Today we commemorate the Reformation, over 500 years since Luther famously nailed his 95 Theses on the doors of the Wittenberg Castle Church, protesting against the abusive teachings and practices of the church of his time. The church taught that God’s favour could be earned by certain practices, like praying on each step of the church, or gazing at religious artefacts thought to be holy. Probably the most well-known was the ‘Indulgence scheme’. It was thought that the souls of deceased loved ones were trapped in a place between this life and heaven called Purgatory and could only be freed by paying money for an indulgence certificate. Thousands in poverty had to decide between personal welfare or paying for a ticket to heaven for loved ones. This ticket of ‘hope’ was not affordable to most people. With the plague throughout Europe causing mortality rates to skyrocket, it was the perfect storm for indulgence preachers to prey on the most vulnerable people, in what was basically a fundraiser for St Peter’s Basilica. The indulgence scheme allowed for a ‘sin now, pay later’ attitude. Repentance was cheap and tied to how much money a person had.
The church had lost its head—it had forgotten all about Jesus. But through studying God’s word, Luther and others rediscovered the gospel: that because of God’s great mercy, we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. We are declared not guilty and made right with God through faith in Christ’s saving work for us, apart from works. The Reformers translated the Bible from Latin into their native German, so that to many who had never heard the scriptures they were now accessible, bringing freedom from the impossible task of working and paying their way to God’s favour and salvation. It was freeing, hearing the truth of God’s word! It was life changing!
Its hard for us—506 years later, in metropolitan Adelaide—to grasp the enormity of this event, and the depth of joy that the true gospel brought. Could we say that the gospel is life-changing? That it is freeing? Jesus says in today’s text: “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Our initial reaction might be the same as those to whom Jesus first spoke: “We have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?”
Jesus’ audience was only thinking in earthly, family relationship terms, not spiritual. “We are descendants of Abraham and never been slaves of anyone!” They had forgotten that they were also descendants of Adam. And we are too. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, but from the moment of conception we are slaves. Spiritually dead and blind, we are unable to even know the one true God, choose him or please him. That’s why we begin our time of worship with the confession: “We are born in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.” We might not like hearing and speaking those words. We might argue that we are pretty decent people, not like the terrorists and war-mongers in the news. But Jesus says: “Truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.”
Adam and Eve were the first people God created and had such close fellowship with him in the Garden. But they were also the first to throw all that away, when they turned their backs to God by authoring an alternate truth to his word. Since this declaration of independence, it is natural for all people to not like to be told what to do, to rebel against God and ignore his good and gracious will. The human way is to crave freedom but distort it, making ourselves the only authority, and ourselves the only one to serve, creating God in our own image to be whatever we want him to be, and one who would never say “no” to us.
Jesus said: “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.” On this day, some things important to our tradition and culture might include looking at the meaning of the Luther rose, singing “A mighty fortress”, and referring to those phrases so central to our identity: “Saved by grace”, “the Gospel” and “God’s love”. You might even go ‘all in’ like me and wear a pair of ‘Here I stand’ socks! But what does it mean that you and I have been freed by Christ? Today’s text comes after the account of a woman caught in adultery being brought to Jesus, at beginning of John 8. Jesus’ response so powerfully and beautifully portrays and encapsulates what true freedom is:
At dawn Jesus appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
“No one, sir,” she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
Jesus’ writing in the ground reveals his divine nature, connecting him with God who inscribed the 10 Commandments on stone with his finger—one of those being “You shall not commit adultery.” In Leviticus 20 God prescribes the death penalty for adultery, stipulating that both the adulterer and adulteress are to be put to death. We might say: “Well, times have changed, and that’s just an Old Testament thing. But that would be us rewriting God’s narrative again. Jesus also said that anyone who even looks at someone lustfully has already committed adultery with them in their heart (Matthew 5:28). Jesus has not come to do away with God’s law, but brings it to its sharpest focus. The wages of sin is death, comes the chilling verdict of the law. Doesn’t this woman’s plight, then, also reveal our own?
Jesus has not come to do away with the law, but he has come to do away with the law’s punishment, for us. With his refusal to condemn this woman, thereby freeing her from the penalty of her sin, Jesus shows what he would soon do on the Cross for all: taking the sin of this woman and the whole world upon himself and exchanging it with his own righteousness, so that there is no condemnation for whoever puts their trust in him.
As we reflect on the beginning of John chapter 8, weren’t the Teachers of the law and the Pharisees needing freedom too? Freedom from their bitter heart, and self-righteous spirit? Freedom from the need to be right, and control the community, and work their way to a greater holiness than anyone else? Freedom from the need to judge and condemn to make themselves look better? For to look at the law as they were was to look to the law rather than the God who gave it. They had forgotten that they weren’t without sin themselves. They weren’t free from the wages of sin—death—by their own moralising, judging, condemning, striving, appearance, and works… sounds like the very issue at the time of the Reformation—doesn’t it?
And that’s just the thing. Sin and self-justification is not a Pharisee thing, not a Roman Catholic Church thing, not the thing of any particular group of people of any time or place. It is a human nature thing. All are born in bondage to sin. We cannot free ourselves from doing that which we know we shouldn’t do, but can’t. We can’t free ourselves from our body that is captive to death, and the dominion of darkness and the power of Satan. The only way is by the sacrificial death of God’s only Son, who by his suffering and death has freed us by his precious blood to be in God’s family.
Jesus uses the picture of a household to show us. A slave (servant, worker) of a family comes and goes. They attend to the needs of the family household, but they themselves do not belong there and they do not have the same rights as the family members. Their position is temporary, and could at any time be sold or transferred. On the other hand, the son of the family belongs as a member of the family forever. Nothing can alter the fact that he is the son. Jesus has freed us to belong to our heavenly Father’s household, not coming and going as mere workers, but as children of God—and even more particularly, sons of God. Jesus is referring to the legal arrangement of the day: that the firstborn son had the legal right to the inheritance. Jesus has freed us all to be sons, so to speak, of the Father’s home in heaven, so that through faith in Christ, we are heirs together with him with the same legal right to his heavenly inheritance, and so we will also live in the house of the Lord forever.
To the woman caught in adultery who he had just freed from condemnation to death, Jesus said: “Go and sin no more.” The freedom Jesus has won for us means there should be a change in how we now live. The freedom he has won for us is not a freedom to once again turn our back on God to again be the author our own truth, as Adam and Eve did in the Garden. It is a freedom to hold on to Jesus’ teaching, to grasp his word, to cling to it; to hold fast to the scriptures as the only source of truth for all matters in life—even when that is the unpopular way, and even in the most controversial matters for today’s church.
It is often said that the central concern of the Reformation was the gospel; the doctrine of justification, that we are saved by grace through faith in Christ’s saving work—’sola gratia, sola fidei, sola Christus’—meaning salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. But the central concern was actually the authority of Scripture, for we can only ever know this through God’s word. At the time of the Reformation it was not the Bible but the Church whose authority was absolute—and look what happened when the authority of the pope, church tradition and interpretation was elevated as the final authority! So another ‘sola’ is necessary: Sola scriptura—scripture alone: because Scripture is God’s inspired word, it alone is the inerrant, sufficient, and final authority for the church in all matters of faith, life and teaching—and our reason must in all things submit to it, just as God said: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8).
As you entered the church this morning, it would have been hard to miss the chains on the floor around the supersized bible. The gap in the chains symbolise that God’s word has freed us from our slavery. The cover of the bible opens to function as a doorway, symbolising that through his word God has first come to us and revealed his truth, so that through the gospel we are able to enter the sabbath rest and meet with God as the people who he has freed.
Jesus said: “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.” What might our response to this freedom look like?
The story is told of a man who once bought a young slave girl at an auction[1]. As they left the slave auction, the man turned to the girl and said: “You’re free!”
She turned to him in amazement. “You mean I’m free to do whatever I want?”
“Yes,” he said.
“And to say whatever I want to say?”
“Yes, anything.”
“And to be whatever I want to be?”
“Yes!”
“And even to go wherever I want to go?”
“Yes!” He laughed. “You’re free to go wherever you’d like.”
She looked at him intently and replied: “Then I shall go with you.”
May this be a picture of how you live out your freedom in gratitude to Jesus. May you always go with him, walking in the word with the Word made flesh. For he says: “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Amen.
[1] Lloyd-Jones, Sally Thoughts to make your heart sing. Zondervan: Michigan (2012:118).
