Sunday, November 2nd 2025
All Saints’ Day (observed)
Text: 1 John 3:1-3
Sermon Audio
As we gather… We often ask children, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” A three-year-old is going to give a much different answer than a fifteen-year-old. Yes, some become racecar drivers, but less teenagers want to be racecar drivers than three-year-olds. That picture of what life will be like when we grow up becomes clearer as we age. In the Christian Church, we are growing up into salvation and eternal life. We grow into the image of the Son as we approach eternal life. How often the vocation of a young person mirrors that of their mom or dad! We seek to be like our Heavenly Father whose image we can see in Jesus Christ. On this All Saints’ Day, we celebrate those who have “grown up in Christ” being perfected in their deaths, awaiting the resurrection of the body.
Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Freedom. There are few things that we, as Americans, value more than our freedom. Countless lives have been lost in the history of this country to ensure freedom. Our constitution was written to protect our freedom and ensure it for future generations. Many battles, whether they are from the sword or the pen, have raged over freedom. One thing we know for certain about freedom is that it ain’t free. Everything has a price. Freedom has its rules and it only lasts as long as the freed people understand these truths and stand up against tyranny. Now, that is to protect earthly freedoms that will inevitably pass away. How much more does freedom from the tyranny of sin and satan cost? What does it mean to be set free by the Son?
So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” The truth will set you free. What truth? Truth is none other than Christ, the Word incarnate, in whose words we must abide to be His disciples and set free. To abide in His word is to live in it. The problem is, our natural status as sinner makes the very Word of God impossible to live in without help. Like the Jews from John’s Gospel today, we don’t want to admit that we need to be freed from anything.
It is interesting to note that Jesus is addressing the Jews that had believed in Him. A few verses after our reading we will see that these same Jews wanted to have Jesus killed. They knew who Jesus was, but they refused to believe that His word is the very truth that will free them. They didn’t think they needed freedom. They claimed that they were sons of Abraham and were never enslaved to anyone. They must have skipped a few books of the Old Testament, or at least forgotten about the time their ancestors spent in Egypt and Babylon. Maybe they knew exactly what Jesus was getting at and they refused to believe that they were sinners in need of freedom from sin. How could God’s chosen people be sinners? They did everything within their power to keep the law, even the laws that they invented to make them seem more righteous. They knew who Jesus was, but they would prefer to be secure in their own deeds. Only abiding in Jesus’ words can reveal this inbred sin as our captor. Only in Him can we find the truth that frees us from the bonds of sin.
This is one of the main issues that confronted Luther and the reformers. Rome knew who Jesus was, but they were heirs of the papacy. They had convinced themselves that the best of them could do enough good works to atone for their sins. They even could do enough works to share those merits with those Christians who weren’t as good at being good. To be extra sure, they would even provide assurance of forgiveness for the low low price of an indulgence. The truth of the Gospel of Christ took the back seat to their own self-righteousness. The truth needed to be brought to the forefront. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.”
No matter how good a person is, he falls short of the glory of God.All of the works that the Pharisees and Rome clung to and taught the people in their congregations were nothing but filthy rags. Lucky for us the truth doesn’t stop there; by the grace of God we were redeemed in Christ Jesus. Freedom was bought at the price of the blood of the Son of God. The price of your freedom was paid on the cross of Calvary. This freedom is a gift of grace that is given to you by faith. You, dear Christian, have had your bonds shattered so you know longer are enslaved to sin, but are free to live in Christ. This freedom is found in Christ and revealed to us in Scripture, given to us as the gift of grace through His redeeming sacrifice, which we receive through faith. This is the truth that the Reformation stands on. This is the truth that we still stand on and defend against the tyranny of sin and the devil.
The Reformation stood firm in this. They worked to reform the church from errors and still retain good traditions that pointed faithful Christians to Christ. In fact, the Lutheran services looked identical to Rome, but the teachings were drastically different. The Reformation set the world on fire with this truth. It didn’t take long for some to overcorrect the errors of the papacy. Soon the reformers had to stand their ground from those who thought that Luther didn’t go far enough. Some started by forcibly removing artwork and crucifixes from the churches as too “catholic.” Luther stood against these people by defending these visuals as good traditions of faithful men that have been around from the earliest times of Christianity to help people engage all of their senses in the truth of Scripture. Still other people wanted to reform the church further by disregarding the Sacraments as too “catholic.” The church of the Reformation can do nothing but stand on Christ’s truth. We must affirm that the only way to receive forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation is the means by which God gives for us to do this; namely through His Words and through His Sacraments. To deny the gifts of God through His Sacraments is to deny His Word. The reformers had to stand on two fronts in this battle over the Truth of Scripture. Thanks to this two front assault, we now have a confession of faith that is tested through Scripture and handed down from the apostles, through the early church, the reformation era, and now to us. The truth is narrow and it is easy for sinners to want to fall off the edge on either side.
As heirs of the Reformation we must stand on what it truly means to be freed in Christ. We abide in His Word of truth as His disciples. We protect our freedom in Christ. When our Baptist friends speak of the age of accountability and baptism as a work of man, we stand in the truth that Holy Baptism is God’s work for forgiving us and making us heirs through Christ at any age. When our Roman Catholic friends talk about going to confession and being given works to do so their sins can be absolved, we cherish that we can go to private confession and absolution and be assured by the pastor of Christ’s satisfaction for our sins through His atoning death, without any strings attached. When our Presbyterian friends talk about the Lord’s Supper as a symbol of God’s body and blood, we stand on Christ’s words that it IS His body and blood for the forgiveness of sins and life in Him.
The battles of the Reformation are still our battles today and we must take our stands. We defend our freedom to live in Christ through His church. In the Divine Service we are being sustained through Christ’s truth and in His Sacraments. We refuse to let the errors of church bodies who have watered down God’s truth infiltrate us. This is one of the reasons we practice closed communion. We love our neighbor and truly believe that it is the body and blood of Christ and want no harm to come of those who don’t believe this truth. We also don’t want to solidify them in their misunderstanding by letting them come to the altar. This would affirm to them that their incorrect doctrine is the same as the whole truth and assurance that God gives us in His Word about His Sacrament. We know that the teaching of pure doctrine is one of the ways that God makes His disciples. We love them and share Christ’s truth in hopes of coming together in unity of His doctrine. We don’t waver from His truth. We cling to the doctrine of God over the doctrine of man. We embody this truth and witness to others so that we can be united because of it, not despite it. To be freed in Christ is to be freed to walk in His ways, no matter the cost, taking up our cross and following His truth.
Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” To be freed by the Son does not mean that you can do whatever your flesh wants to do. To continue in sin is to continue to be a slave to it. We can’t make room for sin in our lives and still be called heirs in Christ. This is the doctrine of the world, the devil, and our sinful nature. This doctrine has infiltrated many evangelical churches in this world. We must not give heed to our Methodist or ELCA friends who would tell us that freedom means that we are free to change the Biblical definition of sin, so that we can do whatever we want and still be free to live in the Son. To be free in the Son is to be freed to actually want to do the will of God. God hates sin. To be confessionally Lutheran is to stand in this balance of being a sinner and a saint. We are by nature sinful and unclean yet by the grace of God we have received His grace through Christ and given faith through the Holy Spirit who was bestowed on you in your baptism.
This narrow way is the way we are to walk. We know that we cannot by our own reason or strength believe in Christ Jesus or come to Him, but it is purely a gift of God that He has called us out of the darkness into His marvelous light. You have been freed to realize that it is not your deeds that free you, self-righteous works enslave you just as much as unrepentant sin. We refuse to fall into either pit. You are freed by the Christ who did all the deeds needed in His life and made satisfaction for your sins on the cross. In Christ, you can stand against the tyranny of sin and Satan. You now do the works of God because you are freed by the Son to do them through His Spirit. Not for your good, but so that the truth of God can be made manifest through you to those around you. This is why we are joyfully Lutheran. We have been freed by His truth, and we will accept no other. Go forth as the church of the reformation, which simply means the church of the free gift of grace through Christ received by faith as revealed in Holy Scripture. You who the Son has set free can do no other. “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” Thanks be to God!