reading
the very reading we heard today in Romans, Luther realized that God wasn't
expecting poor Martin Luther to free himself from his chains but to trust that
God himself, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, was the only
one who could free a sinner from this slavery.
Freedom didn't come from feeling guilty or from doing enough good works,
but true freedom only came through faith in God's Son, Jesus Christ. Only Jesus had the power and authority and
compassion to forgive. This is the full
story of truth that Jesus refers to in the gospel of John, now written in the
book of Romans, "This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus
Christ to all who believe. There is no
difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are
justified freely by this grace through the redemption that came by Christ
Jesus."
You know those scary dreams I was
talking about? When I was the lead in a
musical and didn’t know my lines? One
time I tried to change the date of opening night, one time I tried to get
someone else to do the part, one time I quick tried to memorize the whole thing
in about ten minutes, one time I just tried to run away. But the only thing that made a difference was
when I would wake up and realize . . . hey, it was a dream. I am not expected to play the lead role in
any play today. Phew!
I believe that the truth that Jesus
Christ talks about is something like that.
It's like waking up from a horrible dream and realizing that there is a
new reality. God isn't going to base
your eternal salvation on your sin but, instead, on his forgiveness.
We all feel trapped by the sin in
our lives. We will all fall short of
God's glory. The full truth is that,
while sin can destroy our lives on this earth, our eternal life is based on
something more true than our slavery to sin: the gracious forgiveness of
God. Jesus says, "I tell you the
truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.
Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to
it forever. So if the Son sets you free,
you will be free indeed." Amen
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