+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. (Amen.)
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
You may recognize The University of Texas at Austin’s iconic “Tower”, part of the University’s current “Main Building”, completed in 19‑37, and built originally in part to be the University’s library. You may know that, with that purpose as a library in view, inscribed on the south façade of the building are the words “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free”. Those words are drawn from the King James Version of the Gospel Reading appointed for Reformation Day, which we observe today. And, having heard those words read moments ago in their original context, you should notice that those words, as Jesus spoke them, really do not apply to a library, nor do they apply to people in general, but they apply only to Jesus’s disciples. As we, with the help of the Holy Spirit, this morning consider the Gospel Reading, we realize that “If you abide in Jesus’s Word, He, the Truth, will set you free”.
At the time of the Gospel Reading, Jesus was in Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles (John 7:1-10), at which Feast “freedom” was reportedly an important theme (Weinrich, ad loc John 8:32, p.128). Jesus taught the people many things, and, right before the Gospel Reading, the Divinely‑inspired St. John says that “many believed in Him” (John 8:30). So, as we heard, Jesus either began to say or was repeatedly saying (NASB) to the Jews who had believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Then, either some of those who had believed in Him, or others who were there listening, objected, saying essentially that they did not need to be set free religiously, so, presumably, they would not abide in Jesus’s Word, and then they would not truly be His disciples.
Whether Jews in Jesus’s day, Roman Catholics or others at the time of the Reformation, or still others today, there are always people who, even if they are disciples initially, do not abide in Jesus’s Word, and so are not truly His disciples. That is why Jesus said “if”! There is doubt that all believers will abide in Jesus’s Word! They may be oblivious to their condition. They may not like what Jesus says and instead hold to what they think. They may think that they rule over themselves. They may deceive themselves in other ways. Jesus said that everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin, and, at least by nature, that includes every one of us. We might think especially of such things as addictions to alcohol, drugs, gambling, or pornography, but Jesus does not so limit His statement. Our wills are not free but enslaved; they are “mighty and active only in the direction of that which is displeasing and contrary to God” (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration II:7, Tappert, 521). Whether thought, word, or deed, on our own we cannot do it. Seemingly elaborating on what Jesus says in the Gospel Reading, the Divinely‑inspired St. Paul writes to the Romans and to us about our once being slaves to sin, which leads to death, and about our presenting our members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness (Romans 6:16, 17, 19, 20).
Similarly, in the Epistle Reading (Romans 3:19-28), St. Paul writes that God’s law stops every mouth and holds the whole world accountable to God. There are no distinctions, such as that distinction between Jew and Greek (Romans 10:12), not even distinctions of age or assent. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. God’s law shows us our sin, but God’s Gospel shows us our Savior from sin. St. Paul tells Timothy and us how God grants repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth (2 Timothy 2:25). Working through God’s Gospel, the Holy Spirit calls and enables us to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust God to forgive our sin, and to want to stop sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives us. God forgives our sinful nature, our not abiding in His Word, and all our other actual sin, whatever our actual sin might be. God forgives us for Jesus’s sake. “If you abide in Jesus’s Word, He, the Truth, will set you free”.
Earlier in his Gospel account, St. John wrote that grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (John 1:17). St. John records Jesus’s telling a woman from Samaria that the hour had arrived for true worshipers to worship the Father in Spirit and Truth (John 4:23), and later Jesus told Thomas and the other ten of His disciples that He Himself is the Truth (John 14:6). Likewise, in the Gospel Reading, Jesus says both that the truth will set His true disciples free and that the Son sets you free. Indeed, the Divine Son of God, in the human Son of Mary, sets us free. As God foretold through the prophet Isaiah, the Spirit of the Lord is upon Jesus to proclaim liberty to the captives (Isaiah 61:1; confer Luke 4:18). Out of God’s great love for us, Jesus died on the cross for us, in our place, in order to set us free from our slavery to sin. More than anything else, Jesus’s Word is about Him, God and man, Who willingly sacrificed Himself on the cross for the sins of the world (John 1:29), and Who gives us who repent the benefits of His cross through His Word in all of its forms (confer Weinrich, ad loc John 8:31-38, pp.135, 145). We not only know the facts of what Jesus has done, but we trust that those facts apply to us. In the Epistle Reading St. Paul writes of the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, how we are justified by God’s grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, Whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith.
Jesus, the Truth, sets you free through those whom He sends to act on His behalf. In the First Reading (Revelation 14:6-7), we heard about an “angel”, or “messenger”, with an eternal Gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth. Some interpret that “messenger” as none other than the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther, whose Ninety-Five Theses, “posted” on October 31, 15‑17, are usually understood as starting the Reformation that the Holy Spirit used in order to restore to its proper place the truth of the Gospel of the free forgiveness of sins through faith in Jesus. Like Luther, other faithful pastors not only proclaim the eternal Gospel but also apply the Gospel to individuals: with water in Holy Baptism, with touch in Holy Absolution, and with bread and wine that are Christ’s Body and Blood in the Holy Supper. Especially in the Holy Supper we abide in Jesus, as Jesus Himself says that whoever feeds on His flesh and drinks His blood abides in Him and He in them (John 6:56).
Transformed by God through His Word and Sacraments, as St. Paul describes in Romans, we are set free from sin and become slaves of righteousness. We are obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which we are committed. We present our members as slaves of righteousness leading to sanctification and its end, eternal life. (Romans 6:17-19, 22.) Already now we have the peace and joy of the forgiveness of sins, but we will experience it more fully in glorified bodies for eternity. Until then, however, there will be persecution and suffering. We confess the truth of Jesus’s Word with the Lutheran Confessions. We abide in both Scripture and the Confessions, and we are united in both Scripture and the Confessions. We judge others’ opinions on the basis of them. And, like Luther describes at the time of the Augsburg Confession in 15‑30, when, he says, “One could neither see nor feel how things would end or from what source help and counsel might come”, when “The situation baffled and defied all reason and wisdom”, so also we “rely firmly on the Word” and “have no fear”, “Even though we find ourselves at our wits’ end and see no escape”, we will find out that God’s Word is true, and we will not be disappointed (Luther, ad loc John 8:3, AE 23:400; confer Weinrich, ad loc John 8:31‑38, p.135 n.39).
My brother-in-law, a former campus tour-guide for The University of Texas at Austin, told me that the inscription originally proposed for the Main Building was one that the chairman of the Faculty Building Committee wrote, which reads, “The records of the past shall give light and courage to them that come after”. A colleague on the Committee eventually suggested the verse from John, which the other Committee members later approved, and we all may be thankful that they did! They may not have intended the religious message, but, with the help of the Holy Spirit, today we have gotten the religious message: “If you abide in Jesus’s Word, He, the Truth, will set you free”, and you will be free indeed!
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Amen.)
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +
