How the Son sets us free
Reformation Sunday| John 8:34-36; Romans 3:19-30| Pastor James Preus| Trinity Lutheran Church| October 25, 2026
34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. 35 The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. John 8:34-36
Martin Luther was fond of our Gospel lesson as He was of the entire book of John. He especially liked the word Free. In Greek the word for free is ἐλεύθερος (eleutheros), which sounds very much like Luther’s name. He would even sometimes sign his name, “Martinus Eleutherios,” to express the freedom he had in Christ Jesus. And so, this text is fitting to pair with our Epistle lesson from Romans 3, which articulates the chief doctrine of the Lutheran Church, that sinners are justified before God, not by their own strength, merits, or works, but are freely justified for Christ’s sake through faith when they believe that they are received into favor and that their sins are forgiven on account of Christ, who by His death made satisfaction for our sin. God credits this faith as righteousness in His sight (AC IV; Romans 3; 4). The worst form of slavery is slavery to sin. The greatest freedom you can have is to be justified before God. The Lutheran Reformation is all about how we are justified before God through faith and not through our works, in other words, the Lutheran Reformation is all about how Christ sets us free from slavery to sin.
The worst form of slavery is slavery to sin. Slavery is bad. Yet, it was a common institution throughout almost all of human history. People bought and sold other people and made them serve them. A slave does not have the freedom to do what he wants to do. He must obey his master, do what his master tells him to do. This is why Jesus says that the one who practices sin is a slave to sin. Our ignorant world tells us that sin is freedom to do what you want. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sin is to obey the passions of your flesh, to obey the pressures of this sinful world, to obey the enticements of the devil. The sinner may tell himself that he enjoys his sin. But that is not why he sins, not chiefly. He sins, because he’s a slave. He can’t help himself. Even if he wanted to quit, he can’t. He must obey. St. Paul expresses this pitiful condition in Romans 7, when he laments, “The good I want to do I do not do, but the evil I do not want to do, I keep on doing.”
Yet, even a human slave master has a responsibility to his slave! He must feed him, clothe him, give him a place to sleep, care for him when he’s sick, if not for the laws that may have governed slavery, then for his own benefit. It’s a waste of money to let your slave die. A farmer wouldn’t let his cattle starve or freeze to death. So even a heartless slave owner would be foolish to withhold these basic needs to his slaves. But sin feels no such responsibility to you. It will push you to obey its will and give you nothing in return, only shame, guilt, and finally death and hell. Slavery to sin drives the sinner to destroy his own relationships, to estrange himself from his parents or children, to divorce his spouse, to lose his job. The toil sin demands of you: lust, laziness, greed, envy, wrath, pride, drunkenness, self-indulgence, all these give but fleeting gratification. But they soon destroy you. Slavery to sin pushes the sinner to labor only for things that pass away, except for the shame and guilt in the heart. And finally, the wages of sin is death, that is, eternal damnation. There is no worse form of slavery than slavery to sin.
Yet, if the Son sets you free you are free indeed! To be free means to be righteous before God, that is, to be justified. If you are righteous, you are free of sin. It means that you are in a right relationship with God. Justified and righteous are not words we use often outside of church, and unfortunately, children and adults who do not regularly attend church or read their Bibles do not know what these words mean. But it is critical that you understand what these words mean. To be righteous before God and to be justified before God means the same thing. It means that God has declared you innocent of all sin and worthy to live forever in His kingdom. There is no greater freedom than to be justified before God, that is, for God to declare you righteous. To be justified means that you do not need to be ashamed or fear God’s wrath, but that you may be confident in His love, confident that you are His child, confident of everlasting life. That is true freedom. There is no other freedom that compares.
Yet, how does the Son set you free? Does He do this through works of the Law? The Law tells you what is right. Sin is breaking the Law (1 John 3:4). So, it seems logical that one becomes righteous before God by obeying the Law. Stop sinning. Do what is right. Then you are free. Then you break the bonds of slavery and head up on that railroad to freedom! But there is a problem. The Law does not break your chains! Rather, the Law only clasps on heavier and tighter bonds. St. Paul writes, “For by works of the Law, no human being will be justified in His sight, since through the Law comes knowledge of sin.” (Romans 3:20) The Law does not set you free. Rather, the Law reveals to you your slavery. And the more you focus on the Law and examine yourself according to the Law, the more you see your slavery, the greater your sins appear before your eyes. The Law is a thunderbolt which gives no comfort. It is a hammer that crushes the heart in pieces. The Law gives no comfort and no hope to the slave of sin.
The knowledge the Law gives you is important. Without it, you would not know your need for a Savior. If you are not aware that you are a slave to sin, why would you seek Christ to set you free? This is why the Jews were offended at Jesus. He promised them freedom from slavery. They took umbrage at the accusation that they were slaves. But Jesus did not mean slavery to men. He meant slavery to the impulses of sin. So, the preaching of the Law is important. But you must understand that you are not saved by obeying the Law. Those who think that they can become righteous before God through the Law either fall into despair, because the Law only accuses them, or they become delusional in their pride and self-righteously think that they are good enough to be saved. But the Law is understood rightly when it robs you of all pride, exposes you as a slave of sin, and threatens you with condemnation and hell.
Only then do you rejoice that the Son sets you free. The Son sets you free from that which you could not set yourself free. The Son sets you free entirely through His Work and not your own. You are set free from sin through faith in Jesus Christ, who by His death redeemed you from your sins and grants you His righteousness as a gift. St. Paul writes that we are justified by God’s grace as a gift. That means that God is the one who declares us righteous apart from our works. St. Paul writes that this justification is done through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. This means that Christ Jesus paid our debt. The price of our freedom was the payment of the debt of our sin. And Christ paid every cent, not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood and innocent suffering and death. The debt that stood against us and kept us in slavery, Jesus nailed to His cross, so that we may never be enslaved again.
St. Paul writes that this is through faith that we receive this justification. Faith means that we believe the promise. God promises forgiveness and salvation to us for Christ’s sake. The one who believes it receives it. This is why our Lutheran confessions state, “people are freely justified for Christ’s sake when they believe that they are received into favor and their sins are forgiven on account of Christ.” We are justified when we believe God’s promise to justify us. We are forgiven when we believe God’s promise to forgive us. God counts faith in His promises as righteousness in His sight.
This righteousness is so pure and so perfect, because it does not depend on our works at all, neither can our sins diminish it. Paul writes in Philippians 3, “that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (vss. 8b-9) And the Prophet Isaiah writes in chapter 61, “I will greatly rejoice in the LORD; my soul shall exult in my God, for He has clothed me in the garments of salvation; He has covered me with the robe of righteousness.” (vs. 10) God covers us in Jesus’ righteousness, so that we must not doubt that the righteousness we receive through faith is sufficient to save us.
Now, this does not mean that we can go on sinning, and that will not affect our salvation. Why would Christ set us free from slavery, just for us to go back and continue serving our former slave master? No, rather St. Paul writes that this faith in Christ upholds the Law. That is, faith confirms that the Law is good and true. Why? Because this faith confesses that Christ Jesus perfectly fulfilled the Law in our place (Galatians 4:4-5). Christ did not serve sin when He fulfilled the Law, but rather He pleased our heavenly Father as our representative. Our faith upholds the Law, because Jesus suffered and died for our sins against the Law. We confess that Jesus’ death was necessary to remove our debt against the Law. So, when we confess Jesus, we confess the truth of the Law. Finally, our faith in Christ causes us to hate sin and to love righteousness. Our faith bears good fruit. Before faith, none of our works could please God. But through faith in Christ, the Holy Spirit enables us to do good works, even as a good tree produces good fruit. And on account of our faith in Christ, our works please God, even though they remain imperfect.
So, this faith does not abolish the Law, but upholds it. Yet, this faith rejects the teaching that we are saved by our own works. Rather, we are justified, that is, set free from sin and the condemnation it brings, through faith alone. This is what it means to be Lutheran. Everything we believe and confess centers around this Gospel truth that we are justified by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone apart from our works. We hold this faith for three reasons. First, because Scripture clearly teaches that we are justified by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone apart from our works. That alone is how the Son sets us free from slavery to sin. Second, because only this faith honors Christ. To teach that we can be justified before God by our own works is to rob Christ of His honor. Jesus won for us justification at great cost, for which God has given Him the name which is above every name. To deny that He gives us this righteousness through faith alone is to say that His righteousness is not good enough. Finally, this faith alone gives us certainty of our salvation. If we needed to depend on our works, even a little bit, to be saved, we would never be sure we were saved. But when you despair of your own works and count them as rubbish, and instead set Christ Jesus before you as your righteousness, then you may have confidence that you are justified before God and are an heir of eternal life. Christ Jesus’ righteousness cannot fail you. As Jesus says, if the Son sets you free, you are free indeed!
Amen.