Free Indeed
--John 8:31-38
--Galatians 5:1, 13-26
I consider myself a very patriotic American. I love our country. If there is one thing I could change about my years in ministry, it would be the fact that I wish I had become a military chaplain; I believe that would have been a most fulfilling ministry.
At the same time I also have a deep love and appreciation for England. England is the homeland of the Fathers of Methodism John and Charles Wesley and the Great 18th Century Wesleyan Revival; the birthplace of William Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, my favorite all time Rock Group the Beetles; and the adopted land of my favorite composer George Fredrick Handle.
Twice thus far in my lifetime I’ve had the privilege of going to England. The first time was in July of 1971 when I was honored to accompany my friend the late Reverend Henry Clay Wright on his pulpit exchange to what then was Trinity Methodist and now is Trinity Methodist-Reformed Church in the London Borough of Sutton, Surrey. Perhaps my most memorable “Fourth of July” was that year. It fell on a Sunday, and we got to lead a patriotic service in the Country from which 195 years earlier we had gained our Independence.
Thirty years later I had the pleasure of representing the Illinois Great Rivers Annual Conference at the World Methodist Conference in Brighton, England, and take Liz along with me. On both occasions I was privileged to visit Wesley’s Chapel at City Road, London, and Bunhill, the famous Dissenters’ Cemetary directly across the road from his home and Chapel. There you can view the graves of such notable persons as poet William Blake; Susanna Wesley, the Mother of Methodism; Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe; John Bunyan, creator of Pilgrim’s Progress, and Isaac Watts, the great hymn writer.
These persons were all Dissenters because they were not part of the State supported Church of England. The love and quest for freedom brought our English forbearers to these shores. Many of them who came were Dissenters, opponents to the doctrines and practices of the Church of England who came to America for religious freedom. Others came seeking political freedom, earlier ones because they opposed the Stuart kings who claimed absolute authority in all affairs. Still later Dissenters came seeking political freedom, because they supported the monarch that had been deposed by Oliver Cromwell and the Puritan Parliament. Others came to America in search of economic freedom, to escape debtor’s prison and establish a better way of life in a New World.
Some early English emigrants to America came seeking religious freedom, others political freedom, and still others economic freedom. We still treasure these freedoms today. However, ultimate, eternal freedom is spiritual freedom. It is freedom won at a very precious, costly price—the blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the One Who still promises and assures us, “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” [--John 3:36].
The freedom Jesus gives His disciples is real freedom, the only true freedom. Real freedom is made possible by His death and resurrection. We can only receive and experience it as a free gift of grace by being born again. Real freedom begins the moment we repent of our sins and trust Jesus as our personal Lord and Saviour, and it continues beyond our physical death for all eternity.
In our Gospel Lesson Jesus says to “the Jews who had believed in Him”: “If you continue in My word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” A true disciple of Jesus continues in the Word. Jesus Himself is the Word. John identifies Jesus in the beginning of His Gospel by declaring: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” [--John 1:1, 14]. If we are His disciples we must “continue in His Word.” When something continues, it goes on happening. We continue in His Word by maintaining a personal, one-on-one-relationship with Jesus as we allow Him to speak to us and guide us each day through reading His written Word the Bible and through talking with Him in prayer.
Continuing in His Word is much more than reading about and talking with Jesus. We only continue in His Word by obeying Him. True disciples of Jesus live out His Great Commission through “obeying everything He commands us.” We learn obedience though His Word and prayer.
By continuing to obey Him each day, “we know the Truth, and the Truth makes us free.” That is Truth with a capital “T,” for Jesus Himself is the Truth—Absolute, Ultimate, Unquestionable, Complete, Final, Eternal Truth. He still speaks to us in John 14:6, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
Jesus is the Truth that sets us free, and that freedom comes through knowing Him personally in a one-on-one relationship. There is a tremendous difference in knowing about a person and knowing that person. I know about President Bush and Prince Charles, but I do not have a personal relationship with either of them, and they know nothing at all about me.
On the other hand, I know my wife Liz personally. For almost 31 years she has been my best friend on a daily basis. Only as we experience a relationship with Jesus in such a personal, intimate way can we “know the truth that makes us free.” That relationship is developed in daily reading of His Word, talking with Him in prayer, and obeying Him to the extent His Mother Mary instructed the servants at the Wedding in Cana, “Do whatever he tells you” [--John 2:5]. As we communion with Him daily, He “tells us what to do.”
True Freedom is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Not only can you know Him personally; but be confident that He has known you personally even before you were conceived. He speaks to us as He did the prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1:4-5:
“Now the word of the LORD came to me saying,
“‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you. . .’”
You have always been a beloved child held close to the Lord’s heart.
Verses 34 through 36 are crucial: “Jesus answered them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” SIN
ENSLAVES US; JESUS SETS US FREE! Most of you probably know that the
New Testament term for sin means “to miss the mark.” The picture we usually have in mind is that of an archer scoring a bull’s eye. I’ll always remember the Olympic Flame being lit at the 1992 Barcelona Games. Paralympic archer Antonio Rebollo shot a flaming arrow right into the middle of the cauldron, right on target!
Normally we picture sin as simply “falling short of the cauldron.” I assume I miss the cauldron by a mile because of my lack of ability, precision, and skill in archery. That’s not quite accurate. We miss the mark because by nature we “shoot at the wrong target.” It has been well said, “The problem with sin is the “I” in the middle of it.” I want to be the god of my life, the one in control, in charge as the jingle in the commercial for one of my medications Singular declares, “I want to go where I want to go, do what I want to do.” At all times and in all ways I want to do as I please. So I aim at the wrong target; instead of allowing God to be in charge and control of my life, I make myself the center of everything.
This has been the root of all sin from the beginning of time. Rather than obediently following God and enjoying fellowship with Him, Adam and Eve choose to take absolute charge and control of their lives becomes clear in Genesis 3:4-5: “But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Just as he himself had done before creation, Satan tempted our fore parents to make self the god and center of their lives rather than the Lord. They fell for his lie, and everyone has followed suit throughout history.
Many times Paul gives his personal testimony in praise of the real freedom Jesus gives to those who put their faith and trust in Him. He especially does so in our Epistle Lesson from Galatians 5: “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. . . .For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” [--Galatians 5:13-14].
Paul’s words affirm those of Jesus in Matthew 22:37-40, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Sin enslaves us by making self the center of our universe. Jesus sets us free to “love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. All who live in such freedom are “free indeed!”
As a freshman in high school, I read William Ernest Henley’s poem “Invictus”:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
[--William Ernest Henley, “Invictus,” in The Best Loved Poems of the American People, comp. Hazel Felleman (Garden City, N. Y.: Garden City Publishing Co, 1936), p. 73.]
This is the picture of the one who shoots at the wrong target, the target of self-centered sin with the capital “I” in the middle.
Dorothea Day’s poem “My Captain” is the Christian response to Henley:
Out of the light that dazzles me,
Bright as the sun from pole to pole,
I thank the God I know to be
For Christ the conqueror of my Soul.
Since His, the way of circumstance
I would not wince nor cry aloud.
Under that rule, which men call chance
My head with joy is humbly bowed.
Beyond this place of sin and tears
That life with Him! And his the aid,
Despite the menace of the years,
Keeps, and shall keep me, unafraid.
I have no fear, though strait the gate,
He cleared from punishment the scroll.
Christ is the Master of my fate:
Christ is the Captain of my soul.
[--Dorothea Day, “My Captain,” in Youth Seeks a Master by Louis H. Evans (Westwood, N. J.: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1964), pp 29-30.]
My brothers and sisters, when Jesus is “Our Captain,” we are “Free Indeed.” Let us celebrate this freedom in Jesus as we gather at His Table this morning, and may we always know and experience real freedom as we continue to follow and obey His Holy Spirit.
