Sermon preached 25 October 2026 (Reformation Sunday, Essington)
Reading: John 8:31–36
Tr Pastor Lawrence McCatty
Introduction
Have you ever had difficulty working out whether what you have been told is the truth? How can you tell what is true and what isn’t? Those among us who have children will know this problem all too well.
And on TV, on the internet, in social media, we are bombarded with so much information and news which, instead of making it easier to know the truth, seems to make it much more difficult. We try to make sense of it all and end up dazed, confused and trapped.
As we celebrate the Reformation by which God set free His church and His Word, we will see in our Gospel text that Christ’s Word, His gospel, shines a light in the darkness to reveal the truth and that this truth sets us free.
The earliest surviving fragment of the New Testament was written around 125 AD and is known as Papyrus P52. This fragment is from John 18:31-38, in which John reports the trial of Jesus by Pilate which ends with this exchange:
37 Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” 38 Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”
What is truth?
This question raised by Pilate around 2000 years ago is still asked today. Some say that truth can only be found in Science “Trust the science!”, some say in Mathematics “2+2 equals 4, except when it doesn’t!”. Some say that there is no objective truth and the only truth that matters is what you feel in the moment.
Jesus is the light
And in our Gospel text today Jesus teaches the Jews and the Pharisees in the temple about the truth. A few verses earlier Jesus taught them that He is the light:
“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
But the Jews had walked in darkness for so long that when the light came into the world most did not recognise it. As John writes in chapter 1 of his Gospel:
9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him
The light of the world now addresses the Jews who had received faith in Him, those “who had believed him” as John reports.
Jesus teaches them:
“If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
The answer
Jesus here reveals the answer to the question Pilate will ask Him over a year later. “What is truth?”.
It is simply His Word. Truth is the Word of God and in the Word in human flesh sent from heaven and born of the virgin Mary. This is truth from God. So “abide in my word … and you will know the truth”
“… and the truth will set you free.”
But they do not understand
Jesus had come to set them free from the bondage of slavery to sin, He was their long-awaited Saviour, the Messiah, that the Scriptures they studied so diligently pointed to. But they did not understand nor see that they were slaves to sin, and to death.
Their faith in Jesus is a smouldering wick, it is in peril, and their pride in being earthly descendants of Abraham blinds them. They are offended by the suggestion that they may be slaves. We hear this in their reply to Jesus in verse 33:
“We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?”
They had forgotten, or chose to ignore, their history of slavery in Egypt, of slavery to the Assyrians, the Babylonians. They had forgotten how each time, through God’s grace He had brought the Israelites to repentance, to a reformation, and brought them out of their slavery.
But, more importantly, they were blind to their spiritual slavery to sin, that only the Son of God could free them from. They could not see that to be descendants of Abraham was to inherit the promise of righteousness through faith. Faith in the promised Redeemer, the Saviour who was now literally staring them in the face.
God’s promise to Abraham
Remember the promise that God had given to Abraham:
5 And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” 6 And he believed the LORD, and He counted it to him as righteousness.
Genesis 15:5–6
Abraham believed God’s promises and it was credited to him as righteousness. It was his faith that justified him before God.
Instead of trusting in God, the Jews had put themselves under the heavy burden of the yoke of man-made rules and ceremonies and rituals. They trusted that these would earn them credit with God and make them righteous before Him and avoid the punishment their sins deserved in this world and the next.
Slaves to sin
But Jesus calls them out. He tells them their unrighteousness remains as they are still sinners before God and therefore slaves:
34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.
And because they are slaves of the master of sin, Satan, they are only temporarily in God’s house of grace. Their weak faith is waning and in peril of dying out completely unless its object is the Son of God, who remains forever:
The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever.
For if they believe in Him, in the saving gospel that all of God’s Word points to, they will be set free to live in His house forever as His dear adopted brothers and sisters.
The Christian religion in Luther’s time
The Christian religion that Martin Luther found himself in when He entered the Augustinian Monastery at the age of 21, was not much different from that of the Jewish religion in Jesus’ time.
The way to please God was to unquestioningly obey many laws and rules and to carefully perform rituals and ceremonies dictated by the religious leaders, such as buying indulgences, the accumulation and worship of relics, and of pilgrimages.
Like the Jews in Jesus’ time of ministry, they put their trust in outward works and traditions rather than the Word of God.
Time and again Luther was driven to despair by looking to these man-made rules and rituals to give him the desperately needed assurance that he was saved, that Christ had died for him and risen from the dead to give him victory over death.
Freedom
The turning point for Luther, his road to Damascus moment, that eventually led to the Protestant Reformation, came while studying Paul’s letter to the Romans. There he unexpectedly discovered the liberating words of Romans 1:16-17:
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
Luther later said about this moment that by God’s grace he saw the gate to paradise opening up! The Holy Spirit had opened his heart and mind to the truth and the truth set him free!
He understood that rather than the gospel freeing believers, the church had made it into another yoke of man-made rules and performance of traditions, rituals and ceremonies. They had not heeded Paul’s warning in his letter to the Galatians:
For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
Galatians 5:1,5–6
5 For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.
The freedom Jesus offers does not come from us, just as it did not come from the Jews or their forefather Abraham. They could never keep the laws given through Moses perfectly as God demanded, let alone the numerous additional rules that they added. During his ministry Jesus called out the hypocrisy of the Pharisees who claimed to love God but failed to love and help the helpless. They could never be truly free.
Neither can we by our efforts grasp the freedom that can only be ours through Jesus Christ.
We were born spiritually dead in our sins and: “were by nature children of wrath”. Our natural instinct is to carry out “the desires of the body and the mind” (Ephesians 2:3,5).
This is our sinful nature. It is a terrible enemy; it would enslave us. Our sinful nature would keep us dead forever; it would send us to eternal punishment in hell.
We need freedom from our sinful nature and its deadly consequences. That’s the freedom Jesus gives us. Because:
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.
Romans 8:1–2
Christ has earned the freedom for us that we can never earn ourselves, He has purchased us with His blood. He has redeemed us so we belong to Him.
The truth has set us free from slavery to sin and death, so that we can become willing and obedient slaves to Christ.
17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart … 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.
Romans 6:17–18
And being slaves of Christ’s righteousness we are servants of all.
The Freedom of a Christian
Martin Luther explained this paradox of being freed by Christ, but at the same time His willing slaves and servants, in his booklet “The Freedom of a Christian”.
He wrote it to Pope Leo X, five years after the Holy Spirit had set him free by the truth of the gospel, in the hope that the Pope would experience the same freedom from the burden of doubt and despair that Christ had granted to Luther through His Spirit. In it he wrote:
“A Christian is the most free lord of all, and subject to none; A Christian is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to everyone.
Although these statements appear contradictory, yet, when they are found to agree together, they will work excellently for my purpose. They are both the statements of Paul himself, who says:
1 Corinthians 9:19
19 For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them.
Thus even Christ, though Lord of all things, was yet made of a woman; made under the law; at once free and a servant; at once in the form of God and in the form of a servant (Phil. 2:6)”
Just as Martin Luther wanted the world to know the freedom that the Holy Spirit had opened his heart to, so we, out of gratitude for the yoke of slavery to sin that has been taken from us, will want to share that freedom with the world as Christ’s slaves.
On this Reformation Sunday, it is appropriate to let Luther have the last word:
“A Christian is the most free lord of all, and subject to none; A Christian is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to everyone.”
Amen