Sermon on Galatians 5:1, 13-26, for the 4th of July, "Three Kinds of Freedom"

 

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Happy Fourth of July! I want to preach this Independence Day on the meaning of freedom. But definitions always matter, as words are constantly redefined or changed, and you can’t take for granted that your words mean what someone else thinks, without clarification. You need common meaning to really communicate.

So, what is freedom? What freedom does St. Paul mean in Galatians 5, when He says: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery… For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” Freedom gets many definitions. Do we mean the same thing? Martin Luther describes three kinds of freedom. Spiritual freedom; political or civil freedom; and freedom of the flesh. Let’s consider these three freedoms and what they mean for our nation’s Independence and for our faith and life as Christians. Paul doesn’t want us to lose our freedom. We do well to listen how to keep it.

Luther focuses on our spiritual freedom in Galatians 5. It’s where true freedom begins and ends. Spiritual freedom from God’s wrath against our sin, freedom from the judgement, death, and hell that our sins deserve. Costly freedom purchased by Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. Ours by faith in Christ Jesus. Our salvation. This freedom sits in our heart and conscience. It knows God is merciful to us in Christ Jesus. It’s freedom from the slavery of fear, guilt, shame, and death, were it not for the grace and mercy of Christ Jesus. This spiritual freedom exceeds all others because it is eternal freedom, not just for this life. Christ said, “If the Son sets you free, you are free indeed!” That’s worth celebrating! It fills our thankfulness to God every Sunday, where we are renewed in His gifts through Word and Sacrament. It fills our thankfulness every day of our life!

How little we prize this freedom. Luther glories in it. I quote him here at length: For who can express what a great gift it is for someone to be able to declare for certain that God neither is nor ever will be wrathful but will forever be a gracious and merciful Father for the sake of Christ? It is surely a great and incomprehensible freedom to have this Supreme Majesty kindly disposed toward us, protecting and helping us, and finally even setting us free physically in such a way that our body, which is sown in perishability, in dishonor, and in weakness, is raised in imperishability, in honor, and in power (1 Cor. 15:42–43). Therefore the freedom by which we are free of the wrath of God forever is greater than heaven and earth and all creation. The words “freedom from the wrath of God, from the Law, sin, death, etc.,” are easy to say; but to feel the greatness of this freedom and to apply its results to oneself in a struggle, in the agony of conscience, and in practice—this is more difficult than anyone can say.

He goes on to say that our spirit must be trained to banish the fearful accusation of the law, the terrors of sin, death, and God’s wrath, and instead set our sights on the freedom of Christ, the forgiveness of sins, righteousness, life, and God’s eternal mercy. It’s truly hard to hold onto that freedom and live in the face of great struggles in life. It’s like fighting to go upstream in a river. Freedom is upstream. Bondage and death are downstream. But we stake our trust on God’s merciful promises in Christ Jesus. We hang on and we fight and struggle for that freedom, and it’s Christ who sets us free and pulls us upstream. The devil always wants to steal, kill, and destroy that peace and spiritual freedom in our hearts and conscience. He wants us eternally plagued by fear, guilt, shame, and death. Enslaved to sin and our selfish appetites. Headed in the easy drift downstream to slavery.  

This spiritual freedom, greatest of the three freedoms I mention today, is why we gather. Our reason for existence as a Christian congregation. Without this freedom, our soul is lost. What alternatives does anyone have to this joyful, peaceful knowledge in our hearts, that God is good, merciful, and loving, and forgives us our sins in Christ Jesus? Here are some possibilities: Live in anger and bitterness towards God? That’s soul-shriveling. Live blissfully ignorant or careless toward God, and gamble at death whether you guessed right or wrong for all eternity? Assume that no God exists, ignore His fingerprints all over the world, and say you’re the mere result of chance and no purpose? Nature has no plan or purpose but to pass on your genes before death? Some find that fulfilling and “freeing” but most find it despairing and hopeless, and it’s still a gamble with your soul. Decide that we know the rules better than God, and are more loving and compassionate? This is to make ourselves gods and assume we are wiser and more knowing than God. No, none of these alternatives are better than our spiritual freedom to know that God is merciful in Christ Jesus. It’s the greatest peace to face all life’s challenges with God’s love and Christ’s victory over my sin and death. Precious freedom to treasure and preserve! Never to be forgotten, bartered, or given away! Renew your joy in this freedom in Christ Jesus. It’s where all the rest starts and ends!

The second freedom is not really in focus in these readings, and that’s civil freedom. But that’s the freedom this 4^th of July celebrates. The uniqueness of the American experiment is found in these momentous words of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, liberty (i.e. freedom!!), and the pursuit of happiness.” What was so unique is that the Founding Fathers admitted that these rights come from God and not the government! That’s huge! Otherwise, government gives and takes away rights, acting as the highest authority. But here they rightly bowed the knee to God and declared human governments must honor the rights and freedoms that God gives every person! Men in power don’t naturally want to do that! So the Declaration and the Constitution together set a boundary against the power-hungry tendencies of human nature. Now, working out and reconciling that truth of God-given freedom into the American republic, ironing out all the inconsistencies, goes well beyond this sermon. But the essential thing is that on its birthday, they sewed that truth into the very fabric of our country! Liberty comes from God and government must respect it. That’s the powerful basis of our civil freedom.

Later, the Bill of Rights to the Constitution started to spell out some of those freedoms. The first amendment freedoms are freedom of religion, speech, press, petition, and assembly. These are first freedoms because government must respect them in its citizens. They’re the power of the people against government overreach into your conscience, your speech, your free access to information and criticism of the government. Sadly, all these freedoms are under attack today, and many think the 1^st Amendment might no longer be relevant or necessary! Nothing could be further from the truth!

At the same time, Christians must confess that civil freedoms are secondary to our spiritual freedom, our greatest treasure. While spiritual freedom cannot be stolen or taken away by any man, government, or even the devil, civil freedoms can be stolen, taken away, restricted, or denied. Indeed, through most of human history, believers only had the spiritual freedom of our conscience, and had few or no civil freedoms. So, it is troubling, not only in America, but in other “free” countries to see civil freedoms under attack. For example, pastors have been jailed for even the most compassionate preaching on the Bible’s teaching on homosexuality or other Biblical truths; bakers and florists have been viciously targeted for not using their artwork to celebrate things they find objectionable, doctors and nurses have been pressured to use their medical training to do procedures that go against the Hippocratic Oath or lose their jobs. All this while our media, entertainment culture, and education system are relentlessly pushing a total redefinition of sex and gender on people, labeling anyone who disagrees as hateful or bigoted, even if your ideas were entirely ordinary even 20 years ago, and have been standard for thousands of years of human history. Where is the freedom of thought, speech, and disagreement in all this? It all sounds like the future George Orwell feared when people were obsessed with “wrong-think” and demanded everyone hold one socially acceptable way of thinking. Sometimes the boiling anger and demand for uniformity of thought seems to come right out of the hated era of heresy hunting and witch trials and the Inquisitions of the past. It’s a new secular religion.  

All this flows into the third freedom we mentioned before. The freedom of the flesh. Paul wrote: For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. Freedom of the flesh is really no freedom at all. It’s degeneracy. It’s the surrender of freedom to our selfishness and appetites. It’s to flow downstream to the bad instead of heading upstream toward the good. It’s to define ourselves by me, myself, and I, and what I want. Paul lists examples. It can be sexual selfishness, financial selfishness or greed, it can be a selfishness of anger, jealousy, or worship of anything but God. Freedom of the flesh is no true freedom at all, because it yields completely to sin, and holds us in the gritty and unlovely darkness of slavery. True freedom, that Paul wants us to keep, requires self-control and love, to restrain our selfish appetites and look externally in love, compassion, and goodness to our neighbor. True freedom does not turn downward to slavery and wrongdoing, aspires upward to the freedom of goodness and life and love. True freedom is upstream and takes effort to keep it. It’s an upstream struggle against our flesh.

But we begin and end with spiritual freedom in Christ Jesus. We all have been enslaved in various ways to our sinful desires. We’ve all been swept downstream by our sins and passions. Enslaved in our emotions, our hearts, minds, and actions. But Christ sets us free by His death on the cross. He broke the slavery and the Son set us free. We are free indeed! Stand firm in that freedom! Don’t trade it for a yoke of legalism, a life of fear and shame, or the slavery of sin. Aspire upward to the freedom of walking in the good. Only Christ in you makes this possible. Only His spiritual freedom enables you to walk in newness of life, stepping free of the snares, traps, and dangers the devil and the world set all around you. Heading upstream against the tide of the world and our sinful flesh. It is truly possible to love all those who are trapped in the false freedom of the flesh, and caringly bring them to Christ who is all freedom. It doesn’t require judgmentalism, cruelty, or self-righteousness. But we abide in His Truth as our guide, His compassion as our example. His life in you is the only way we keep this precious spiritual freedom, freely given to us by faith in Jesus’ Name, Amen.