The Most Important Freedom

The message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday morning, July 4, 2021.  The Bible verses used are John 8:31-36.

            It’s the Fourth of July.  Independence Day!  A day to celebrate our freedom!

            As Americans, we tend to value our freedom.  And that’s a good thing, of course.  People should be free.  God wants us to be free.  That’s why God created us the way He did, with the ability to think for ourselves and to make choices about how to live our lives.  God wants us to live our lives with freedom.

            But as Christians, we need to be careful about that freedom and how we exercise it.  Because society has a very different view of freedom than we should have as Christian.  Society often claims that “freedom” means “I can do whatever I want to.”  And in fact, society often takes that further, saying that freedom means “I can do whatever I want to with no consequences.”  And these days, we see people taking it further still, saying that freedom means “I can do whatever I want regardless of the law and regardless of how many people might be hurt.”  That’s not freedom.  That’s anarchy.  And you cannot find a society that fell into anarchy and retained its freedom.

            For a Christian, freedom does not mean “I can do whatever I want to.”  For a Christian, freedom means “I can do whatever God wants me to do.”  Freedom means living a life free from slavery to sin.  

            In our Bible reading for today, Jesus said, “The truth shall set you free.”  The truth, like freedom, has become kind of a floating concept these days.  Society tells us that there is no such thing as “the truth”.  We all have our truth.  I have my truth, and you have your truth.  You have no right to tell me my truth is not true, because it’s my truth.  Even if “my truth” has no basis in reality, you still have to accept it and respect it, because it’s “my truth”.

            That’s not a Biblical concept.  Jesus believed there is “the truth”.  In fact, Jesus said he is the truth.  That’s why the truth sets us free--because Jesus is the truth, and it’s Jesus who sets us free.

            “The truth shall set you free” is quoted so much it has almost become a cliché.  It’s a true statement, of course.  But to get the full meaning of what Jesus is saying, we need to look at the full quote.  Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.  Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

            So, the truth will only set us free if we know the truth.  We know the truth by being Jesus’ disciples.  And we can only be Jesus’ disciples if we hold to Jesus’ teaching.  So, if we want to truly be set free, we need to hold to the teaching of Jesus.

            Jesus made that point a second time in this reading.  He said, “Everyone who sins is a slave to sin.”  The only way we can avoid being slaves to sin is to be set free from our slavery to sin by Jesus.  We are set free from that slavery by holding to the teaching of Jesus, by living our lives the way Jesus told us to.

            What are those teachings?  Some would reduce it to a single word:  “love”.  The teaching of Jesus is love.  Therefore, if we always act with love, we will hold to Jesus’ teaching, we will be Jesus’ disciples, and we will be set free from the slavery of sin.

            There’s truth in that of course.  Jesus did tell us to love.  Love the Lord our God.  Love our neighbors as ourselves.  Love our enemies.  It’s absolutely true that love is an important part of the teaching of Jesus.

            The trouble is that, like truth, love has also become a floating concept these days.  We’re told that, if we cite the Bible and say that certain behaviors are wrong, we’re being too judgmental and not showing love.  We’re told that, if we don’t accept behaviors that violate God’s laws, as laid out in the Bible, then we’re using the Bible as a weapon, and not showing love.  And in fact, we’re told that it’s not enough to accept those behaviors, we need to applaud them.  And again, if we don’t, we’re showing hate, and not love.

            That is not what Jesus said.  You cannot find a place in the Bible where Jesus embraced an “anything goes” philosophy.  Jesus did not say “anything you want to do is okay.”  Yes, Jesus showed love to people who had all kinds of lifestyles.  But Jesus did not tell them, “Do anything you want.”  Jesus did not tell them, “Just keep doing what you’re doing.”  Jesus would not have needed to come to earth, Jesus would not have had to die to save us from the consequences of our sins, if anything we wanted to do was okay.  That was not Jesus’ message.  Jesus’ message was, “Go and sin no more.”  Jesus said he had come to call sinners to repentance.  Jesus’ message was for us to repent of our sins, and follow Him.

            We do not do anyone a favor by telling them it’s right to do things that are against God’s laws.  Yes, we get forgiveness of our sins from faith in Jesus, but Jesus himself said he did not come to abolish God’s laws.  Instead, he said he came to fulfill them.  In fact, Jesus said that not one letter, not the slightest stroke of a pen, would disappear from the law until all the things written in that law came to pass.

            But, in thinking about that, there’s another of Jesus’ teachings we need to remember.  Jesus told us that, before we start telling someone else about the speck in their eye, we need to take the log out of our own eye.  In other words, before we start telling someone else about their sins, we’d better make sure our own life is in order.  We’d better repent of our own sins, and ask God for forgiveness, before we tell other people they need to do that.  We’d better go and sin no more ourselves, before we start saying that to anyone else.

            Now, most of us have heard that teaching before.  And we know the truth of it.  But--it’s so much easier to see other people’s sins that it is to see our own, isn’t it?  It’s so easy to see what other people are doing wrong than it is to see what we do wrong.  It’s so easy to hold others to a strict standard of accountability, while at the same time making excuses for all the mistakes we make, all the sins we commit, all the times we fail to do what God wants us to do.

            And again, I’m as guilty of this as anyone.  I am not pointing a finger at you.  Or, if I am, I have all the other fingers pointing back at me.  

            It’s not easy to see ourselves as we truly are.  Our pride, our arrogance, our ego, our self-centeredness, those things all get in the way.  In other words, our own sinful nature gets in the way.  Our sinful nature tries to make us focus our attention on other people’s sins, while making excuses for us to ignore our own sins.

            This is not something we can do by ourselves.  Now, certainly, we need to do our part.  But we also have to allow the Lord to do the Lord’s part.  The last line of our reading for today says, “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”  

            The truth sets us free.  The Son sets us free.  So the Son--Jesus--is the truth.  We know that truth when we follow Jesus, when we do the things Jesus said to do.

            So, I invite each of us--most definitely including me--to look at our lives and how we live them.  Are we truly following Jesus?  Are we loving our neighbors as ourselves?  Are we loving our enemies?  Are we praying for those who persecute us?  Are we forgiving those who have sinned against us?  Are we repenting of our sins?  Are we loving the Lord our God with all of our heart and soul and mind and strength?  Are we putting our trust in God, regardless of the circumstances?  Are we staying faithful to God, not because we want God to do something for us in return, but because staying faithful to God is the right thing to do?

            We could go on and on with questions like that.  And I don’t mean them to sound accusatory.  I am not trying to imply that anyone here is not doing those things.  Each of us needs to answer those questions for ourselves.  I need to answer them for myself.  

            I encourage you to take some time with those questions.  And I need to take some time with them, too.  Let’s think about them.  Let’s pray about them.  Because those questions are not easy.  And again, it can be very hard for us to see ourselves as we truly are.  We need the Lord’s help to do that.  But asking these questions will do us no good if we don’t do everything we can to answer them honestly.

            And if we answer them honestly, and we’re not satisfied with our answers, we need to do something about that.  It can be easy to make excuses about that, too.  It can be easy to convince ourselves that, even if we have faults, even if we are sinners, we’re basically doing okay, and we don’t need to really change anything.  I know how easy it is to convince ourselves of that, because I’ve done it many times.  And of course, if we do convince that we don’t need to change, then we won’t change.  We’ll continue living in our sins.

            Jesus wants to set us free from our sins.  And He will, if we follow his teachings.  So let’s ask Jesus to help us look at ourselves in the light of His truth.  Let’s ask Jesus help us truly follow Him, and live lives that show we follow Him.

            It’s fine for us to celebrate our freedom as Americans.  But as Christians, it’s even more important that we celebrate our freedom from sin.  Through faith in Jesus, we can celebrate that most important freedom, not just on the fourth of July, but on every day of the year.