“A Christian is a perfectly free Lord of all, subject to none.”
–Martin Luther in “On the Freedom of a Christian
“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
--the Apostle Paul (Galatians 5:1)
(Inserted by editor)
What does this mean? The answer is that it means just what it says! A Christian is subject to absolutely no one or anything. It means that because of God’s act in Jesus Christ, that which makes you to be a Christian; you are absolutely free from all the nonsense that people usually and inevitably associate with the name of religion. It means that God has taken care of everything that has to do with your relationship to him. You are subject to no one, no institution, no set of rules, no laws, nothing, absolutely nothing. You are free, absolutely free! God has, in effect, through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, put up for the entire world a blazing KEEP OUT sign over the whole province of religion and salvation. This, God has said, is my business, and shoved us out into the world where our real business is. That, really, is what Luther meant when he insisted that salvation is by grace alone, sola gratia. It means that God has an absolute monopoly on the salvation business, and that you are free, absolutely free, when you simply take God at his word. He has made you a free Lord of all things!
Think of it! When, in the entire history of the church, has anything so radical, so optimistic, so bold ever been said about humanity? Usually we hear that Luther was so pessimistic and gloomy, so insistent upon human sinfulness and total worthlessness. But what about this? A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none! Did Luther really mean it? Can we take him at his word here? It seems so dangerous, so reckless, and so foolhardy. So much so that we are afraid to believe it! And that, I am afraid is precisely the way we react. Right here we reach the critical point: the fear of this freedom. We are afraid of it because we are not sure where it will head. We are afraid to say that humans are set free because then who is to make sure that they will be kept religious and moral? That is where the battle is lost. We say to ourselves “well, of course, he didn’t really mean it just that way!” and then the scale which was balanced so delicately just on the brink of success wavers and falls back in the other direction, and we begin to say that the believer is not really free, but that there are after all certain religious rules that one had better live up to. We begin to set up all kinds of forms and standards and laws and rules, usually of a very petty little sort that one must conform to in order to be accounted properly religious. Somehow we get sucked back into the whole machinery of religion, we get sucked back into the salvation business ourselves—making it seem that even if God does most of it, nevertheless there is that little bit we have to do ourselves. Instead of Christian freedom to move out and do something really big and worthwhile, we get Christianity. We try to put Christ to work in the penny-ante business of making us religious. Faith is no longer a declaration of independence, but a sickly introverted groveling around in the morass of our own religiosity. In place of freedom, we have bondage to “churchianity” and religion.
--Gerhard Forde: “Freedom to Reform” Reformation Day, 1967
Lutheran Quarterly, Volume XXV/Number 2, Summer 2011, pp. 170-171
