FREEDOM!

John 8:31-36

Saturday, July 4, 2009 we celebrated the 233rd birthday of the United States of America. Two hundred and thirty-three years ago, a group of men signed a document declaring their independence from the tyranny of England. For the next several years, scrappy colonists and well-trained soldiers would fight for that independence. The fighting was hard, the conditions for the colonists sometimes at their harshest, but in the end, England surrendered and the United States of America declared itself a free country.

That freedom came at a price. An estimated 25,000 Americans died in active military service, while as many as another 25,000 were seriously wounded or disabled. As a youngling country with a population of about 2.5 million, this came to about 2 percent of the population who died, were wounded or became disabled. Yet, to this new, free, independent country, it was considered worth the cost.

The idea of paying a price for freedom isn’t a new idea. Whenever there have been slaves, there has always been a cost for their freedom. For the freedom of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, it cost the Egyptians their livestock, their crops, their health and eventually their firstborn. For the freedom of the black slaves in the southern United States, it cost the division of a nation, millions of lives and one president.

In our passage today, Jesus refers to a different kind of freedom, one that He considered worth the cost. He tells his new disciples that there is a different kind of slavery, a slavery that doesn’t shackle a person with physical chains, a slavery that doesn’t bind the body, a slavery that doesn’t leave physical wounds. He speaks of a slavery that shackles the mind, binds the spirit and wounds the heart. It is a slavery that affects all of humanity, not a select group of people. It is a slavery that we are all born into. No one is exempt from it, not you, not me. The slavery to which Jesus refers is the slavery of the human race to sin.

Just what is sin? Well, that’s a touchy subject in today’s day and age of anything goes. Basically, sin is anything we do, whether knowingly or unknowingly, that violates God’s will and separates us from God. Whether we like it or not, we are sinful people. We like having our own way and it doesn’t generally match up with what God wants for us. We turn our backs on the wonderful life that God has for us and dig ourselves deeper into the slavery of sin. Have you been there? Are you there? Have you ever thought, “There’s got to be more to life than this?”

Well, have I got good news for you. There is more to life than our slavery to sin. There is more to life than being stuck in the pit of despair, tied to a rack, having the life sucked out of us. Yeah, yeah, I meant that “Princess Bride” reference. Think about it, though. For those who know Jesus, isn’t that a good image of our life without Him? Just waiting around for our lives to be sucked out of us, without hope of rescue.

Jesus tells us in this passage that though we are in slavery, we can be free. Truly free to enjoy a life with peace, with joy, a life that is as God intended it. Yet, true freedom doesn’t end with this life. It extends to the next. Too many people believe that their lives end with their death. I’m here to tell you that that’s not true. Death is merely a stopping point along our eternal journey, and what we have done prior to that is what determines our destination after death.

So, what is true freedom? Quite simply put, it is the freedom from the bondage of sin. Jesus states in verse 34 of our passage, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave of sin.” He doesn’t say, “Everyone who isn’t a Jew is a slave to sin.” He doesn’t say, “Everyone who doesn’t have a certain skin color is a slave to sin.” He doesn’t say, “Everyone who isn’t a political conservative is a slave to sin.” He says that everyone, without qualification, is a slave to sin. This makes our situation pretty hopeless.

Yet, Jesus gives us hope. He goes on to say, “So if the Son sets you free, you are truly free.” (v. 36) We don’t have to be stuck in our pit. We can be pulled free of it. Hundreds of years before Jesus, King David of Israel knew this truth. In Psalm 40:2, David tells us about God: “He lifted me out of the pit of despair,/out of the mud and the mire./He set my feet on solid ground/and steadied me as I walked along.”

Let me point out something here. Freedom does not equal independence. Independence, while it is similar to freedom, implies that it stands alone, that no one had to make us independent. We did it ourselves. Out of curiosity, I looked up the word independence in my exhaustive concordance. Care to guess how many times the word independence appears in the Bible? In the NLT, it occurs just once, referring to Israel’s abandonment of God. Not once is it used for the word freedom.

Freedom causes us to be dependent on someone or something else to set us free. Being set free implies that someone had to pay a price for our freedom. Whether it’s the slave whose freedom was purchased with money or the addict whose freedom was purchased with hours put in by a loving friend, freedom costs someone other than ourselves something. Our freedom costs someone else something.

The same is true of our freedom from sin. Jesus tells us that if we know the truth, then the truth will set us free. Later on in John’s gospel, Jesus tells his disciples, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” (Jn 14:6) So, if Jesus tells us that the truth will set us free, then tells us that He is the truth, it doesn’t take much to conclude that Jesus is the one who sets us free from the bondage of sin.

But at what cost? What price did Jesus pay so that we could be free from the bondage of sin? The apostle Paul tells us that “[H]e …died a criminal’s death on a cross.” (Phil. 2:8) What does that mean, exactly?

I’ll spare you the gory details, because they are very gory. Crucifixion, death on a cross, was the most excruciating, horrific method of execution. It was used with the most common criminals or used to disgrace those being executed. It was painful – the one being executed was usually scourged before being forced to carry the crossbeam of their cross to the place of execution. It could take hours or days for the one being executed to die, and often the condemned’s legs were broken to hasten death. It was also humiliating. The condemned was usually stripped naked, forcing them to the degradation hurled on them by passers-by. In other words, think of the worst, most painful way for you to die and multiply it by ten. This is what Jesus endured on the cross.

By now you’re wondering why someone would go through such an agonizing, humiliating death. Jesus put it very simply in the most famous verse in the Bible. Speaking to the Sanhedrin member Nicodemus, “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” (Jn 3:16) Love motivated God to become human in order to be a perfect sacrifice for our sins. In the Old Testament, the people were to offer for sacrifice the most perfect animal they could afford, from a spotless bull to two doves or pigeons, as an atonement for their sins. The priest then sacrificed the animal and placed it to be burned on the altar in the temple. Yet God knew that the system of animal sacrifice would be manipulated and violated, so He provided a permanent solution: Jesus.

You see, God knew us humans so well. He knew that we could never fully enjoy the intimacy we once had with Him through the animal sacrifices. He knew that for us to be able to communicate with Him, to enjoy a relationship with Him without hindrance required our full repentance. He knew in our imperfect state we were incapable of repenting fully. Christian author C.S. Lewis puts it this way in the classic Mere Christianity: “[Repentance] means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs a good man to repent. And here comes the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person – and he would not need it.” Lewis concludes that the only way humanity could repent was if God became man and did it for us. And that is exactly what He did.
Maybe you’re still asking yourself why. Why would the God of the universe want anything to do with a flawed race like humanity? That answer is actually very simple and is found in Genesis 1:26, 27: “Then God said, ‘Let us make human beings in our image, to be like ourselves. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.’ So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”
God loves each and every one of His creations. Consider the words of Jesus in Matthew 10:29: “What is the price of two sparrows—one copper coin? But not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it.” When we were created, we were perfect, just like God is perfect. But we messed up. We listened to lies that God was holding out on us and tried to become God ourselves. I’m telling you, that didn’t work out so well. In trying to become God ourselves, we separated ourselves from God and from the relationship we once had with Him.
God knew that drastic measures were needed to bring His fallen creations back to Him. Only a powerful, amazing, incomprehensible, crazy love would do something as drastic as giving up One’s only Child to save the creation. Yet Jesus was willing to count the cost, determining that each and every one of us was worth it, because He loved us.

Because He loved us, Jesus considered our freedom from sin was worth His death on the cross. Freedom from the bondage of sin is available to each and every person on earth. It doesn’t matter where you’ve been or what you’ve done. All that matters is that you want to be free.
So how do you get free? This is actually very simple. The apostle Paul tells us in Romans 10:9, 10: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved.” The apostle Peter in his very first sermon told the crowd before him, “Each of you must repent of your sins, turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ to show that you have received forgiveness for your sins.” (Acts 2:38)[i]

Here’s the deal: if you believe in your heart that Jesus died to free you from sin and that He rose again, tell somebody. Acknowledge that Jesus is Lord of your life. Have someone pray with you. Then, as Peter told the crowd in Jerusalem on Pentecost, repent. All this really means is turning your back on sin and turning to God. I’ve heard it described as doing a 180, as if you’re headed south and you turn around and go north. Repenting is not an easy task. C.S. Lewis describes it this way: “It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing yourself, undergoing a kind of death.” But repenting is not something you have to do on your own. God will be with you every step of the way.
You can be free from the bondage to sin right here, right now. You don’t have to do anything special. Just tell Jesus, “Jesus, I screwed up. I’m in bondage. But I believe You died to set me free. Be my Savior. Be my Lord. Set me free.” Your prayer to Him doesn’t have to be fancy. It doesn’t have to be out loud. It doesn’t even have to be done right here, right now. But once you’ve prayed it, tell somebody who already knows His freedom. They can walk alongside you as you start this incredible new journey.

If you asked Jesus to set you free just now, tell me. I want to pray with you and for you. If you asked Jesus to set you free just now, fabulous! Welcome to your freedom and your new life.

[i] Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright ©1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois, 60189. All rights reserved.