The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
George Orwell, of 1984 fame, said, "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." Telling the truth in a world, and even a church, that is captive to a lie is always revolutionary, and never welcome.
It wasn't welcome in the Old Testament time with the prophets. It wasn't welcome when the Son of God took on flesh and was born of the Virgin Mary. It wasn't welcome when the Son of God took on flesh and Herod heard of His birth. It wasn't welcome during Jesus's three and a half years of earthly ministry. It wasn't welcome when the apostles went about preaching, teaching, and establishing Christian congregations after Pentecost. The truth wasn't welcome in the early church and the church of the Middle Ages. And it wasn't welcome in the centuries and decades leading up to the Reformation. But today we celebrate the return of the truth to the church in the event known as the Reformation.
Today we celebrate the truth that a person is set free from sin, judgment, death, and the power of the devil in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Jesus Himself said in John chapter 8, "If you abide in My word, you are truly My disciples, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Now, that proposition — that there is only one universal truth, not many contradictory truths, or no truth at all — that makes a person free. As Jesus says here, such a statement is scandalous, offensive, and exclusive by its nature. This proposition rests on three fundamental assertions about the reality of the human condition.
First, humanity is captive to a universal deceit. Humanity is in bondage to sin and cannot free itself, though people everywhere believe otherwise. Second, truth has the power to tear the dark deceit apart and free people who were once children of the darkness. Third, only those who know — that is, who trust — God's Word and the Gospel know the truth, and therefore only they are free, truly free.
As history moves toward its end, the details of the lie change from time to time, but at its core, the deceit remains consistent. In Luther's day, the deceit found its expression in religious doctrines and systems of works-righteousness within the dogma and practice of the Roman Catholic Church. Now, lest you think I'm picking on the Roman Catholic Church then and now, works-righteousness is simply humanity's default religion and philosophy. If one is going to be considered righteous, they must conform to specific rules of law, customs, and traditions. To be judged good, or righteous, or worthy before God and man, they must earn their merit. But the advocates of these works-righteousness systems generally do not hide the fact that they are, in fact, advocates for a works-righteousness system.
From his earliest days, Martin Luther — the child, the student, the monk, the priest — understood he was being raised in a system that taught that he had to do certain kinds of works to help balance the scales and merit eternal life in heaven. Faith plus good works, so the teaching went, would eventually result in acceptance by God and entrance into purgatory or the heavenly realm. All man-made religious systems set before their followers various commandments and practices that must be followed in order to become acceptable in God and man's sight. This is the universal deceit. This is the great lie: that sinners can make amends for their sinful natures and deeds in order to placate an angry and wrathful God.
The lie made its way into the Old Testament church, Israel. If a Jew in the Old Testament or New Testament periods kept certain laws and traditions and believed certain things, they could be counted as righteous by God. Many of the Epistles in the New Testament were written because the lie had been mixed into Christian theology. What better way to take people captive to the lie than to enlist Jesus as the principal practitioner? The lie turns parables into morality stories about doing good deeds that merit God's favor. The sad truth is that most people are content to abide by such a system. They live the lie. They don't see the deceit.
For a few, though — chief among them Luther — they knew something was wrong, and was very wrong, with the system. The system did not bring peace and assurance of salvation, because the law is never satisfied by the works of men. Not even the penitent can fulfill the law. The system only produces more demands, more doubts, more fears, more despair, and no saving faith. It is rather like the tax code: it demands and produces everything, and gives very little when it is done. The system only produces more demands, no faith at all.
And that had implications for how people thought and looked upon God Himself. Luther, in fact, wrote the following in a moment of doubt: "Our God appears to be a cruel and intolerable God, by which very many have been offended in all ages. And who would not be? I was myself more than once driven to the very abyss of despair, so that I wished I had never been created. For there is no escape from the law." No matter how strenuously Luther tried, he couldn't escape the truth. He was a sinner, and he could not save himself.
Bible verses like Romans 3:19 would not let him rest. There he would read, "We know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God, because by works of the law no human being will be justified in His sight." But the lie says the opposite. The lie tells people to trust their own self-defined good deeds. The problem is that human nature is hardwired to believe the lie. The blind can't see. The deaf can't hear. These people don't even know that they are captive to the lie, or to sin, or to death, or to the devil himself.
The Jews to whom Jesus was speaking in John chapter 8 were advocates of the lie. They couldn't understand nor believe the truth. Jesus here is not talking about your financial situation. He's not talking about freedom from sickness or persecution or loneliness or afflictions. He's talking about freedom from God's judgment against our sin.
The Jews to whom Jesus was speaking thought Jesus was talking politics. So they responded to Him, "We are Abraham's offspring and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that You say you shall become free?" The leaders of the Jews thought they were free because God was pleased with their compliance to the law and the traditions. Why not? In their thinking, they were happy with themselves, with the illusion of their moral and religious superiority. That's the thing about self-righteousness and the big lie: it deceives the individual into believing something about himself or herself that isn't true.
Today, if authorities, or the woke culture warriors of our time, say something is true, or if they say that most people must love one thing and hate another, most people will comply. They will tolerate, defend, and do as they are instructed to do, believe as they are instructed to believe. And why? So that they will be thought of by the world as good, caring, and sensitive people. That which was once regarded as good is now deemed evil, and that which was called evil is now called good. It's an age-old problem. Isaiah wrote about it in Isaiah chapter 5: "Woe to those who drag wrongdoing with cords of deceit, and sin as if with cart ropes. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight."
We're in a much worse position than Luther was. At least in Luther's day, people believed, and rightly so, that sin existed and that God took offense at sin. They believed sin is an offense to God and He judges sin and sinners. They believed that they were sinners and in need of salvation. They just thought it was up to them to appease God's wrath by their own good thoughts and deeds.
Today a person is treated as unclean and unworthy, and worthy of cancellation, if they call sin by its proper name. If a person happens to say or do something 5, 10, or 20 years ago that's now considered offensive today by the guardians of our public virtue, they are told by the same guardians there is no forgiveness, no path to redemption. There's only exile. As for the churches in Europe and America, they buy into every liberal social cause, no matter how decadent. As for the individual Christians themselves, the self-righteous streak still lives in our old sinful nature. A great many churchgoers simply go along and make these evil ideologies their own and regard themselves as good.
Those who remain Christians all too often don't want to be labeled by the world — not to mention by family and friends and co-workers — as mean-spirited, or arrogant, or intolerant, so most Christians today cower for fear of being shunned or cancelled themselves. So we sit passively by and let our neighbors, even our kinfolk, die a sinner's death rather than speak the Word of God and call them back to true Christian faith.
In contrast to these systems of works-righteousness, and a life and culture under man-made moral codes and philosophies, stands the truth, and a proper understanding of the Law and Gospel of Jesus Christ. In direct opposition to all these religions and philosophies of good deeds and forced compliance stand those three fundamental truths. Humanity is captive to a universal lie. You were once captive to the lie. Thus Ephesians warns us not to become partners with them — with them means with the liars. Don't be partners with people who engage in promoting the lie. For you were once in darkness, but now you are in light in the Lord. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the light consists of all goodness, righteousness, and truth.
Second, the truth has the power to cleave the darkness of deceit and free people who were once children of this darkness. Colossians 1:13: "For He rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of His beloved Son." The people who were once sitting in darkness saw a great light, and those sitting in the land of the shadow of death — upon them a light has dawned. Matthew 4:16.
Third, only those who know — that is, those who trust — the truth shall be free: free from sin, free from God's judgment, free from death, free from the power of the devil, free from the universal deceit, freed from the great lie. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Me."
Romans 6:6–7: "Knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin. For the one who has died is free from sin."
Jesus is clear about what it meant to believe in Him: "If you abide in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. Therefore, if the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed." To believe in Jesus is to believe His words, His preaching, His teaching. The Son made us free by His perfect obedience to the law, by His crucifixion, His bloody death, and His glorious resurrection. We live in freedom because we live in the Word of God. If therefore the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. Galatians 5:1: "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Therefore, keep standing firm and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery."
In one of Luther's best theological treatises, titled On the Freedom of a Christian, he summarizes the state of our freedom and its effect on the Christian in two seemingly contradictory statements. The first one: a Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. The second one: a Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. And you are people of the truth, of the Gospel truth, the truth of God's Word. You are free from the judgment of God, from sin, death, and the power of the devil. You are the revolutionaries in every age and of every time. Revolutionaries of the Reformation, so that you may continue in the revolution called the Reformation. You are truly disciples of Christ, truly revolutionary in a world of darkness. Amen.