"Gospel Freedom"
Freed to love
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. David McMaster
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Text: Galatians 5:1-15
John Newton was a sea captain, captaining ships associated with one of the greatest acts of oppression and exploitation of human life ever seen. Newton captained slave ships, ships that took people from west-Africa to be slaves in the West Indies, the American Colonies and elsewhere in the British Empire. Conditions on the ships were beyond appalling. Slaves were chained together and herded into the smallest of spaces to get as many as possible on board. On some ships the slaves would sit knees up with the next person sitting right between their knees. Rows and rows of people crammed in this way in the hold of a ship. On other ships, they would lie in quarters no larger than a coffin. For the weeks of the journey, they would be there with little light, little fresh air, little food and water, no sanitation. The heat, the pungent odour, the inevitable disease was enough to put many of them out of their minds. A cry or complaint was met with the lash and many died on board. There were no funerals or last rites; the dead were simply tossed into the great deep … such was “man's inhumanity to man,” during the years of colonial slavery.
In Britain, many opposed the slave trade. They were the radicals of their day and among them was the young parliamentarian, William Wilberforce. Wilberforce made abolition a life long quest, but it was a difficult quest in a very pro-slavery House of Commons. After all, the king's coffers were filling up because of slave trade labour. In the midst of Wilberforce's many futile attempts to bring change, The Rev. John Wesley wrote, from his death bed, to encourage him. Wesley penned these lines:
Unless the divine power has raised you up to be as Athanasius contra mundum, I see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise in opposing that execrable villainy which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? O be not weary of well doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.
Such encouragement drove Wilberforce on. He worked at great cost to his own health and wealth. He brought bill after bill to the Commons only to be met with failure and the power of the merchants and slave industry. But as the 19th century got under way, the mood began to change. After years of lobbying, finally, in 1807, he managed to get assent for The Abolition Act prohibiting the trade of slaves in Britain and on British ships. It was a great victory that spelled the beginning of the end of slavery, an end that was finally to come in British territories with the passing of The Emancipation Bill 175 years ago this week, on 26th July, 1833. Because of the work of Wilberforce and others, freedom came to hundreds of thousands of human beings around the world.
After the passing of the 1807 Abolition Act, in a rare act of emotion, members of the British parliament stood and applauded the work of William Wilberforce. The Solicitor-General, Sir Samuel Romilly, paid him a fitting tribute. He spoke of how some men are great and how often it is those who engage in war and violence who are deemed strong and great. He spoke of Napoleon Bonaparte who must go to bed at night into tortured sleeplessness because of the blood on his hands. Wilberforce, however, has a greatness of another kind and when he goes to bed, it is too the peaceful happiness wrought in well doing, knowing that he has brought an end to a despicable practice and freedom to countless numbers. Twenty-six years later, a retired Wilberforce praised The Emancipation Bill. His work was done and three days later, he found the freedom of eternal rest. He is buried in Westminster Abbey next to his life long friend, Prime Minister William Pitt.
Wilberforce's life and struggle is depicted in one of the most significant films of 2007, Amazing Grace. We can note, however, that slavery was not just something of the 18th and 19th centuries; it was something that had gone on all over the world for centuries. It existed during the Roman Empire and was an image that the Apostle Paul could draw on in his letter to the Galatians.
Over the course of this month, we have been looking at Paul's letter to the Galatians. In it, we have discovered that after Paul had left Galatia, and having left a small church behind, one or more individuals came into the town preaching a different gospel, telling the people that if they were truly to be God's followers, they had to be circumcised (males) and follow Jewish law. They even claimed that Paul preached as they did and the Galatian people began to do as they said (5:11).
When Paul heard about it, he was appalled and urged them, “Do not submit again to a yoke of slavery (5:1).” God has shown that you are accepted as you are and if you receive circumcision and the law, “Christ is of no advantage to you (5:2).” If you regress to circumcision, “You are bound to keep the whole law. You are enslaved, you are severed from Christ (5:3, 4),” “fallen from grace.” These people are out to confuse you (3:1), they “want to make a good showing in the flesh” to avoid persecution (6:12, 13). But “in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail (5:6); in Christ you are free (5:1).” So, “Do not submit again to a yoke of slavery (5:1).”
Thus, as was the work of the abolitionists, Paul's gospel was a word of freedom. But in his very language of freedom from the law there was a problem. In his teaching there was always one danger … the danger of antinomianism. “Antinomianism” is a word formed from the conjunction of two Greek words “anti” and “nomos,” meaning “against” or “without law.” There were always those who would take Paul's words of freedom to the extreme and say, “That then means that I can do what I like; that all the restraints are lifted and I can follow my inclinations, my passions, my desires, my emotions wherever they lead me.” Law is gone, and grace and faith are everything. There were Christian leaders, for instance, in the latter part of the first century, whom John had to address in the letters to the seven churches and who were teaching that immorality and the rituals associated with idol worship were as nothing if you had faith (Rev.2:14; 2:20). It doesn't matter how one lives. The law is gone. There is no such thing as sin. Do what you like! That is what antinomianism is, and there have been situations even in the more recent past, especially in segments of the Protestant movement, where grace has been preached so extensively that people have received the impression that they can do as they please, live as they want, for God is always a God of grace; God will always forgive.
But this is not what Paul had in mind at all when he spoke of freedom in Christ. O yes, he saw the end of the law, and yes, he saw freedom, but Paul's freedom was not a freedom to sin. He says, “For you were called to freedom, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another (5:13).” A life of faith in God's grace could never result in antinomianism; it can never mean freedom to sin, but it does mean freedom to love.
Each year, the youth of the church here produce a play. In their recent Spirit Express production, Godspell, one of the things that stood out to me was the retelling of a parable of Jesus from Matthew 18:23-35. It is a parable that illustrates well what Paul was getting at regarding the life of a person of faith. The parable goes like this: The kingdom of heaven is likened to a master who wished to settle accounts with his servants. One man owed his master $100,000. He could not pay and the master ordered him to be sold with his wife and children and all that he had for payment to be made. But the man fell down on his knees and implored him, “Master, master, have patience with me and I will pay you everything.” When the master saw him on his knees, he looked upon him with pity, released him and forgave him the whole debt.
A little later the servant came across a fellow servant who owed him $1000 and demanded payment. His fellow servant fell down and cried, “Please be patient with me and I will repay you.” The man refused, however, and had his fellow servant thrown into prison until he paid everything that he owed, all of the $1000.
Well, word got back to the master about the servant's actions and he summoned him. He said, “What do you think you're doing? I forgave you $100,000 when you implored me to be gracious, yet you could not be gracious with a man who owed you just one thousand! Away with you!” and he threw him to the jailers till he should pay his debt in full.
The idea in Jesus' teaching and Paul's is that when we experience grace we should respond by showing the same grace to others. When we experience love and forgiveness from God, we should respond by showing love and forgiveness to everyone we deal with. So Paul says, “In Christ you are now right with God, apart from the law. You are free of the yoke that has enslaved many. But now, do not use that freedom selfishly to serve yourself. Use it to serve others (5:13). Use it to turn and do good to all (6:10). As God has treated you, so treat others. As New Testament scholar, William Barclay has said, “Christianity is not freedom to sin, it is freedom not to sin… The Christian is the one who through the indwelling Spirit of Christ is so purged of self that he loves his neighbour as himself.” We might say, “we are freed to love,” (freed from the law to live in love).
I remember when I was studying at a Methodist Seminary in the United States, the professors there used to talk about John Wesley's theology as “a theology of love.” It is a doctrinal distinctive of Wesleyan thought that Wesley himself taught for over 50 years; basically, it is that we do not just accept God's grace through faith but we let it affect how we live. It was that theology that influenced the young William Wilberforce and led him to translate his conversion into a life of action to bring an end to the vile oppression of God's children. Wilberforce had attended Methodist societies in his childhood and, after his conversion, he too was freed to love and serve others.
And there was another in those years who also experienced the grace of God. I began this sermon saying that John Newton for years captained the awful slave ships. Little by little, however, Newton began to sense the loathsomeness of it all, the inhumanity of it and the sin of his complicity in this horrid business. It ate away at his soul. Guilt haunted him and he struggled and struggled with it for years even after his conversion until, one day, he encountered the grace of God. Newton then penned the words of perhaps the most well-known hymn in the western world,
Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)
That sav'd a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
John Newton had even entered the church and ministry prior to fully understanding God's grace in its fullness, but it was this real encounter with the God of grace that allowed him to throw heart and soul into the service of God and others at a different level. He was now freed to love. He was freed to remember his past and speak and write for a freedom that was spiritual and a freedom that was the abolitionist doctrine. Newton was greatly influenced by the Wesleys and George Whitefield, and it was he, in turn, who in his ministry influenced the young William Wilberforce - for when Wilberforce was young, John Newton was his minister. They worked for justice and freedom because they were free themselves, free to love, as are we free in Christ to show the love of God to others.
So if you have faith in God, think about how God's love might work out in your life. There are those among us who have high positions in life and much influence. How might you use the place God has given you to work for justice, for peace, to help those who cannot otherwise help themselves? There are others among us who have ordinary positions as the world would see them. Some work in administration, some on the shop floor, some attend school, some have no work. Yet how might you also use the place God has given you to serve and to love others? We have been freed to serve and love others … so let us go forward, not just to live in God's grace and carry on as usual, but let us go forward to live in his service and carry his love to the world. Amen.