The Good News Truth That Sets Us Free

Sunday Readings: Jeremiah 31:31-34 & John 8:31-36

Today is Reformation Sunday.  It’s a special day for Lutherans.  It marks the anniversary of when Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, an act that sparked the Protestant Reformation!  Luther’s Theses argued against the idea of indulgences, the purchasing forgiveness of sins.  He affirmed that forgiveness was not for sale—but a free gift of God’s grace!  Given to us freely from a loving God who’s not looking to smite us, but who loves us so much that He was even willing to suffer and die on a cross for our sake.

The Reformation was the rediscovery of the truly good news that Jesus proclaimed.  That good news of freedom had become so misunderstood that Christianity basically became bad news about God’s wrath, hell, and needing to feel guilt and earn forgiveness.  In a medieval world obsessed with doing enough to earn your way into heaven, Luther reminded people what the Bible clearly says: that God does not keep score of our good and bad deeds, rather we are saved by God’s grace as a free gift!

A theology that emphasized God’s love and grace was crucial to Luther and the Reformation movement.  Because horrible theology led the church to do horrible outcomes, both in Luther’s day and throughout history.  And understanding this freeing theology Luther taught led to a life of spiritual freedom.  It is the truly liberating message of Jesus Christ, the truth about God’s love and goodness and grace, the truth that sets us free, as Jesus says in today’s Gospel reading.  Our theology matters.  The way we understand God has a major impact on the way we live our lives.  Jesus and Luther knew that our theology not only informs our religious worldview, but effects the way we live entire our lives.    

The early church understood this well.  They understood Christ’s message of God’s grace and unconditional love.  How their faith inspired a life of humility, mercy, forgiveness, and caring for the poor.  The good news that God is not a harsh king looking to punish us, but a loving parent guiding us to grow into mature reflections of the divine image.  Shifting our theology from the God of judgment to the God of love makes all the difference.  Early Christians were committed pacifists and willing martyrs.  The early church had great regard for the poor, respected women leaders, and upheld virtues of mercy and forgiveness, poverty and humility.  Values that looked like weakness to a Roman world that lauded military might, pride and ambition, wealth and prestige.  Christianity was a truly revolutionary movement that challenged that world and its values.  And those early Christians who understood this core message of the Gospel really did live in the world differently.  How they understood God mattered.  Because theology not only informs our religious worldview, but influences our entire way of life.  

One example of this in the early church was Saint Macrina the Younger.  Macrina was a woman who lived in the fourth century.  She was the oldest of ten siblings.  Several of her younger siblings were renown leaders in the early church as well.  Macrina was a nun and with her brother Basil she founded what many consider the world’s first hospital and the world’s first orphanage.  Christians like these rejected the Roman concept that poverty was punishment and God’s will, and instead challenged the world to consider the Judeo-Christian ideal of God’s love for the poor.  The way she thought about God inspired her priorities.  Early Christians like Macrina serve as a powerful example of the fact that how we understand God matters; our theology not only informs our religious worldview, but influences our entire way of life.  

Over the centuries, as Christianity grew, it started to be looked at by monarchs as a convenient way to exercise control.  And though it was never entirely lost, much of the church in the middle ages forgot the core of Jesus’ message of freedom and grace.  By the 1500s looked more like its own military-political-economic empire than it did a community of disciples trying to live like Jesus.  The church was corrupt and powerful and silenced anybody who spoke up against them, killing many critics as heretics. 

One terrifying example from this period was a man named Conrad of Marburg who lived in the 1200s.  He was the first inquisitor in Germany and was known for his harshness and cruelty.  He believed God demanded severe punishment for sin and was commissioned by the pope to root our heresy.  He traveled throughout Germany and was quick to believe any charge of heresy reported to him.  He had a strong conviction in the wrath of God and believed heretics would face eternal fire in hell if they did not repent.  That is how he justified his preferred way of killing them by burning them at the stake.  Better to experience a few minutes of flames now, he thought, than an eternity of them.  Clearly Conrad’s ideas about God contributed a lot to his cruelty and led to great suffering for many.  How Conrad and the inquisitors understood God mattered.  It’s a frightening example of how theology not only informs our religious worldview, but the way we act, the way we treat others, and influences our way of life.  

Now let’s consider the example of Martin Luther.  He had his own misconceptions about God as a young man.  He had been way more scared of God than anything, frightened nearly to death about God’s wrath.  As a young monk, one author said, “Luther was struggling with the need to confess completely everything he had ever done wrong. He wore [his confessor] out, trying to remember every sin that his mind would try to cover up. On at least one occasion, he confessed for six hours straight.”^[1]  Luther’s confessor, Johann von Staupitz, told Luther he didn’t need to worry so much.  He told Martin to just love God and rely on the promise of God’s love, mercy, and forgiveness.  Later in life Luther described this period saying, “I was more than once driven to the very abyss of despair so that I wished I had never been created. Love God? I hated him!"^[2]

It wasn’t really God Luther hated, but the false idea of God he had grown up believing in.  The theology of the medieval church had driven serious monks like Luther to despair.  And it was reading the book of Romans at his confessor’s request that Luther finally had his great breakthrough—a moment when he said the Gospel was truly revealed to him and he felt as though he was altogether born anew and had entered the gates of paradise!   

This experience and new understanding of God’s grace changed Luther’s life, and changed the course of history.  What Luther realized is that we don’t become righteous by striving to become worthy.  We are declared righteous because of Jesus, and are loved and accepted by God because of God’s grace, not anything we do or don’t do.  Sin doesn’t cause God to stop loving us.  Sin doesn’t separate us from God.  God offers abundant mercy, extravagant forgiveness, and loves us and guides us to grow in Christ.  That’s the Good News of Jesus.  That’s the Good News that caught the world by storm in the early church period!  And that’s the Good News that ignited the Reformation! 

Luther dedicated his life to assuring Christians that they need not worry about the wrath of God, eternal hell, or not being good enough or believing hard enough.  He emphasized God’s love and the promise of eternal life in Christ because of divine love not human achievement.  And more than just assuring people of a positive afterlife, Luther reminded us that salvation is about living in right relationship with God here and now.  It is being free to be who God calls us to be in this life and the next.

The reforming of his theology completely changed Luther’s life.  This new way of understanding God wasn’t really new at all, it was getting back to the original teachings of the New Testament.  But in a world obsessed with guilt and judgment and damnation, calling attention to God’s love and grace changed the world.  Luther’s transformed theology led to a transformed world.  His story is a prime example of one of the key lessons of the Reformation: that theology matters.  How we understand God matters.  Our theology not only informs our religious worldview, but influences our entire way of life.   

Today’s world is full of bad theology and false ideas about God that lead to much harm and cruelty.  Whether it’s Islamic terrorism, Zionist apartheid, or Christian nationalism in our own country, examples of bad theology leading to bad outcomes are all over the news.  At the same time however, there are just as many—if not more—examples of good theology inspiring good outcomes.  Ways of understanding the divine that inspire love and compassion, welcome of the stranger, justice for the oppressed, goodness and kindness in the way people live.  

Do your ideas about God lead you to freedom and liberation?  Or does thinking about God lead to guilt and fear, stress and anxiety?  If fear and judgment, fire and brimstone, are the cornerstones of our Christian faith, we’ll live life one way.  It may not turn you into a cruel inquisitor, but it will play out in your life in negative ways.  But if we believe in unconditional love, mercy for the poor, graciousness and generosity, peace and humility and compassion; if those things are the cornerstones of our Christian faith, we’ll live another way.  We’ll experience the truth that inspired Luther, the Truth about God that Jesus says will set us free. 

And so, if our theology feels oppressive and harsh rather than freeing and life-giving, question it and pray for God to reform it.  Because how we understand God matters.  Our theology not only informs our religious worldview, but influences our entire way of life.  Knowing this, let us all trust in truth of God’s unconditional love, God’s amazing grace, God’s profound goodness and care.  Let us grasp this Good News all the more deeply.  Let us all know this Truth that sets us free.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  +  Amen. 

Pastor Brian | October 25, 2026 | Reformation Sunday

[1] https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1501-1600/johann-von-staupitz-luthers-confessor-11629932.html

[2] Ibid.