+ Reformation Sunday – October 31, 2021 +
Revelation 14:6-7; Romans 3:19-28; John 8:31-36
Beautiful Savior Lutheran
Milton, WA
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Schools and churches, like ours, often have many doors. Entrances and exits. Front doors and side doors. Closets and rooms. And so on. Instead of having a separate key for each and every door and walking around like a jailer in an old western, you have a key that opens all the doors and rooms. A master key.
In many ways God’s Word is a house full of many doors and rooms: psalms, prophets, Gospels, epistles and so forth. Wouldn’t it be great to have one key that could get you into all those rooms? A master key to that opens the Scripture.
Five hundred and four years ago, to the very day in fact, Luther was in the process of discovering – or rediscovering, rather – the master key to Scripture. Luther found it, not in good works, nor in the indulgences and merits of the church, nor even in his own prayers and piety.
Have you guessed what, or rather who, that key is? Luther found it in the words of the Master Key himself. Jesus is the Master Key. And once Luther rediscovered that all of Scripture centered on this glorious promise and good news, that sinners are justified freely for Christ’s sake by his death and resurrection, well, suddenly all the other doors and rooms of Scripture opened up to Luther as well. Christ crucified and risen; he is the Master Key.
What our Lord did for Luther in the Lutheran Reformation, he was doing for the Jews he was teaching in John 8 as well. Jesus came to open their hearts, ears, eyes, and minds to see that he is the promised Christ. That he is the very Word and Truth and Freedom of God in human flesh. That he is the Master Key of all Scripture, and indeed, of all of God’s promises.
So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
John uses one of his favorite words in his gospel here. To abide. To remain, stay, dwell, endure, reside, to stay put and sit in place. It’s much like we’re doing right now as we sit in our Lord’s house. We are abiding. Sitting in and receiving God’s Word. Dwelling in his Word even as he is dwelling with us in the Scriptures, in his body and blood. In his gifts of forgiveness.
This is what it means to be a disciple. To sit in. To dwell. Remain. To abide in the Words of Christ. To abide in him who is the very Word of God in human flesh. To be set free by the Word and promise Jesus declares. It was not the blood of Abraham that saved or made one a disciple, but the faith of Abraham which looked to Christ. It was not the good works or efforts of Luther that saved him or made him a disciple, but the work of Christ for him and for you. No, the key to Scripture isn’t found within ourselves any more than it was Luther for the Jews before him.
They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?”
It sounds crazy. Ridiculous even. Never been enslaved to anyone? Did they forget about Egypt? Or Assyria, Babylon, or Persia? Greece and Rome? But this is how our sinful flesh works, isn’t it. Sin and unbelief leave us so blinded we don’t even see just how blind we really are apart from Christ.
Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.
Jesus speaks the honest, hard truth. Apart from Christ, we are no different from the Jews Jesus was teaching. Spiritually blind. Dead in trespasses. Apart from Christ we are locked out. Trapped and enslaved in our own sin. And not only that, if we’re honest, we’re just as proud and defiant as the Jews in John 8. There’s that part of us we call our sinful nature that loves to be enslaved in sin.
Yes, Jesus delivers a hard, honest word here. But he doesn’t leave us in bondage to sin and death, just as he didn’t leave Israel in bondage to slavery in Egypt. It’s true, what Paul writes in Romans 3. all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…And this is true as well. You are justified by his 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.
So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. The freedom he won for us on the cross is pure, unmerited, undeserved, unconditional, no-strings-attached gift. In Jesus crucified, we who were enslaved to sin are set free. In Jesus crucified, we who were held captive by death are liberated. In Jesus crucified, we who were imprisoned are busted out of an eternal prison in the greatest jail break of all time. Jesus’ death and resurrection is the Master Key that unlocks not only Scripture, as it did for Luther, but also frees you from sin and death.
This is the truth that sets you free. And the truth is Jesus himself. His birth for you, his life lived for you, his keeping the Law for you, his bearing the punishment of sin for you, his dying and rising for you, by his blood shed and given for you here, today.
So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
This is what Luther rediscovered five hundred and four years ago. When the Son of God in human flesh sets you free you are part of the family, you belong to God the Father; you are part of the house, adopted by God’s grace, inheritors of eternal life; you are no longer a slave of sin and death and the devil; you are set free from sin in Jesus.
In Jesus you are freely justified. Freely saved. Freed from sin. And set free to serve. Free to love your neighbor. Free to remain, dwell, abide, and rest in Jesus’ word, water, body and blood as his disciples. Christ the Master Key has opened heaven and all his gifts to you by grace, through faith in him.
A blessed Reformation Sunday to each of you…
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment