LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Brock University

MUNDT: CHOOSE FREEDOM (GAL. 3:23-29) 89
truth and the truth will make you free” (Jn 8:31). Then He lived, suffered,
and died for our sins so that we do not have to. This is no new or novel
thought. The prophet Isaiah saw it coming, and recognized it as the only
possible way for sinful people to be reconciled to a holy God:
He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon Him
was the punishment that made us whole, and by His bruises we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and
the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. (Is. 53)
No laws can make us free. They only condemn us when we break them.
“Before faith came” our text reminds us, “we were imprisoned and
guarded under the law.” Think of the law as a prison guard. He is not
going to free you; only a higher authority can say that he no longer has the
right to detain you—or to shoot you should you try to escape. Although we
know that law can be a good thing in protecting our rights, our possessions,
our lives, we usually find it more irritating than useful. Imagine driving on
your vacation with a police cruiser constantly behind you! Or working for
someone who continually tells you that you are wrong and yells at you to try
harder! That is what life under the law is like. To live under the law means to
be aware that every wrong thought, word, or deed will be punished.
Generally we like to confine ourselves to the broad terms of some
commandments to prove to ourselves that we are better than most. So if we
can get to the end of the day and not have killed anyone, stolen anything
(cheating doesn’t count), or bowed down to worship a stone god, we like to
commend ourselves. By “law” we mean all of God’s good and perfect will
as encapsulated in the Ten Commandments and expounded in the Small
Catechism of Martin Luther. Like it or not, no one can keep the law
perfectly. Why then do so many choose to remain its prisoner trying to be
saved by keeping it—even imperfectly
The answer lies within our nature—our sinful human nature since the
Fall. Even though we know it is impossible to please God by our own
efforts, because “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom.
3:23), we still persist in thinking we must be able to do something which will
impress God enough to reward us. We have great difficulty seeing beyond
such self-imposed concepts. Let me illustrate how our nature—which we
know is imperfect—acts. Does anyone have an aquarium Here is an
experiment you can try: place a piece of glass down the middle with half the
fish on one side and half on the other. After a few weeks you can remove the
glass but the fish will only swim in their half, as if the glass wall was still
there. Similar stories have been told about people. Prisoners of war have
been found still living within the compound, still behaving as model
prisoners, even though all the guards fled in the face of an oncoming
liberation force.