Reformation
“The truth will make you free”“The truth will make you free” Jesus says“…The truth…, and the truth will make you free” “If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed”
Free indeed, free at last, thank God Almighty we are free and forgiven… indeed.
“The truth will make you free”
God says..
(1) Now, what kind of truth are we talking about again? And
(2) How can we learn this truth? And
(3) what’s this truth good for again?
Well, The only answers God gives are these: scripture, faith, and grace.Scripture, is the truth were talking about. Faith, is the spiritual language of truth and Grace, is the experience of understanding God’s goodness, even if and when the truth hurts our story.
We begin with scripture if we want to know the truth, God’s truth.
The truth includes God’s history and people’s history of love, judgment, and redemption.
The truth shared through scripture- sola scriptura-Martin Luther learned many languages to share the truth sola scriptura is Latin, for where to find the truth, sola scriptura means only scripture…tells the true story of God past and our future.
Aleitheia, the Greek word for “truth,” in today’s scripture literally means to “stop forgetting.”
To stop forgetting the truth…to remember God’s story of love—since the days of our ancestors, and for the good of our children.God’s story in scripture isn’t about just being in some book, rather scripture points us towards actions today, so that we can keep remembering the truth about our lives, the covenant, the plan, which God builds in us.
“Do this, in remembrance of me”, Jesus’ story instructs us.Jesus says, don’t just read about it, do it.
If scripture then, gives us actions to do, to remember and be accountable to God’s plan for our lives, then It’s probably a good idea to learn scripture, to learn these plans and act on them, to read and hear and experience God’s plan in our lives.
And so we come back again to the question, How can we know this truth? Because, the Bible, is after all, a big book, with lots of confusing stories…and it takes a long time to read…Does God give us some type of help to understand it all? And the helpful answer God gives is, faith, faith that is a gift from God, to help us understand. As we are learning, reading, hearing, and experiencing scripture, suddenly the language of faith starts making sense of our lives, of our prayers and actions. Sola fide- only faith makes sense of our reading and speaking and experiencing God. The language of faith as taught by God through the Holy Scriptures, the language of faith as practiced through prayer.
Martin Luther once wrote…“Tomorrow I plan to work, work, from early until late.In fact, I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.”
Faith, is the spiritual language of truth. So, let’s now come to the third part of the question, “what’s this truth good for anyways.” So know that we are understanding the Bible- scripture, through God’s gift of faith, what’s it good for again?
What are we freed by faith for?
What is this plan for our lives, this gift, that we discover in God’s Word?
It is… to experience (drumroll) Grace!to experience and share only grace- sola gratia,the grace of God is mercy that God has for us to share,the gift of grace corrects the wrongs of the world by the righteousness of God. Grace is the goodness of God, God’s grace in place of punishment. Grace, is the experience of understanding God’s goodness, even when the truth hurts. So then, with forgiven cries of remembrance and tears of joy, let us commend our spirit to: the truth of scripture, with the gift of faith, to share God’s good grace with all the world.
