Standing on the "Alones"

[Below, you'll find the message shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, yesterday, Reformation Sunday, along with live stream videos of both services.]

John 8:31-36

On this Reformation Sunday, we consider an important question: What is a Lutheran?

Lutherans have always seen Christian faith, the faith commended to us in the Bible, as having three key truths: Grace alone; Faith alone; and Word alone.

What does that really mean?

When the thirty-three-year-old German monk and priest, Martin Luther, accidentally began the Reformation movement back in 1517, he found himself addressing both a religious elite who no longer cared about the Word of God, choosing to replace it with their own ideas and traditions, and Christian masses whose allegiance to the Church was as an institution and a habit, rather than a fellowship with the living God. No wonder that the elites hated Luther or that the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire put Luther under an imperial ban, meaning that anyone who saw him was authorized to kill Luther on sight!

Luther’s witness to the justification of sinful human beings by God’s grace through faith in Jesus, to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and to the authority of the Bible as God’s Word undermined those who wanted to replace Jesus with other lords and the authority of the Bible with traditions and customs that brought them control or power. 

The experience of Luther and the other church reformers was nothing new. As I mentioned last Sunday, when you read the Old Testament, you see a recurring pattern in the life of God’s chosen people. God would call them to repent, trust in Him for life, and follow Him, and the people, feeling weak or vulnerable or afraid, would do so. For a time. Then, once they got a little food in their bellies, a tract of land to farm, a bit of wealth or power, they would mostly forget God. Or, they would make God into an indulgent Santa Claus who didn’t care if they repented, believed, or followed, so long as they were happy. Or, they would tinker with their faith, adding their own rules, intermingling the worship of other deities. It was to God’s people in these latter circumstances that God would send prophets to call people to repentance and faith in Him.

We see this rejection of God and of God’s Word in the people Jesus confronts in today’s Gospel lesson from John. Just before our lesson, Jesus foretells His crucifixion and resurrection. Then Jesus lifts up those three distinctives of Biblical faith, three distinctives that would become the three principles of the Lutheran movement within Christ’s Church. John tells us: "Then Jesus said 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.” (John 8:31-32)

Lutherans don't claim to have a corner on the truth market. But the Confessions of our movement, found in a book called The Book of Concord or Concordia, hold that Jesus is the Truth that sets us free. We believe that people are set free from sin, death, and futility, first of all, through God’s grace alone. Jesus doesn’t say, “Perform these deeds and I’ll set you free from sin and death.” He doesn’t say, “You’re just perfect the way you are so nothing needs to be done to make you righteous, or acceptable for life with God.” Instead, Jesus tells us that we are sinners who need to be righteous and then, on the cross, through His innocent suffering and death, does the hard work of taking our sin into His body while giving His perfect righteousness to us.

He does this as a free gift, an act of grace (or charity) from God for us. We are saved by God’s grace alone. 

Lutheran Christians also believe we are saved through faith alone. Faith is how God delivers the grace Jesus bore for us on the cross.

Jesus told His fellow Jews that they would only be free to be the people of God if they trusted or believed in Him, literally the original Greek says "remain in My Word."

To have faith is to remain rooted in Jesus and to draw life from Him alone. This is what Jesus means when He says elsewhere, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

Faith, the gift God gives by His Word, both proclaimed and given in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, overcomes our deadliest enemies: the devil, the sinful world, and our sinful selves. As Jesus tells Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live and everyone who lives and believes in me will live forever.” Then Jesus asks, “Do you believe this?”

Well, Christians, do you believe this? Do I? I mean, how is it possible for self-centered, untrusting people like us to have faith in Jesus?

The Small Catechism tells us, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel [that is, the good news message that God the Father sent Jesus, God the Son, to save me from sin and death], enlightened me with His gifts [The Bible and the Sacraments], and sanctified and preserved me in the truth faith.”

In Jesus, God not only does everything needed to save me from myself, He also creates my faith in Jesus.

A Lutheran is someone who, because of God’s great grace or charity, gratefully receives the Word about Jesus that creates faith. 

Finally, Lutherans believe that we come to know God through the Word alone. Above all, we know God through “the Word made flesh,” Jesus. The Bible, the inspired Word of God, which is about Jesus from Genesis to Revelation, points us to the life God gives through Jesus. This Word brings us life with God.

In Martin Luther’s day, the Church added to or ignored the witness about Jesus found in the Scriptures. Luther and the other Reformers said that the Church dared not do or say anything contrary to the will of God revealed to us in the Bible. Second Timothy 3:16 says: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness...”

We all have our favorite sins and so we may not like the things that God calls sin. But we Lutherans believe that when the righteous, loving God of the universe and we disagree about how we should live our lives, God is right and we are wrong.

We may want to know much more than God reveals to us in Christ and in Scripture. But in the 66 books of the Bible, everything we need to know about God, about ourselves, about salvation, about how to live, and about Who can be trusted, is found.

We live in an era in which the Bible is routinely snubbed, dismissed, or misused. The Bible isn’t the writing of just one person claiming a hotline to God, as is true of the books of Islam or Mormonism. The Bible doesn’t claim to give us a means by which we can work our way to heaven or to a state of spiritual enlightenment, as is the case with eastern religions. The Bible is a library of books that tells us how God reaches out to us in our sin, repents us, saves us, loves us, and wants to be reconciled to us through the Savior He sent for us. The Bible is the Word from God that has the power to change the lives of anyone who stands under its authority. The New Testament book of Hebrews says, “...the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

God saves through grace alone, faith alone, and Word alone. It was true in 33 AD, true in 1517, true today, and true for all eternity.

So, what is a Lutheran? At the least, Lutherans are people who stake their eternal lives on these three  truths.

And when the world rejects or demeans or tries to tell us to reject the Bible's witness to these three essential truths, we must say with Luther who was commanded by the powers of the Church and of the State to recant or repudiate his witness for Christ, “Unless I am convinced by the testimonies of the Holy Scriptures or evident reason…I am bound by the Scriptures…and my conscience has been taken captive by the Word of God…I am neither able nor willing to recant. God help me.” 

May God help us to be true to our Lutheran heritage, not from a commitment to tradition, but from simple faith in Jesus, the One Who has borne the cross and opened eternity for us. 

May we be true to our good confession as Lutherans that we are saved from our very real enemies–sin, death, and the devil–by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone!

Faith in the Savior Who justifies sinners, making us innocent of our sin through His death on the cross, this faith is the best way to celebrate Reformation Sunday, today and always. Amen

Reformation: Grace Alone, Faith Alone, Word Alone

[Below are the live stream videos of this morning's worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, as well as the text of the message prepared for them.]





John 8:31-36

On this Reformation Sunday, we consider a simple and important question: What is a Lutheran? Lutherans have always seen Christian faith, the faith commended to us in the Bible, as having three key truths: Grace alone; Faith alone; and Word alone. What does that really mean?

When the thirty-three-year-old German monk and priest, Martin Luther, accidentally began the Reformation movement back in 1517, he found himself addressing both a religious elite who no longer cared about the Word of God, choosing to replace it with their own ideas and traditions, and Christian masses whose allegiance to the Church was as an institution and a habit, rather than a fellowship with the living God. No wonder that the elites hated Luther or that the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire put Luther under an imperial ban, meaning that anyone was authorized to kill Luther on sight!

Luther’s witness to the justification of sinful human beings by God’s grace through faith in Jesus, to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and to the authority of the Bible as God’s Word undermined those who wanted to replace Jesus with other lords and the authority of the Bible with traditions and customs that brought them control or power.

The experience of Luther and the other church reformers was nothing new. When you read the Old Testament, you see a recurring pattern in the life of God’s chosen people, the Israelites or Jews. God would call them to repent, trust in Him for life, and follow Him, and the people, feeling weak or vulnerable or afraid, would do so. For a time. Then, once they got a little food in their bellies, a tract of land to farm, a bit of wealth or power, they would mostly forget God. Or, they would make God over into an indulgent Santa Claus who didn’t care if they repented, believed, or followed, so long as they were happy. Or, they would tinker with their faith, adding their own rules, intermingling the worship of other deities. It was to God’s people in these latter circumstances that God would send prophets to call people back to Him.

We see this rejection of God and of God’s Word in the people Jesus confronts in today’s Gospel lesson from John. Just before our lesson, Jesus foretells His crucifixion and resurrection. Then Jesus lifts up those three distinctives of Biblical faith, three distinctives that would become the three cornerstone principles of Lutheranism.

John tells us: "Then Jesus said 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.” (John 8:31-32)

Lutherans don't claim to have a corner on the truth market. But the Confessions of our movement, found in a book called The Book of Concord or Concordia, hold that Jesus is the Truth that sets us free. We believe that people are set free from sin, death, and futility, first of all, through God’s grace alone. Jesus doesn’t say, “Perform these deeds and I’ll set you free from sin and death.” He doesn’t say, “You’re just perfect the way you are so nothing needs to be done to make you righteous, or acceptable for life with God.” Instead, Jesus tells us that we are sinners who need to be righteous and then, on the cross, through His innocent suffering and death, does the hard work of taking our sin into His body while giving His perfect righteousness to us. He does this as a free gift, an act of grace (or charity) from God for us. We are saved by God’s grace alone. 

Lutheran Christians also believe we are saved through faith alone. Faith is how we grab hold of the grace Jesus gives us on the cross. Jesus told His fellow Jews that they would only be free to be the people of God if they trusted or believed in Him, literally the original Greek says "remain in My Word." To have faith is to remain rooted in Jesus and to draw life from Him alone. This is what Jesus is talking about when He says elsewhere, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

Faith, the gift God gives by His Word, overcomes our deadliest enemies—the devil, the sinful world, and our sinful selves. As Jesus tells Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live and everyone who lives and believes in me will live forever.” Then Jesus asks, “Do you believe this?”

Do you believe this? Do I? I mean, how is it possible for self-centered, untrusting people to have faith in Jesus, the Lord we’ve never actually seen? The Small Catechism tells us, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel [that is, the good news message that God the Father sent Jesus, God the Son, to save me from sin and death], enlightened me with His gifts [The Bible and the Sacraments], and sanctified and preserved me in the truth faith.” In Jesus, God not only does everything needed to save me from myself, He also creates my faith in Jesus. A Lutheran is someone who, because of God’s great grace or charity, has been given and receives the Word about Jesus that creates faith. 

Finally, Lutherans believe that we come to know God through the Word alone. Above all, we know God through “the Word made flesh,” Jesus. The Bible, the inspired Word of God, which is about Jesus from Genesis to Revelation, points us to the life God gives through Jesus. 

In Martin Luther’s day, the Church added to or ignored the witness about Jesus found in the Scriptures. Luther and the other Reformers said that the Church dared not do or say anything contrary to the will of God revealed to us in the Bible. This agrees with 2 Timothy 3:16, which says: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness...” We may not like the things that God calls sin. But we Lutherans believe that when the righteous, loving God of the universe and we disagree about how we should live our lives, God is right and we are wrong. We may want to know much more than God reveals. But in the 66 books of the Bible, everything we need to know about God, about ourselves, about how to live, and about Who can be trusted, is found in the Bible.

We live in an era in which the Bible is routinely snubbed, dismissed, or misused. The Bible isn’t the writing of just one person claiming a hotline to God, as was true of the books of Islam or Mormonism. The Bible doesn’t claim to give us a means by which we can work our way to heaven or to a state of spiritual enlightenment, as is the case with eastern religions. The Bible is a library of books that tell us how God reaches out to us, saves us, loves us, and wants to be reconciled to us through the Savior He sent for us. The Bible is the Word from God that has the power to change the lives of anyone who stand under its authority. The New Testament book of Hebrews says, “...the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

God saves through grace alone, faith alone, and Word alone. It was true in 33 AD, true in 1517, true today, and true for all eternity. 

So, what is a Lutheran? At the least, Lutherans are people who stake their eternal lives on these three  truths. And when the world rejects or demeans or tries to tell us to reject the Bible's witness to these three essential truths, we must say with Luther who was commanded to recant or repudiate his witness for Christ, “"Unless I am convinced by the testimonies of the Holy Scriptures or evident reason…I am bound by the Scriptures…and my conscience has been taken captive by the Word of God…I am neither able nor willing to recant. God help me.” 

And may God help us to be true to our Lutheran heritage, not from a commitment to tradition, but from simple faith in Jesus, the One Who has borne the cross and opened eternity for us. May we be true to our good confession as Lutherans that we are saved from our very real enemies–sin, death, and the devil–by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone! Faith in the Savior Who justifies sinners, making us innocent of our sin through His death on the cross, this faith is the best way to remember Reformation Sunday, today and always. Amen

A Reason to Celebrate

[This is the message shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, yesterday, Reformation Sunday.]

John 8:31-36
Reformation Sunday is one of my favorite days on the Church calendar. And this year, of course, brings a special celebration of this day with the 500th. anniversary of Martin Luther posting his 95 Theses on the Wittenberg church door.

But there’s a bit of danger in all this celebrating of our Lutheran heritage. It can too easily become about Luther and our connection to him.

But Reformation Sunday isn’t a time to say, “Yay, us!” It’s a call to thanksgiving that we are only saved from sin and death by the power of God’s grace given to those who trust in the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, as their God, Savior, and King.

It’s a truth of which we in the Church and the world we seek to reach in Christ’s names need to always be reminded! That's because, as long as we're on this earth, you and I will need to be open to the reformation of our faith, lives, and characters that God wants to accomplish in us.

The term, Lutheran was first used as a putdown by Luther’s accuser, Johann Eck. “None of you are Christians,” Eck was saying, “You’re Lutherans.”

Martin Luther hated the word, Lutheran. “I ask that my name be left silent and people not call themselves Lutheran, but rather Christians,” Luther said. “Who is Luther?...I have been crucified for no one...How should I, a poor stinking bag of worms, become so that the children of Christ are named with my unholy name? It should not be dear friends. Let us extinguish all factious names and be called Christians…”

While we can be thankful that God used Luther to re-awaken the Christian Church to the true teachings of God in His Word, Reformation Sunday calls us to live in the light of two fundamental truths.

The first truth is that I am a sinner whose sin will earn me eternal condemnation if I am not saved. As Paul puts it in Romans 6:23: “the wages of sin is death.”

The second truth is that Jesus Christ, God enfleshed and sinless, took the punishment of death I deserve for my sin on the cross, then was raised by God the Father, so all who turn from sin and follow Him are freed of sin and death and have eternal life with God.

I need saving and I can’t save myself: I can’t be good enough, sorry enough, or virtuous enough to be saved. Only Jesus Christ can save me.

And I am saved only by turning from sin and surrendering to the God we meet in Christ. Paul puts it all succinctly in Ephesians 2:8: “...it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God…”

All of this leads to today’s gospel lesson. It records an encounter between Jesus and fellow Jews who believed in Him. In it, Jesus talks about what it means to be saved, what it means to be His disciple. And, because the New International Version translation of the Bible, which is the version we have in our sanctuary and which I usually use in preaching, is so horrible in translating the first verse of today’s gospel lesson, I’m going to be using the more accurate English Standard Version today. So, up here on the screens, take a look at our gospel lesson, please, John 8:31-36.

Verse 31: “So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, ‘If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’” 

There may not be two more important verses in all of Scripture than these!

That’s true because, first of all, Jesus here defines what belief or faith is.

When we speak of believing in something, we usually refer to intellectual assent, an opinion we have: “I believe that gravity exists”; “I believe that Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy.”

But what Jesus means when He speaks of belief or faith in Him is more than intellectual assent. To believe in Jesus is to “abide in [His] word.”

The word translated as abide is, in John’s Greek, μείνητε, a verb, an action word meaning to remain, stay, stick it out. The people to whom Jesus first addressed these words believed that Jesus was something special; after all, they were part of the crowd of 5000 Jesus had fed with a few fish and pieces of bread. Their opinion was basically, “Jesus is a great dude.” But Jesus says that faith is not a personal opinion. Faith is abiding, standing fast, when the crosses come, the chips are down, the temptations are great.

This verse is also important because Jesus tells us what to abide in. Or more accurately, who we are to abide in.

Jesus says we’re to abide in His Word. Jesus means more than spending time in this book, the Bible, the Word of God. That book, the Bible, is worthy of spending our time in it not just because it contains the Word of God. It's worthy because it tells us about the Word of God.

John 1 tells us: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) And then, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” (John 1:14) Faith is making our home on the strong foundation of Jesus, the Word of God, and staying there! Jesus says when we do this, we will be free.

Verse 33: “They [the Jews who believed in Jesus] answered him, ‘We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, “You will become free”?’”

People who are enslaved are often quick to deny their slavery.

Someone tells a friend, “I think you have a drinking problem,” and the friend denies their addiction.

A woman is repeatedly abused by her husband and tells her parents, “He’s not really like that.”

A man embezzles from his company but actually believes it when he says, “I’m not a thief.”

Jesus’ fellow Jews, whose entire history was filled with times of enslavement to other nations, say, “We’ve never been slaves to anyone.”

Today, Jesus calls us to look at ourselves as we appear in the eyes of God. What enslaves us?

Materialism?

A love of comfort?

Selfishness?

Self-loathing?

Indifference to God and the hurting people around us?

These and every other sin stemming from our failure to remain rooted in the God we know in Jesus are what enslaves people, taking them away from God and the life that only God can give.

Christ wants us to see the truth.

And just as the Word is a person, Jesus Himself, so is the truth. Jesus says, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

When we remain rooted in Christ, we see in the brilliance of God’s truth what enslaves us and we see too, that we can trust in the love and power of our crucified and risen Jesus to set us free to live, now and in eternity.

A woman once came to see me for counseling. “I started an affair with a no-good man, a really no-good man, years ago,” she told me. “He’s married and has no intention of leaving his wife. When I’m with him, he makes me feel loved and alive. But after he goes I wonder what I’m doing. I feel so rotten. So, I’ll tell him I’m not seeing him any more. Then he calls me a few months later and I cave in. I know it’s wrong. But I can’t get free.”

That woman was enslaved to her sin, enslaved to the idea that she needed this man to verify her worthiness as a human being. She understood that it was wrong, that her eternal destiny hung in the balance. But she was helpless to overcome her sin.

And here’s the thing: We are all helpless to resist sin when we try to do our own.

When God helps us to first, see our sins, and then, see the grace He offers in Christ, we are ready to be set free...not by our efforts to be good or religious or strong, but by Jesus Christ, Who died and rose for helpless sinners like you and me.

It is only when we know our helplessness and Who is the only One Who can help us that we will ever be free.

Paul puts it beautifully in 2 Corinthians 12:10: “...when I am weak, then I am strong.”

When I empty myself of all pretense of having it together, of being a good person, of being proud of my humility, it’s then that the God we meet in Jesus can fill us with God’s strength, God’s goodness, God’s love, God’s righteousness.

In other words, it’s only when we stop denying that we are sinners that we are open to the truth embodied in Jesus that we are “saved by grace through faith in Christ” alone!

An old saying puts it this way: When I’m at the end of me and God is all I’ve got, I realize that God is all I need!

I don’t always experience the fullness of God’s grace as God intends to give it to believers. I too often get in the way. But there are times when I do get out of the way.

This past week, I went to the deli again. Driving there, I asked, “Why do I almost always go to this deil? There’s another one closer.” “Just go,” I sensed God say.

When I got there, two different employees, neither one of them waiting on me, approached me about situations in their lives.

In that moment, Christ set me free from myself! Instead of denying our slavery to sin, you and I need to confess it, so that Jesus Christ can set us free. Not just once in a lifetime. Not just once a week. Not just at church. Not just at the deli. Always! We need to remain in Christ so that we’re free to live.

To the denial and cluelessness of the crowd who think that they’re free, Jesus says, starting at verse 34: “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”

When Martin Luther, after steeping Himself in Scripture, came to see that God sets free all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ, he understood that sin and death need not be the last words for human beings. Even sinners like Martin Luther, Mark Daniels, you, and every human being, can be set free to live as God intended for us to live: His grateful, grown-up children, filled with the life and power of God, at ease in knowing that God will guide us through every moment in this fallen world, certain that we will live with God forever. Even now, through Christ and our faith in Him, we are free.

And that is what we can celebrate on this Reformation Sunday!

Can You Handle This Truth?

[This was shared at the early worship service of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, this morning.]

John 8:31-36
I’ve never seen the movie, A Few Good Men. But like most people I’ve seen one of its most famous scenes. Tom Cruise’s character, a prosecuting attorney, demands of a witness, “I want the truth!” And Jack Nicholson, the witness on the stand, “You can’t handle the truth!”

Today’s gospel lesson asks us, “Can you handle the truth?”

The people with whom Jesus speaks in today’s lesson couldn’t.

We’re going to look at the truths Jesus reveals in this lesson and see whether you and I can handle them. Please turn to the lesson, John 8:31-36 (on page 746 in the sanctuary Bibles).

In verse 31, we read: “Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed in Him, ‘If you hold to my teaching [or more literally, If you abide or remain in My Word, you are really my disciples..’” Truth number one, which seems to elude the people to whom Jesus is speaking, is that believing in Jesus is more than just reciting the Creed or enlisting in a "club" called "the church."

This is Reformation Sunday. We celebrate the simple act of a priest, monk, and Bible scholar, Martin Luther, on All Saints’ Eve (Hallowe'en), October 31, 1517, when, to the church door in Wittenberg, he nailed ninety-five theses for debate among clergy and scholars.

Luther had no intention of starting a Reformation. But his questions for debate challenged the teachings of the Church of his day.

Through his act, the Holy Spirit unleashed a Christian movement that pointed to the central teaching of the Bible that unrighteous, sinful human beings are made right with God not by engaging in good works, but solely by the charity (or grace) of God given to those with faith in Jesus Christ.

To be saved from sin, death, and darkness, we must only believe in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ. That’s good news!

But, of course, believing in Jesus is more than the recitation of words or showing up for church functions.

Belief in Jesus is entrusting my whole life to Him, accepting His total authority over my life.

Because this idea so violently collides with our pretenses of self-sufficiency and our personal desires, the good news of Jesus is also a tough truth. And most people can’t handle it! (Including me, much of the time, I must honestly confess, though I crave to live for Christ more than anything.)

But Jesus isn’t done laying the truth on us. Look at what He says in verse 32: “‘...you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’”

This verse is widely misquoted and misunderstood. For example, the words "the truth will set you free" are chiseled into the marble on the front face of the Law School at my alma mater, The Ohio State University, as though Jesus were saying, “If you know the facts, you’ll be free.” That is NOT what Jesus is saying! Jesus means something, in fact Someone, very specific when He talks about the Truth: Himself.

Please turn to John 1:14, part of the prologue or introduction to the gospel of John (page 739 in the sanctuary Bibles). In his prologue, John calls Jesus the Word, God the Son, then tells us: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Then, please slip over to John 14:6 (page 752). It says: “Jesus answered [Thomas], ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”

Truth #2 then, is this: Jesus is the foundational Truth on which the entire universe is built. To build on any other foundation but Christ is to live a lie and a delusion.

To be in relationship with Jesus, to entrust our past, present, and future, our sins, and our identities to Jesus Christ alone, is to be in relationship with God.

To refuse relationship with and surrender to Jesus is to be out of relationship with God, separated from God.

The entire universe, in fact, is not as it should be because it is out of relationship, out of sync, with Jesus the Truth. 2 Thessalonians 1:9 says that those who refuse Christ’s lordship over their lives, “...will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord.” Tough stuff. But Jesus says that as we stay connected with Him, meeting Him with trusts in the ways and in the places He promises to meet us--as we daily repent of our sins, pray in His Name, read and hear ans study His Word, fellowship with His people in the Church, receive His body and blood, and live under His grace alone--we will know the truth, we will know Him, and He will set us free.

Jesus’ original hearers, fellow residents of Judea who said they believed in Jesus, could not handle any talk of their needing to be set free. In verse 33, they protest: “‘We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?’’”

This is denial, pure and simple. The whole history of the descendants of Abraham had been filled with their enslavement and subjugation under other peoples. In fact, except for a brief period between 140 and 63 BC, about seventy-seven years, God’s people had been slaves of other people for centuries! Most notable, of course, was the 430 year stint of slavery in Egypt. And even at the moment Jesus spoke with them, they lived under the dominion of a foreign nation, the Roman Empire.

But though we may shake our heads at this denial of reality, these people aren’t the only slaves in human history to deny their slavery. All of us are equipped with the capacity to not see when we’re enslaved to sin. Whether the focal point of our sin is the abuse of alcohol or drugs, gambling, too much time on the computer, workaholism, materialism, pornography, or whatever our gods of choice may be, a common first response when confronted by loved ones is to deny our slavery. “I don’t need it,” we crow. “I can quit it any time.”

Jesus doesn’t mince words in expressing truth #3. Look at verse 34: “‘Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.’”

This is the unpleasant truth the human race does not want to hear. None of us does. And when called to the carpet for something I’ve done wrong, my first impulse is to let loose with a string of excuses.

Psalm 51:5 and the whole Bible tells us that we are born in sin. Sin is the condition of alienation from God and from other human beings, the enslavement to ourselves and our own desires that blocks out true, open, loving relationships with God and with others.

This is what we reference when we confess to God on Sunday mornings that “we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.”

From this condition of sin, we naturally commit sins. We really do not, by nature, love God or love others.

Other-mindnedness, which is what the Bible calls righteousness looks like, isn’t the default mode those whose first words are often, “No!” and “Mine!” (Ask any parent and they will confirm that.) We are slaves to sin. And it’s from this slavery that Jesus came into the world to free you and me. 

Look at what Jesus says in verse 35 of our lesson, please: “‘Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever.’” Under the inheritance laws of first-century Judea, only the oldest son inherited all that his father left behind. And slaves had no rights to an inheritance at all. There was nothing they could do about their circumstance. They would spend their entire lives as slaves.

Absent God’s help, we sinners would have no hope of anything but eternal condemnation and everlasting separation from God and the life for which we were made. We couldn’t inherit life with God. Hard truth #4 isn’t specifically mentioned here, but if Jesus is speaking it to Jews who believed in Him, the first Christians, it’s true for you and me as well, and it’s truth that’s mentioned in Romans 3:23: “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

We are all slaves who can’t free ourselves, who deserve death, as Romans 6:23 reminds us: “the wages of sin is death.” Death is what we deserve for our sin, a hard truth to handle!

Thank God for the promise that Jesus makes in verse 36 of our lesson: “‘...if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.’”

When we trust Jesus to take our sins on His shoulders and their condemnation into His very body, He crucifies our old sinful selves and sets us free from their power.

Martin Luther, as you know, said that on Judgment Day, God will look out over two seas of people, both groups composed entirely of sinners. One group will stand naked in their sins, having chosen sin over salvation by their refusal to repent for sin and believe in Jesus. By their refusal to believe in Jesus, they will have chosen condemnation, an earthly lifetime and an eternity spent in a chosen exile from the God Who made and loved them.

Luther pointed out that God will also look out over another group of sinners. Because of their faith in Jesus, God won’t see their earthly fallen selves. God will only see Jesus when He looks at them. They will be clothed in the forgiveness and new life Jesus gave to them and that they received by faith in Christ. Romans 6:23 tells us: “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

That is the greatest truth of all!

A few years ago, I read about the large number of emigres from Iran (Persia) who, in some independent German Lutheran congregations, are leaving the Muslim religion and coming to faith in Jesus Christ. These Persians were making public profession of their faith in spite of the fact that in many of their ethnic enclaves, their fellow Persians enforce Muslim sharia law, which says that if Muslims become Christians, they must be killed.

Why would these converts risk their lives to abide in Jesus and be His disciples?

One convert to Christianity explained, “In this [Lutheran] congregation, I heard for the first time that God is a loving Father who desires a personal relationship with every human being. This was news to me, because Islam had taught me...[that] God [is] a distant deity...”

The fact that God wants to have a personal relationship with each of us and that this God took on human flesh in order to die for our sins and rise again in order to secure that relationship for now and all eternity for all who believe in Jesus Christ is the good news on which the Reformation was built. It’s also the good news on which we can build our lives.

Those who build their lives on Christ will find, as Luther wrote in his famous hymn, inspired by Psalm 46, that God is "a mighty fortress," “a sword and shield victorious”! That is a truth we can not only handle, but celebrate, today and forever! Amen!

[The image above is taken from the 2004 release, Luther, which I highly recommend.]

What's a Lutheran?

[This was shared during the early worship service of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, this morning.]

John 8:31-36
On this Reformation Sunday, I want to talk with you about a simple and important question: What is a Lutheran?

Lutherans have always seen Christian faith, the faith commended to us in the Bible, as having three key truths:

• Grace alone; 
• Faith alone; and 
• Scripture alone (or Word alone). 

Lutheran Christians are people then, who, first and foremost, believe in grace alone, faith alone, and Word alone. But, what does that really mean?

When the thirty-three year old German monk and priest, Martin Luther, accidentally began the Reformation movement back in 1517, after posting ninety-five theses for academic debate on a church door in Wittenberg, Germany, he found himself addressing both a religious elite that no longer cared about the Word of God, choosing to replace it with their own supposed wisdom, and Christian masses whose allegiance to the Church was as an institution and a habit, rather than a fellowship with the living God.

No wonder that the elites hated Luther! No wonder that the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire put Luther under an imperial ban, meaning that any one was authorized to kill Luther on sight!

Luther’s faithful witness to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and to the authority of the Bible as God’s Word undermined those who wanted to replace Jesus with other lords and the authority of the Bible with traditions and customs that brought them comfort, control, or power.

But the experience of Luther and the other church reformers was nothing new. If you take time to read the Old Testament, you see a recurring pattern in the life of God’s chosen people, the Israelites or Jews. God would call them to repent, trust in Him for life, and follow Him, and the people, feeling weak or vulnerable or afraid, would do so. For a time.

Then, once they got a little food in their bellies, a little tract of land to farm, a bit of wealth or power, they would mostly forget God.

Or, they would make God over into an indulgent Santa Claus who didn’t care if they repented, believed, or followed, so long as they had a good time.

Or, they would tinker with their faith, adding their own rules, intermingling the worship of other deities, maybe ensconcing wealth as a sign of God’s favor and love.

It was to God’s people in these latter circumstances that God would send prophets to call people back to God.

We see this rejection of God and of God’s Word in the people Jesus confronts in today’s Gospel lesson from John.

Just before our lesson, Jesus once more foretells His crucifixion and resurrection.

Then Jesus lifts up those three distinctives of Biblical faith, three distinctives that would become the three cornerstone principles of Lutheranism.

"Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in Him,” our lesson begins, “’If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

Lutherans don't claim to have a corner on the truth market. But the Lutheran Confessions hold up certain truths which, often it seems, the world would rather forget.

Lutheran Christians believe that we are free from sin, death, and futility in our daily lives, first of all, through God’s grace alone. Jesus didn’t come to us and say, “Perform these religious acts and I will set you free from sin, death, and futile living.” Jesus came to us and offered new and everlasting life as a free gift, an act of charity from God.

Open your Bible to Romans 5:6 and 8, please. Paul writes there: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless [meaning, when we were powerless over our sin and so, ticketed for death or eternal separation from God], Christ died for the ungodly.”

Now slip down to verse 8: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” The Greek New Testament word that is translated as grace is charitas, from which we get our English word, charity, a gift we cannot earn. We are saved by God’s grace alone.

The apostle John gets at this same reality in his first epistle, where, amazed by God’s grace given through the crucified and risen Jesus, he says, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” Our relationship with God is not initiated by us. Our relationship with God is initiated by God, a gracious gift we either receive or reject.

The Bible then, teaches that our salvation and hope depend completely on God's grace. Not our works. Nor our feelings. Not our thoughts. Only on God's grace.

A friend of mine has the perfect response for those who ask Lutherans, “When were you saved?” “That’s easy,” my friend says, “on a hill outside Jerusalem two-thousand years ago.”

What is a Lutheran? First of all, someone who believes that their salvation has nothing to do with them, but is a result of God’s grace, given in Christ, alone.

Lutheran Christians also believe we are saved through faith alone. Jesus told His fellow Jews that they would only be free to be the people of God if they persisted in trusting in Him, literally the original Greek says "remain in My Word."

Throughout the Gospel of John, we see Jesus described as the foundational Truth of the universe, God-in-the-flesh Who spoke creation into being. Life outside of a relationship with the God made known in Christ is a lie, disconnected from the only One Who can give us life.

But faith, the gift God gives to those willing to receive it, can overcome what Martin Luther marked as our enemies—the devil, the world, and our sinful selves.

That’s why Jesus says in John 4, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me…”

And it's why He tells Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live and everyone who lives and believes in me will live forever.”

What is a Lutheran? It’s someone who believes that God’s grace is taken in hand by those who dare to trust—to have faith in--Jesus Christ alone as their only hope, their only Savior, their only way to a right relationship with God.

Finally, Lutherans believe that we come to know God through the Word alone.

Above all, we know God through “the Word made flesh,” Jesus.

The Bible, the inspired Word of God points us to the life God gives through Jesus.

In Martin Luther’sday, the Church added to or ignored the witness of God about Jesus and the will of God found in the Scriptures.

Luther said that the Church dared not do or say anything contrary to the will of God revealed to us in the Bible.

Belief in the authority of God’s Word in Scripture is at the core of what it means to be a Lutheran. 2 Timothy 3:16, a passage I alluded to last Sunday, teaches us that: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness...”

We may want to know much more, but everything you and I need to know about God, about ourselves, about how to live, and about who can be trusted, is found in the Bible.

Knowing this truth will set us free. That’s why the Lutheran Confessions say, “We believe, teach, and confess that the…writings of the Old and New Testaments are the only rule and norm according to which all doctrines and teachers alike must be appraised and judged…”

We live in an era in which the Bible is routinely snubbed, dismissed, or misused. People ignore how unique and different the Bible is from all the other books of other religions.

The Bible isn’t the writing of just one person claiming a hotline to God, as is true of the books of Islam or Mormonism.

The Bible doesn’t claim to give us a means by which we can work or claw our way to heaven or a state of spiritual enlightenment, as is the case with eastern religions.

The Bible is a spiritually consistent revelation given by God to many people inspired by the Holy Spirit.

The Bible is a library of books that tell us how God reaches out to us, God saves us, God loves us, and how God wants to be reconciled to us.

And thousands of years of living with the Bible’s revelations of God, of Christ, and of the will of God have shown repeatedly that the Bible is more than just a collection of sixty-six ancient books. It’s a book whose words from God have the power to change the lives of those who stand under their authority.

The New Testament book of Hebrews says, “...the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

God saves through grace alone, faith alone, and Word alone.

It was true in 33AD, true in 1517, true today, and true for all eternity.

What is a Lutheran?

At the least, Lutherans are people who stake their eternal lives on these three  truths.

And when the world rejects or demeans or tries to tell us to reject the Bible's witness to these three essential truths, we must say with Luther, “"Unless I am convinced by the testimonies of the Holy Scriptures or evident reason…I am bound by the Scriptures…and my conscience has been taken captive by the Word of God…I am neither able nor willing to [reject dependence on Scripture]…God help me.”

And may God help us to be true to our Lutheran heritage, not as a commitment to tradition, but as a commitment to the One Who has committed all for us, through the cross and the resurrection.

May we be true to our good confession as Lutherans and so, stay true to Christ. That’s the best way to remember Reformation Sunday, today and always. Amen

Can You Handle the Truth?

[This is the sermon prepared for this morning's 10:15 worship at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. Today, we celebrated one of my favorite days in the Church Year, Reformation Sunday. To learn more about Reformation Sunday, go here.]

John 8:31-36

I’ve never seen A Few Good Men, but like most people I’m familiar with one of its most famous scenes. Tom Cruise’s character yells with Marine bravado, “I want the truth!” And Jack Nicholson, on the stand, replies with even more Marine bravado, “You can’t handle the truth!”

Today’s gospel lesson asks us, “Can you handle the truth?”

The people with whom Jesus speaks in today’s lesson couldn’t.

Please turn to the lesson, John 8:31-36.

In verse 31, we read: “Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed in Him, ‘If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed.”

Truth number one, which seems to elude the people to whom Jesus is speaking, is that believing in Jesus is more than just reciting the Creed.

This is Reformation Sunday. We celebrate the simple act of a priest, monk, and Bible scholar, Martin Luther, on All Saints’ Eve (Hallowe'en), October 31, 1517, when, to the church door in Wittenberg, he nailed ninety-five theses for debate among clergy and scholars.

Luther challenged the prevailing teachings of the Church of his day, eventually unleashing a movement that pointed to the central teaching of the Bible that unrighteous, sinful human beings are made right with God not by engaging in good works, religious acts, or giving the most money to the church, but by the charity (or grace of God) through faith in Jesus Christ.

To be saved from the common human ills of sin, death, and futility, we must believe in God the Word, Who lived and died and rose among us and for us: Jesus Christ.

That’s good news!

But the truth is that believing in Jesus is more than the recitation of words or showing up for a church function.

Belief in Jesus is entrusting my whole life to Him, acceding to His total authority over my life, giving Him the first and the last word in all our decisions.

To believe in Jesus, Jesus says, is to “abide in His Word,” to live and draw our very being from Him.

Because it so decimates our pretenses of self-sufficiency, the good news of Jesus is also a tough truth.

And most people can’t handle it!

But Jesus isn’t done. Look at what He says in verse 32: “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

This verse is widely quoted and almost always misunderstood.

It’s chiseled into the marble on the front face of the Law School at Ohio State as if Jesus were saying, “If you know the facts, you’ll be free people.”

That is NOT what Jesus is talking about at all!

This only shows that most of the people who misapply what Jesus says here are as confused as the Roman governor, Pilate, was when he presided over Jesus’ illegal capital trial and asked Jesus, “What is truth?”

Please turn to John 14:6. You’ve heard this passage quoted many times, too. “Jesus said to [Thomas], ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’”

And look also to John 1:14, part of the prologue or introduction to the gospel of John. It calls Jesus the Word, God the Son, and tells us: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Truth #2: Jesus is the foundational Truth on which the entire universe is built.

The universe is not as it should be because it is out of sync with Jesus the Truth.

But Jesus says that as we stay connected with Him, daily repenting of our sins, praying in His Name, reading His Word, fellowshipping with His people, and living under His grace alone, we will know the truth, we will know Him, and He will set us free.

Jesus’ original hearers, fellow residents of Judea who had come to believe in Jesus, could not handle any talk of their needing freedom. In verse 33, they protest: “They answered Him, ‘We are Abraham’s descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can you say, ‘You will be made free?’”

Jesus may have been tempted to laugh out loud at this. The whole history of the descendants of Abraham--the Hebrews, Jews, Israelites, or Judeans--had been filled with their enslavement and subjugation under other peoples. In fact, except for a brief period between 140 and 63 BC, about seventy-seven years, God’s people had been slaves of other people for centuries!

The group to whom Jesus is speaking seem to forget about that 430 year stint of slavery in Egypt or the fact that even then, at that very moment, they lived under the dominion of the Roman Empire.

If we’re tempted to laugh at their denial, we might want to check that impulse.

All of us seem to be fully equipped with the capacity to not see the obvious truths about our lives that we don’t want to see. Whether the object of their addiction is alcohol, drugs, gambling, or pornography, a common first response when confronted by loved ones is to deny their slavery. “I’m not addicted,” they’ll say. “I can quit any time.”

We all tend to respond similarly when confronted with our faults. An old Jackson Browne song puts our attitudes well, “Don’t remind me of my failures/I had not forgotten them.”

We don’t want to hear about the truth about our slavery.

But what are we slaves to?

Jesus doesn’t mince words in expressing truth #3. Look at verse 34: “Jesus answered them, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you [in the Greek in which John originally wrote, Jesus is quoted as starting out here, “Amen, amen!” Amen, amen. It is so. It is so. That means you can bank on what He’s about to say.], whoever commits sin is a slave to sin.’”

This is the unpleasant truth the human race does not want to hear. Some months ago, the Columbus Dispatch carried the story of a woman long applauded for her work with a local charity but who, it was found, had stolen thousands of dollars from the charity. At first she took small amounts, but eventually she was taking huge chunks of cash. She was a slave to sin.

Lest we simply tsk-tsk about this woman, remember that Psalm 51:5 and the whole Bible tells us that we are born in sin. Sin is the condition of alienation from God and from other human beings, the enslavement to ourselves and our own desires that blocks out true, open, loving relationships with God and with others, that we’re talking about when we say in our confession together that “we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.”

From this condition of sin, we naturally commit sins. And, as we all know, the more we commit a sin, the easier it becomes to commit the same sin again: whether it’s gossiping, actively entertaining lustful thoughts about persons other than our wives or husbands, engaging in financial sleight of hand, or whatever our favorite violation of the Ten Commandments might be.

We do not, by nature, love God or love others. We are slaves to sin. And it’s from this slavery that Jesus came into the world to free us. 

Now look at what Jesus says next, in verses 35 of our gospel lesson: “And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever.”

Under the prevailing inheritance laws of first-century Judea, the son inherited all that his father left behind. The slaves had no property and no rights to the inheritance. There was nothing they could do about their circumstance. They would spend their entire lives as slaves.

Left to our own devices, sinners would have no hope of anything but eternal condemnation. Hard truth #4 isn’t specifically mentioned here, but if Jesus is speaking it to Jews who believed in Him, the first Christians, it’s true for you and me as well, and it’s truth that’s mentioned in Romans 3:23: “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

We are all slaves who can’t free ourselves, who deserve death, as Romans 6:23 reminds us: “the wages of sin is death.” Death is what we deserve for our sin, a hard truth to handle!

Thank God for the promise that Jesus makes in verse 36 of our lesson: “...if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.”

When we turn from sin and turn to Jesus, when we trust Him to take our sins on His shoulders, He crucifies our old sinful selves and sets us free from their power.

Martin Luther, as you know, said that on Judgment Day, God will look out over two seas of people, both groups composed entirely of sinners.

But one group will stand naked in their sins, having chosen sin over salvation by their refusal to repent for sin and believe in Jesus. By their refusal to believe in Jesus, they will have chosen condemnation, an earthly lifetime and an eternity spent in a chosen exile from the God Who made and loved them.

But, Luther pointed out, God will also look out over another group of sinners. Because of their faith in Jesus, it isn’t them God will see. They will be clothed in the forgiveness and new life Jesus gave to them and that they received by faith in Christ.

“The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This is the greatest truth of all, the truth that can set us free to be our better selves now and our best selves in eternity!

I recently read about the large number of emigres from Iran (Persia) who, in some German Lutheran congregations, are leaving the Muslim religion and coming to faith in Jesus Christ.

These Persians are making public profession of their faith in spite of the fact that in many of their ethnic enclaves, their fellow Persians enforce Muslim sharia law, which says that if Muslims become Christians, they must be killed.

Why would these converts risk their lives to abide in Jesus and be His disciples?

One convert to Christianity explained, “In this [Lutheran] congregation, I heard for the first time that God is a loving Father who desires a personal relationship with every human being. This was news to me, because Islam had taught me...[that] God [is] a distant deity...”

The fact that God wants to have a personal relationship with each of us and that this God took on human flesh in order to die for our sins and rise again in order to secure that relationship for now and all eternity for all who believe in Jesus Christ is the good news on which the Reformation was built.

It’s also the good news on which we can build our lives.

Those who build their lives on Christ will find that God is a mighty fortress, “a sword and shield victorious”!

That is a truth we can not only handle, but celebrate, today and forever!

Amen!