Download (10/30/16) - John 8:31-36

“Lutheranized!”
John 8:31-36
The Observance of the Reformation
October 30, 2016
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and
Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Our text, Jesus says, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my
disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you
free.”
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
One of the basic rules of thumb in studying theology is to
really study the verbs of the text… who is doing the action, and who
is benefiting. In the theology of the Gospel, God is the acting agent,
and man is the recipient of God’s acts / verbs of mercy. For example,
the last verse of our text, “If the Son sets you free, you will be free
indeed.” It’s the Son’s effort, and his effort benefits you!
Now, based on that simple premise, consider Jesus’ first
sentence in our text: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my
disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you
free.” In that sentence of Jesus, we hear three verbal phrases… “If
you abide”… “you will know”… “the truth will set you free.” These
three verbs share for us the heart of the Gospel and the joy for us
this day.
At first, it may sound like man is the active agent – “If you
abide”? Isn’t that what I’m doing? – But, to understand the whole
phrase, let’s actually take them in reverse order… and once we
consider them piece by piece, we can rejoice in hearing the entire
promise of Christ.
The first phrase to consider is “the Truth will set you free”… if
you’ve had opportunity to be in Bible Class, you’ve heard me focus
on this phrase “set free” already this fall. In the Greek, the phrase “to
set free” comes from the word “” – you can hear that the
root word sounds (and is spelled almost exactly) like the name
Luther. Now, it may be coincidental… but how fitting!... for the
Lutheran confession is all about the teaching that the Gospel “sets
free” God’s beloved people from the fear and doubt and despair of
works righteousness, penance, purgatory, and all those false
teachings that led God’s people to wonder whether they had done
enough to be saved and loved by Him.
Indeed, you can hear the Gospel proclamation in this verb…
Jesus desires to “set you free” in the certainty of your salvation… He
wants to  you - “Lutheranize” you, if you will. To be
Lutheran is not about following a man named Martin, but the Godman named Jesus. It’s the joy that the truth of Christ’s Gospel sets
you free from all the errors that have been added to and hoisted
upon the Gospel, even as Jesus promises, “The truth will set you
free.” It will Lutheranize – from your standpoint, this is a passive
reality. It is happening to you; you are being set free. More correctly
– it has happened for you; you have been set free – Christ died for
you, and even in that hour, Christ cried, “It is finished.” He could
2
have added, “You have been set free” … or, paraphrasing the Greek,
“You have been Lutheranized.”
That’s what it is to be a Lutheran – to have God himself work
for you, to have God himself take your place upon the cross, to have
Christ himself as the atoning sacrifice that fulfills all the Old
Testament prophecies and makes good on God’s gospel promise to
pay for the sins of the whole world. Yes, and what’s more, to be
Lutheranized is to have God himself deliver that cross-won benefit to
you individually, to work upon you individually and “set you free” in
the giving of those cross-won benefits to you… to have God himself
baptize you (as Paul says to the Ephesians that it is Christ himself
who baptizes… who this morning adopted little Charlotte in
Baptism)… and thereby God in Christ has set you free from the
condemnation the Law held upon you. (As Paul tells the Galatians,
“For freedom you have been set free!”) To be a Lutheran is not to be
set free from the need for Christ, it’s to be set free by Christ from the
need to depend on one’s own righteousness before God… to set you
free from doubt of works that aren’t sufficient or prayers supposedly
only heard through a holy hierarchy … set you free from ‘decisions
for Jesus’ that fade with emotions… set you free from the artificial
assurance of an artificially “sanctified” life.
The phrase upon which your ‘being set free’ is grounded is
this one: “you will know the Truth” – We are set free as the Truth
becomes ours… this verb is technically active, but in the same sense
3
that the word “learn” is active. True, you learn; but you learn by
someone else teaching you, by someone else working upon you: Paul
says it this way, “How shall they believe on him of whom they have
not heard, and how shall they hear unless someone preaches to
them!” Thus, you know the Truth by the work that the Holy Spirit
does in the Word and Sacraments of Christ.
And you know the Truth, not only by intellect, but by
experience… and ‘experience’ doesn’t mean that you always feel the
truth – the human heart can flip and flop all over with feelings and
can’t be trusted. Rather, you learn the Truth by “undergoing the
medicinal work” of Christ in Word and Sacraments… the forgiveness
of sins is objectively part of your life’s experience whether you
emotionally feel it or not. Every time Christ’s absolution proclaims to
you your forgiveness, the truth there and then becomes yours – You
‘experience/receive it’ even if you don’t sensationally
‘experience/feel it.’ You experience His teaching and the benefits of
His Holy Supper – you experience it objectively and truly, even if you
aren’t sensationally moved by it.
And you experience and know it because it is the Truth.
When Jesus says “You will know the Truth,” he doesn’t mean to say,
“You will know the academic information that makes one a good
student;” rather He says “You will know the Truth”… and the Truth is
that God is actively at work in His Word and Sacraments, so that you
“know/receive” the benefits of that as one whom He sustains and
4
keeps because He cherishes you as one whom He has set free from
sin, death, and the power of the devil. This is what we cherish as
Lutherans – if someone asks how we “know” the Truth of our
salvation, we need not look to our own efforts, our own prayers, our
own worth or merit or the strength/sensations of our faith; rather
we may point that person to the object of our faith – to Christ Jesus,
to His Word and Sacraments – and we may say
“He has set me free, and I know the great Truth that He forgives
my sins and carries me to the resurrection of the body and life
everlasting. I know it because he baptized me into it; I know it
because He proclaims it and fills my ears with it; I know it
because He feeds it to me in His Holy Body and Blood. I know the
Truth; because the Truth is, God is actively caring for me and
providing me the benefits which Christ once earned by laying
down his life for me.”
Now, based on the two verbal phrases we’ve considered, we
can better understand the first thing Jesus says: “Remain in My
Word, and you are truly my disciples” – To depend on Christ’s Word
might seem a given, but it’s more novel in our world than you’d
think. How many who desire to be disciples today seek the advice of
10-step programs, how many appeal to philosophers and self-help
gurus? And that was no different in Luther’s day; any young monk in
the medieval Roman Catholic church studied more philosophy than
theology, more Plato and Aristotle than Jesus and Paul. But the
words of human wisdom fade away. Christ’s Word endures forever;
it is the lamp unto our feet, the light unto our path. It is our mainstay
5
and our fortress; because it is not just a Word about God, but God’s
Word to us.
So, what does it mean to remain in Him and His Word? – for,
yes, after we’ve been put into His Word – saved and redeemed by
His work – “remaining in [His] Word” truly is a verb that we are
actively doing. The Christian disciple does not desire to flee from God
and His Word; rather, this phrase means that – because Christ has
saved us – the one who trusts Christ (the Christian) simply desires to
dwell where God safeguards us. He is our mighty fortress and our
refuge. The psalmist says it this way, “The Lord is our refuge and
strength, a very present help in trouble… The Lord of hosts is with
us; the God of Jacob is our fortress” (Psalm 46:1, 7).
Think of the image of dwelling safely in a fortress. Luther
knew that safety of a fortress as he hid in Wartburg Castle from a
much stronger enemy. Does not every Christian have that assured
safety… a fortress of the Church (we’ll call it ‘Zion’), built on the
foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ himself being the
cornerstone? Yes, God and His means of salvation, God and His
desire to save all people, God and His promise that the gates of hell
shall not prevail against His beloved people… that is a mighty
fortress, the stronghold of Jacob.
And, think of what a mighty fortress looks like towering high
on a hill, with the fields and plains sprawling out in nakedness before
it… What safer place can there be as the enemy appears on the
6
horizon and crosses that exposed battlefield? What safer place than
the walled fortress … as the kingdom’s army goes out to fight for the
people, the people remain safely behind the walls, on the safe side
of the moat, with the drawbridge lifted and closed. And, there the
people dwell safely and await word from those who fight for them.
For us fights the Valiant One, whom God himself elected and
chose to fight for us (as foreshadowed with David/Goliath). And that
Valiant One goes out to the plain for us, out to the battlefield, and he
fights and fends off and defeats the enemy. He does it in a most
peculiar way, crushing the enemy’s head by suffering death on a
standard lifted high for all to see. “As Moses lifted the serpent on the
pole in the wilderness, so is the Son of Man lifted up.” And, though
dreadful to behold, it is the fulfillment of all of God’s strategy to win
this victory and guarantee that He holds the field forever.
And the news of that victory needs to be brought back to the
fortress to tell the trembling that all is well and safe. And you know
what that message from the battlefield is called? It’s called “gospel.”
Literally, the word gospel comes from a military word that refers to
the report that a messenger brought from the battlefield and relayed
the good news that your army had won. And once you understand
that image – that the messenger brings the battlefield report – then
you understand this Word of God through the prophet, “How
beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news… who proclaim
salvation, who reports to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’”
7
Our God reigns. Our army of One on the battlefield has won
the victory, and He holds the field forever. He has defeated sin,
death, the devil, so that we need not depend on our worth (or the
worth of others) before the judgment seat of God, but may depend
on Christ’s worth and victory, and we may hear him say to us, “You
have been set free from the enemy, set free from the evil foe that
laid siege upon you, set free from the threat that – had your valiant
one been insufficient – you’d have to fight by your own strength and
might. You have been set free from all of that… Christ reigns
forever… so that you may safely abide in the kingdom.”
Thus, what privilege and grace is lavished upon you that you
may there remain joyfully in that fortress, living in the Truth that
Christ has won the victory on the battlefield, that Truth which sets
you free from your fears, free to be the people of God who may
joyfully and certainly say, “the fortress / the kingdom ours
remaineth.”
How comforting is this entire promise of Jesus!: “Remain in
My word, you are my disciples. And you will know the Truth, and the
Truth will set you free.”
In the Name of the Father
And of the Son
And of the Holy Spirit.
+ AMEN +
Rev. Mark C. Bestul
Calvary Lutheran Church
October 30, 2016
8