Freed [Wednesday in Lent 1]

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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Romans 3:9-20

• St. John 8:31-38

 

May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. (2 Pet 1)
 
Who speaks to you this evening, from His Gospel heard, saying:

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

 
We rejoiced last week, in our true Gospel hymn Dear Christians One And All Rejoice, but this week we get back to Lent stuff: slavery, hell, and death. But, living in ‘Murica, we also think that we have never been enslaved to anyone, slavery is a sore subject, and therefore we have no idea what slavery actually is, because we’re not allowed to discuss it.
 
Then, Jesus comes along and starts waving that word around and forces us to deal with it.
 
One thing that proves I am just a man-child is I still giggle when I get to say “hell” in Church. It is the upbringing that teaches, “you shall not curse or swear”, often referring to the 2nd Command of the Lord, but not really going far enough. Thus, for the young child, cursing in church, such as saying “hell”, was something I couldn’t do and therefore couldn’t confess the Creed completely.
 
I was convicted by the Law and was therefore proving our hymn true: I was in chains. Even if I were to believe that hell was reserved for satan and his angels, I could not say it with my mouth. Maybe if I just kept it inside, maybe if I never spoke God’s Name, I would at least not be guilty of breaking the 2nd Command, the Name, by the way, which is supposed to be called upon...
 
Do you think you are free? After all, you live in the land of the free and the home of the brave. You sing it before every sports event, so it must be true. And it seems that way. Anything you want, you are free to do. Anything you want, you can find it. Instant gratification. Instant pleasure. We are a country high on dope all the time. Dopamine.
 
This is the euphoric lure of Autonomy, which literally means “a law to oneself”. That it can be applied to every situation, because relativity. I am free. And because I am free, I can apply it to all areas of my life. Thus, I free myself to be a sexual deviant, murder infants and elderly, and steal other people’s money, for the greater good, of course. Its all relative.
 
You can say you’re free, but you have no proof. The Jews tried to offer proof to Jesus, this evening, but it was debunked. If Abraham were their father, they would love Jesus Who has told them the Truth. Instead, they are doing what their actual father did: murder. That is the business of the father of lies, the father of murder, who has no truth in him: the devil.
 
Blood relations are not enough to prove one’s righteousness before God. It is enough to prove your own slavery, especially if you start with the assumption that you are free. There any number of everyday things that prove your bondage. 
 
You are free to awake from sleep, but you are not free to wake up in someone else’s home without permission. You are free to dress as you please, but you are not free to wear your birthday suit. You are free to do as you please, until you run into someone else, who wants the opposite. 
 
It should be of no surprise then, that we are slaves to sin. Even the smallest, harmless sin we can think of binds us to it. Why? Because we are sinners, thus saith the Lord. We are not sinners because we sin. We start off wrong. We begin each and every work, thought, and word as children of the wrong father.
 
To the Jews, the Lord says, “Son of man, make known to Jerusalem her abominations, and say, Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem: Your origin and your birth are of the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite” in Ezekiel 16:2-3.
 
At the outset, He places them in the category that is not Abraham. But even if they were to claim Abraham, the Lord already spoke to that as well in Joshua 24:2, “Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods.”
 
We are not free. Freedom, as we see it, is an illusion. In fact, a famous philosopher once said, “Even if the biblical God did exist, we would have to deny His existence in order to be free in the way we think we want to be free.” 
 
It is not that we shouldn’t seek liberty and justice for all, but that also is slavery, for now that is all we are doing for 7 billion+ people. But we should seek true freedom outside our own works. Our works attempt to break boundaries that God has set in place. We do not break boundaries, His boundaries break us.
 
Our bodies lie to us. Our dopamine hits deceive us into thinking “what feels good is good” and that happiness is the truth. 
 
Possessed by sin and bound to death, we go through life. Not that God is petty and vindictive, enjoying our torment, instead of releasing us immediately, but that He is patient and merciful. Tearing us away from our favorite sins would destroy us and destroy faith. Like a spoiled toddler, we would throw a tantrum until we got it back. 
 
In Christ we see this truth. Divorce from sin is death, so wedded are we to our corruption. A “living hell” is an apt description of that and of the cross. And to face our living hell, we have a living God, Who has divorced us from our sin, taken the punishment upon Himself and taken death upon Himself, in the flesh. 
 
There is only One Who is free, because He is the Almighty. But He chooses to be a slave and take our place. He chooses to remain in the house of sin and death, getting us out of that contract, and becoming the signatory of a heavenly mansion: His Body, for us.
 
The freedom of Christ is freedom from guilt and condemnation. No longer will our false piety, body chemicals, or evil intentions be held against us. Though we are attacked by these things, victory has been secured before we even thought of fighting against them.
 
Our good works, our free will, and our fears fight against God, believing He would bring nothing but more slavery to His Way, His Will, and His thoughts. In the Crucified Christ, the slave becomes the Master. In Christ, God does not demand, but serves us His salvation on a silver platter. His only requirement is that we give Him our sins.
 
You are free, because the Son of God Himself has freed you from the curse of the law, the darkness of death, and condemnation of Satan. You are free, therefore you need no longer live in enslavement to self. An old hymn has us sing “Make me a captive, Lord, and then I shall be free.”
 
And that is the wonder of our freedom in Christ. Freedom is not to be found in living as though God did not exist so that we can be who and what we will to be. Freedom is found only in Christ, outside us. “We are beggars. It is true.”
 
Before God, we can stand only as beggars, but beggars set free to live by faith in the gracious promises of a merciful God. Freedom is found only in Jesus’ words. “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”