Sermon - Trinity Sunday 2021 - John 3:1-17

"Jesus and Nicodemus" Matthias Stom, 1615-1649

“If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Freedom is a topic which has interested people in the West for thousands of years. It’s difficult to define freedom without saying what it is not. Namely, freedom is to not be enslaved to another. Freedom is to not be a slave.

This freedom is what Christ has come to give us. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Through rebirth of water and the Spirit, the Christian is made free.

But freedom from what? Who is the slavemaster? 

Usually when we think of freedom and slavery we’re thinking of worldly masters. So we think of the Israelites being freed from their Egyptian masters. Or we think of slavery here in the history of the US. We think of worldly tyrants and worldly slaves.

We even like to define freedom more broadly. We say that freedom is being able to say or do anything we want without anyone hindering us. But is that what Christ meant when He said that everyone born of the Spirit has freedom? If I want to have an affair, or get drunk, is that the sort of freedom Christ won for me? Obviously not!

Our freedom is not merely a libertine sort of freedom where we can do whatever we want. Our freedom is much greater because our slavemaster is not something so miniscule as a worldly tyrant. Jesus said that the one born of the flesh is flesh. The master of the flesh, the master of this world, is the devil. To be born of the flesh means to have the devil as our master, even as our father. “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.” 

We were born of the flesh and the flesh is enslaved to Satan. We do and we desire what our slavemaster tells us to do and desire: sin. “In sin did my mother conceive me,” the psalmist wrote. To have original sin means that we are slaves of Satan and that we do his sinful will. That’s the slavery Jesus frees us from. “Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness.”

That slavery is a very serious slavery. An earthly slavemaster who whips his slaves to make them do what he wants is a slavemaster that the slaves can escape from. Satan is worse because he doesn’t whip our bodies, but he controls our minds and our wills, to the extent that we desire to do his will. The devil doesn’t have to whip us, instead he makes us like his will, and that’s how he makes us do his will and be his slaves. 

The notion that humans, at birth, have free will is wrong. At birth we don’t have free will, but our will and desires are enslaved to the devil. Humans are not inherently good, desiring good things; it’s the opposite! A nation in which people are free to do whatever they like, and a majority is not Christian, is a nation ruled by the devil. Democracy, means “rule by the people,” but unless the people are all Christian, democracy is actually rule by the devil.

The devil is sly like the serpent in the garden. He fools us into thinking we’re in charge and that we can do whatever we like. In reality he’s our master and we’re his pitiful slaves, and we like it that way! This is a slavery which is impossible for us to free ourselves from, because it’s a slavery we don’t even realize we’re under, and what’s more: we like the slavery! 

It is that slavery to the devil, which we often like and very seldom even realize is happening, that Jesus frees us from. In order to free us from the devil’s slavery, we need to be reborn. “That which is born of the spirit is spirit.” In the waters of baptism you were reborn as a Christian! A new name was placed upon you, that of the triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The old Adam in you was drowned, that slave to the devil was crucified with Jesus on the cross. You emerged from the waters as a new creation. You are of the Spirit, and just as the wind blows where it wishes, so do you have freedom in the Spirit!

Christians have a free will no longer bound to the devil! Everything which the devil made you like and desire went against nature, it was a slavery to live in such a fashion. But as a Christian you are free from that tyrant to live in such a way which is good.

Ah, but you might object! We’re still not free! Before we had to do what the devil wanted us to do, now we have to do what God wants us to do! We just traded one slave master for another! Even St. Paul says: “For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.” What gives! I want to be free and I don’t want to be a slave to anyone!

Oh how foolish! If you think you can be your own master without doing God’s will, you’re fooling yourself. This is just another of the devil’s tricks. If you believe yourself to be your own master, and yet you don’t do the Father’s will, then you’re still unwittingly Satan’s slave.

To be a slave to God is not like being a slave in the normal sense of the term. We must understand that God’s Word, His law, is what is natural and is how this world is meant to work by nature. God’s law is the good. God’s will is no more than us being human and having abundant life. When you live according to God’s word you’re actually free because you’re alive, but when you fail to live according to His will you’re enslaved because you’re living as less than human.

To illustrate, when someone tells you not to drive your car into a tree or off a bridge, they’re not making you their slave. They’re just telling you to avoid the things that prevent you from driving. So when God tells us not to murder or commit adultery, He’s not enslaving us, He’s just telling us to avoid the things that prevent us from being human and living and being free. In fact, when He’s telling us not to go against His will, He’s just telling us not to be slaves of Satan; be free!

“For God thusly loved the world, namely that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” God’s law is not meant to enslave or condemn us, but to set us free to live eternally!

“For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.” When we sin, the only thing we’re free from is being righteous and living, and that leads to death. “But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.” Death and sin are slavery, but having eternal life is freedom!

The difficulty which remains for us Christians today is that our freedom to live according to God’s will is not yet perfect in this life. “For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.  For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate... For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.”

Brothers and sisters, we still live in the flesh, and our old master the devil is constantly at work to once again make us his slaves. So long as we are in the flesh, on this side of heaven, our will and desires are imperfect, confused about which master to obey. We still don’t have a perfectly free will. This is why Christians still sin.

Our great comfort and help in this life then is that the triune God is for us. The Father desires that we be freed from Satan, that tyrannical slavemaster. He has already sent His Son to die for us and defeat Satan. So the Father and the Son have also sent the Spirit to conform our minds to His. He has also given us His law, His Word, so that in our confusion, we would know where we may find freedom from slavery. “Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path.”