On Christian Liberty
We recognize our historical independence as a nation this weekend, celebrating a kind of freedom that is long and hard fought for in this world. At the same time this presents an opportunity to tell the story of a different kind of revolution, a far grander one, that wins for us an entirely different and still more profound and powerful liberty. It is the revolution of God’s campaign to end the rebellion against his creation on the part of his own creatures.
This revolution was wrought not by a war between nations, but a battle between God and man. It began with the incarnation of his Son, Jesus Christ, and culminated in his crucifixion and resurrection. This revolutionary event turned everything upside down for us. For this godly war against us turns out actually to be for us. The one who apparently was defeated actually won. Those who thought they had triumphed in fact sealed their own doom. Those who thought they were free were put in chains, while the bonds of the prisoners were loosed. They eyes of those who thought they could see were darkened, and the blind were made to see. This is how God has chosen to “overcome the world,” to become our sin, to kill our death, and lay waste once and for all to the devil and his hell, so that washed clean of sin, death, hell, and the world in the blood of the Lamb Jesus Christ, we can rejoice in the one who came “to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.” (Isaiah 42:7)
The following is a brief selection from a treatise Luther wrote on the nature of this freedom for which Christ has set us free.
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death” (Phil. ii. 5-8).
“Paul’s meaning is this: Christ, when He was full of the form of God and abounded in all good things, so that He had no need of works or sufferings to be just and saved–for all these things He had from the very beginning–yet was not puffed up with these things, and did not raise Himself above us and arrogate to Himself power over us, though He might lawfully have done so, but, on the contrary, so acted in labouring, working, suffering, and dying, as to be like the rest of men, and no otherwise than a man in fashion and in conduct, as if He were in want of all things and had nothing of the form of God; and yet all this He did for our sakes, that He might serve us, and that all the works He should do under that form of a servant might become ours.
Thus a Christian, like Christ his Head, being full and in abundance through his faith, ought to be content with this form of God, obtained by faith; except that, as I have said, he ought to increase this faith till it be perfected. For this faith is his life, justification, and salvation, preserving his person itself and making it pleasing to God, and bestowing on him all that Christ has, as I have said above, and as Paul affirms: “The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God” (Gal. ii. 20). Though he is thus free from all works, yet he ought to empty himself of this liberty, take on him the form of a servant, be made in the likeness of men, be found in fashion as a man, serve, help, and in every way act towards his neighbour as he sees that God through Christ has acted and is acting towards him. All this he should do freely, and with regard to nothing but the good pleasure of God, and he should reason thus:
Lo! my God, without merit on my part, of His pure and free mercy, has given to me, an unworthy, condemned, and contemptible creature all the riches of justification and salvation in Christ, so that I no longer am in want of anything, except of faith to believe that this is so. For such a Father, then, who has overwhelmed me with these inestimable riches of His, why should I not freely, cheerfully, and with my whole heart, and from voluntary zeal, do all that I know will be pleasing to Him and acceptable in His sight? I will therefore give myself as a sort of Christ, to my neighbour, as Christ has given Himself to me; and will do nothing in this life except what I see will be needful, advantageous, and wholesome for my neighbour, since by faith I abound in all good things in Christ.
Thus from faith flow forth love and joy in the Lord, and from love a cheerful, willing, free spirit, disposed to serve our neighbour voluntarily, without taking any account of gratitude or ingratitude, praise or blame, gain or loss. Its object is not to lay men under obligations, nor does it distinguish between friends and enemies, or look to gratitude or ingratitude, but most freely and willingly spends itself and its goods, whether it loses them through ingratitude, or gains goodwill. For thus did its Father, distributing all things to all men abundantly and freely, making His sun to rise upon the just and the unjust. Thus, too, the child does and endures nothing except from the free joy with which it delights through Christ in God, the Giver of such great gifts.”
