Our faith is precisely where Paul puts it, namely, in the blood of Christ.
On Reformation Day, we remember what we believe, which is where we ultimately take our stand. We also remember previous confessions of faith. In April of 1521, Martin Luther was summoned before the Holy Roman Emperor at the Imperial Diet of Worms. The Emperor told him to recant, to stop proclaiming that Christ alone saves, by faith alone, to stop proclaiming that a man is justified by faith alone apart from works of the law, as Paul says in Romans 3:28.
How did Luther respond when the Emperor told him to cease and desist and recant? Luther looked right at him, and he said, “No way, Jose.” The Emperor was also the King of Spain and his name was Carlos, not Jose. But “No way, Carlos,” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Even though Luther was declared an outlaw for this refusal, which meant that he could be legally murdered, still the new flood of the gospel continued to flow. By 1530, about half of the Holy Roman Empire–half of Germany–was Evangelical. This is what Lutherans were originally called, from the Greek New Testament word euangelion, meaning gospel or good news.
So, another imperial diet was called at Augsburg in 1530. There, the Chancellor of Saxony, Christian Beyer, loudly read what would be called the Augsburg Confession. It contained the very teaching that Luther had been ordered to recant nine years earlier. As he handed over this confession of faith to the same Emperor, Beyer said, “This is a confession that will even prevail against the gates of hell.”
It’s proper that these great confessions took place before emperors and kings because the gospel is all about freedom, which is a public matter because the whole world is seeking freedom. And no one needs to hear freedom being asserted against him as an emperor does.
But this confession of freedom takes place in the midst of an even stronger ruler who rules over us absolutely: sin itself. Sin is an evil lord, and it rules over each and every one of us far more completely than any emperor, king, or tyrant.
The problem is that no one wants to admit to being a slave to sin.
Sin is not a power outside of us that we might rebel against it; that we might throw off its tyranny like George Washington bravely crossing the Delaware. No, as Christ tells us in another place in the Gospels, sin does not come at us from outside of us; sin comes from inside of us, from our own hearts. Whatever the deepest part of a human being is: the soul, the heart, the cockles of the heart, the psyche, the personality, the mind, the guts, sin is deeply seated in even our deepest parts.
But there is something outside of us that can free us, or rather someone. There is only one who can set you free. Who is that? The Son. Christ says, “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” The eternal Son of God, “Eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, True God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father…” This divine Son took on flesh for us and for our sake and bore our sins on the cross, that we be free from them.
The problem is that no one wants to admit to being a slave to sin. We get a comical illustration of this from some of our Jewish friends who speak with Christ in the eighth chapter of John. And these men are even Christ’s own disciples, John tells us. Christ announces that his word can make them free. They correctly understand that this implies that they are not free, but they mistakenly think that Christ is talking about some sort of political freedom. So they say: “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone.” Not only, as we find out, is Christ talking about slavery to sin and not slavery to men, but we see what slavery to sin does. It leads to denial, to the denial of reality, to absurdity.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with being Jewish. There’s much good with being Jewish. Among other things, the Jews have special blessings from God. Mary is Jewish. Jesus is Jewish. The problem with these particular Jews is not that they’re Jewish, not that they’re not Gentile Christians. The problem with these Jews is that they’re not very good at being Jewish.
The descendants of Abraham have never been slaves? Have these Jews ever heard of Moses? You know, Moses who led the Jews out of slavery in Egypt? The event that the Jews celebrate every year on Passover. Have these Jews forgotten Passover?
This would be like an American at the end of November saying, “We Americans have never eaten turkey.” The statement is absurd, but Jew and Gentile alike, we will tell some whopping lies in order to deny our slavery to sin.
But Christ continues by telling the truth. “Jesus answered them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin’” (John 8:34). This is a shocking statement. Everyone agrees that everyone has sinned, but slavery to sin? Bondage to sin? That seems to be too much.
And isn’t this why God gives us his commandments, why God gave his law in the first place? So that we don’t have to be slaves to sin? So that we can look to the commandments and get back on track when we fall?
Surprisingly, the Apostle Paul says the exact opposite in Romans 3. He tells us that God gave the commandments, he gave the law, “so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For no flesh will be justified in God’s sight by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.”
God’s law is not given to free you from sin; it is given to take away our excuses, to shut our mouths, and to hold us accountable to God. The law is given not to get rid of sin but to show us our sin and our bondage to sin. The law says, “no excuses” and “no way out.” Paul tells us in Romans 6 that the wages of sin is death. Death seems to be pretty universal; we seem to be in bondage to it. Death is not simply a matter of a bad deed or bad choices. You can’t choose to never die; that is not reality.
But there is good news in reality, because the reality is that God chose Abraham and his descendants by giving him promises. And God sent Moses to free Abraham’s descendants from slavery in Egypt. And now, God has sent his own divine Jewish Son to set people free from sin.
Freedom first for the Jews, and then the nations (Rom. 1:16).
But Christ’s advent on earth was not glorious. He did not arrive in full battle dress to free his people from the Romans or to set us free from any worldly type of slavery or tyranny. Instead, Christ came to free us from our slavery to sin. For him this did not mean glory but suffering and death.
The blood of Christ was shed because of our bondage to sin; because we did not want to be totally dependent on the Son; because we would rather have our righteousness as glorious sons and daughters of Abraham, or George Washington, or Gustavus Adolphus. Because we would rather have our righteousness through deeds prescribed by the law, as Paul says in Romans 3. We want to be respected for what we have accomplished and for what we have done.
We sinners want to be respected for our deeds, even by God Almighty himself.
But, surprisingly, Paul tells us that God does not respect our deeds. He sees them all in the context of our sin, of not trusting his word. He sees our works coming out of bondage and not freedom. God sees all this. He is the only one who does not deny reality. And knowing all of our sin, he decided to send his Son to set us free.
How does the Son set us free? What is this word from the Son that makes us free and keeps us free when we continue in it? When we trust it? Well, the word that frees is precisely what Paul tells us in Romans: it is the blood of Christ. Christ’s blood is the word, the message that almighty God gives to us to set us free. As Romans 3:23-25 says, “since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God presented as a mercy seat by faith in his blood.”
Christ’s blood cries out to us, and instead of testifying against us, it cries out: “forgiveness, mercy.”
His blood reveals to us our bondage to sin, but it does much more than that. Christ’s blood tells us that Christ has stolen away our sin on the cross; he has borne the sin of the world on the cross, where it shed his blood and took his life. Therefore, this sin is no longer ours, and we can no longer use our sins to destroy ourselves and those around us because now they belong to Christ alone.
And this very same blood is poured out to us for the forgiveness of our sins. We murdered Christ, but his blood does not cry out to God against us like Able’s blood cried out and accused Cain. No, Christ’s blood cries out to us, and instead of testifying against us, it cries out: “forgiveness, mercy.”
Our faith is not in a religious theory. It’s not in a religious ceremony. It’s certainly not in merely human priests, bishops, or any church. No, our faith is precisely where Paul puts it, namely, in the blood of Christ. True God and true man, who truly died, who truly shed his blood, and who truly says to us, “This is the New Testament in my blood, shed for you, for the forgiveness of sins.”
Therefore, you are now no longer, as Paul says, under the law. You are no longer the slave. You have become a son or daughter of almighty God. You have a permanent, eternal place in his household with the Son.
