Quote from Forum Archives on March 21, 2004, 5:24 pm

Posted by: bhfbc <bhfbc@...>

CROSSROADS #2/5
CROSSROAD OF FREEDOM
March 21, 2004
(evening service)

Text: John 10:14-21

Shortly after beginning my ministry in Omaha, I met a teenager who was a
resident in one of the rehabilitation and counseling centers there. This
teen was not an alcoholic; he was not a drug addict; he was not a thief,
or any other type of criminal. He had come from a broken home and could
not cope with society. He was still too young to be allowed out on his
own, so the courts had placed him in one of these centers until he did
turn old enough to be out on his own.

After meeting him, I learned that the primary thought on his mind was
freedom. He sought to be free from parental control and free from the
institution where he lived. In fact, his desire to be free was so great
that he would run away from the center every once in a while. But he was
always picked up and brought back. And, always, he would dream about the
day he could be free.

Before I got to know him very well, he was transferred out to a center in
Lincoln. I did not get to see him any more, but I am reminded of him from
time to time whenever I hear of someone longing for freedom from their
circumstances.

For him, freedom was defined as being completely on his own with no
responsibilities. It meant not being responsible to anyone, including
God. All of us desire freedom. No one here wants to be trapped or
imprisoned or held against our will. But we also know that this idea of
freedom - freedom from everything imaginable - is no freedom at all. It
is, in fact, a bondage, and anyone caught in this kind of thinking will
always be as imprisoned as those who may be held against their will by an
enemy.

I have observed that to use the term freedom when discussing Christianity
typically evokes two questions: what are we freed from and what are we
freed to? These questions can come as a challenge or a seeking. Let’s
take a look at what it is we are "freed from" and "freed to."

As our basis of study, let us first consider the freedom of Jesus Christ.
The text from John 10 finds Jesus in dialogue with a group of Pharisees.
He had just healed a blind man on the Sabbath. The Pharisees had already
cut off the healed man from their fellowship because he defended Jesus as
a worker of good rather than evil. Now the Pharisees were confronting
Jesus and were demanding that He defend His actions. Jesus claims to be
the good shepherd who is willing to lay down His life for the sheep.

Within the context of this larger passage, then, we discover the freedom
Jesus teaches. In the prophetic claim found in verses 17 and 18, we are
told that no one can take Jesus' life. "No one has robbed me of it."
Rather, it is only Jesus who can in fact lay down His life. "I am laying
it down of my own free will. I have the right to lay it down, and I have
the right to receive it back again."

The freedom of Jesus to lay down His life is crucial to the Christian
faith. Without this freedom, Jesus' sacrifice would be no more than a
grotesque version of the Old Testament animal sacrifice. There can be no
lasting power from such a sacrifice. Instead, though, Jesus moves freely
to become the one Holy sacrifice necessary to purify our sins. The one
worthy of worship and life becomes a willing and innocent sacrifice. He
freely lays down His life not for His sake but for ours. We cannot hope
to have freedom without Christ.

Because of the freedom of Christ, we can respond to questions about
freedom. What are we freed from? In America, freedom is one of those
rallying words worthy of fighting for. We are free and intend to defend
our freedom and the freedom of others. And this is a good ideal. However,
because we are used to this freedom, it often becomes a stumbling block
when dealing with Christian freedom. Being free already, what do we need
to be freed from?

We need desperately freedom from the bondage of sin. Paul makes this
painfully clear. Read from Romans 6:20-21. “When you were slaves to sin,
you were free from the control of righteousness leading to holiness. What
benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of?
Those things result in death!”

Turn now to Romans 7:18-24. Paul testifies of the struggle found in
bondage to sin: "I know that nothing good lives within me, that is, in my
sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot
carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil
that I do not want to do - this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do
not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me
that does it. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is
right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I
see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the
law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within
my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body
of death?"

We are enslaved to sin and there is no way that we alone can free
ourselves from it. Every human being is cut off from the Holiness of God,
and this estrangement - this rebellion - is our sin. Even when we want to
do good, we cannot. This is what Paul has written. We are incapable of
making ourselves worthy before God. We are worthy only of God's judgment
and punishment.

This is the sad state of affairs in which the Reformer Martin Luther
found himself in the early 1500's. Taking the judgment of God and the
teachings of the Roman Catholic Church seriously, he found himself in
deep despair and anguish. The God that Luther knew was a harsh and
condemning God. Look at the art that flourished during that period and
you will see what I mean. Much of it depicts God as a harsh monarch
sitting upon His throne with His finger pointing at man condemned to
hell. This is a frightening portrayal, indeed.

Luther became a monk "in order to get a merciful God." That is, he sought
to obtain his assurance of salvation, and hence his freedom, by
submitting to the discipline of monastic rule. In spite of his obedient
works, he continued to experience agonizing depression because of his own
inner struggle for the assurance of salvation. He knew that man could
never obtain righteousness by his own moral and religious efforts. Yet,
through the systems of penance and indulgences, this is what the Church
taught. By performing certain prescribed works - penance - and
contributing to the Church through the purchase of blessings from the
Pope - indulgences - the Church of Luther’s day taught salvation. Luther,
though, was not comforted by these teachings, for he recognized the
futility of man seeking his own justification before God. He felt as
doomed as ever.

It was while reading and interpreting the book of Romans that he
understood the true and ultimate meaning of Jesus' sacrifice. Romans 1:17
became, for him, the beginning of freedom from the bondage of sin. "For
in it [the gospel of Christ] is the righteousness of God revealed from
faith to faith; as it is written, ‘The just shall live by faith.’" We are
released from sin by the sacrifice of Christ; by the very action of God.
We are no longer slaves of sin; we are free from its bondage. Paul makes
this clear in Romans 7:24-8:3: "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue
me from this body of death? Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our
Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the
sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. Therefore, there is now no
condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ
Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and
death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by
the sinful nature, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of
sinful man to be a sin offering."

Because of his new understanding of the assurance of salvation, Luther
obtained freedom from the bondage of sin. Consider his victorious
attitude evident in the hymn "A Mighty Fortress." Luther wrote: "The
prince of darkness grim - We tremble not for him; His rage we can endure,
For lo! his doom is sure." What Luther celebrated is that, through
Christ, satan has no hold and no claim on us. We have freedom from the
bondage of sin.

If we are free from a thing, then it stands to reason that we are freed
to a thing. "What are we free to?" is the second question. We are free to
serve. A tension exists in Christian freedom: we are indeed free - freer
than we can ever possibly imagine - yet we are free to serve - to become
a slave. Strange, isn’t it? How can that ever work?

Referring once again to the letters of Paul, we discover what our freedom
means. Look at 1 Corinthians 7:22. "He who was a slave when he was called
by the Lord is the Lord's freedman; similarly, he who was a free man when
he was called is Christ's slave." Galatians 5:13. "You, my brothers, were
called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful
nature; rather, serve one another in love."

We are freed from the bondage of sin. We are free to serve. Do you recall
the familiar passage of the washing of the disciples' feet? We read the
words of Jesus in John 13:12-17: "Do you understand what I have done for
you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and rightly so, for that is what I am.
Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should
wash one another's feet. I have set you an example that you should do as
I have done for you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his
master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that
you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them." Christian
freedom makes it a joy to serve. We are "blessed if we do it."

Martin Luther likewise found joy in freedom to serve. He wrote that
"Christ does not free us from good works, but to good works." Likewise,
"Justification through the Word leads to joy in good works." Works - the
freedom to act - become not a burden but a joy in the realm of Christian
freedom. Servanthood is not a prerequisite for salvation, but a privilege
for us to participate in the Kingdom of God.

Christian freedom is the only true freedom that we have. I always hope
that those like my young teenage acquaintance will "discover himself" and
find freedom and maturity, but I hope even more that they will discover
freedom found in Christ.

There is no other way to break free from the bondage of sin. There is no
other way to be free to serve the Lord and our neighbors. We are only
free through the freedom of Christ. Christ responded to the crossroad of
freedom by freely laying down His life for us. We, too, can respond to
our crossroad of freedom by accepting forgiveness, giving forgiveness,
loving our neighbor, and extending our freedom to others.

Let’s close with the familiar “Amazing Grace.” "Amazing grace! how sweet
the sound, That saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am
found, Was blind, but now I see." These words were penned by John Newton
who had lived the life of an 18th century slave trader; who was such a
horrid, nasty man that his own crew wanted to kill him. But Christ wanted
to save him; Christ wanted to free him. And Christ won out. John Newton
went on to become a preacher and hymn writer during the English revivals
of the late 1700's.

Has Christ won out in your life? Have you let Him set you free from the
bondage of sin? If you accept Christ as your savior, or if you wish to
rededicate your life to the freedom of Christ, we invite you to come
forward and let us share in your joy as we stand and sing “Amazing
Grace.”

Rev. Charles A. Layne, pastor, First Baptist Church, Bunker Hill, IN

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