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from the district pastor ...

Rev. Mark Jamison

Sin and Death: Our Problem is the title of the next section of "Our Declaration." Death and sin are powers or forces in our lives that enslave us. That is why the New Testament used words from the slavery market of the Roman Empire to describe them. It is fairly easy to prove how enslaving they are. We can't free ourselves from them. We can't keep death at bay forever. Sooner or later it claims all of us. We also can't keep sinful desires and thoughts out of our hearts and minds at all times.

It is at this level of wanting, willing, and desiring that we know the bondage to sin. Most of the time we don't act out our worst desires and impulses. We do have some freedom over our actions. But all of us have had thoughts and desires that we wouldn't choose if we could help it. We don't wake up first thing in the morning and say to ourselves, "at 4:00 p.m. today I will choose to be so angry that I will want to punch out my fellow worker. " The times I've held on to grudges and resentments have been no picnic, and I would have liked to have been free of them instantly. Corrie Ten Boom told the story of meeting again a man a few years after WW II who had been a cruel guard at the Nazi concentration camp where she was imprisoned. He had become a Christian and asked Corrie for forgiveness. She had to ask God to put forgiveness in her heart because she couldn't put it there herself.

We don't always want what God wants, and in fact often want the opposite of what God wants. We don't always want to turn the other cheek and love our enemies. We don't always want to trust God or do his will. Martin Luther called this form of slavery the bondage of the will. It is a bondage because we often can't help what we want or don't want to do. But even what we can't help is sin in the eyes of God (Matt. 5-7, Romans 7). Much of the time we may not even be aware of our bondage. It is the cross that reveals how serious bondage to sin is. The Son of God had to take sins on himself on the cross to free us from sin and death. Our freedom took an act of God. If God had to do it we must be very impotent in our efforts to free ourselves.

However, our bondage to sin does not excuse us from responsibility for our sins. We still go to our graves as the wages of sin (Rom. 6:23). Our own experiences won't help us understand sin's depth and power. Trying to look at our sin from our own viewpoints is like trying to see our eyeballs without a mirror. Because we are sinners then, the word of the cross that makes us aware of our bondage and our freedom in Christ comes from outside of ourselves. It is given to us by someone else. That is because sin as the power of unbelief working in us does not let us see the truth of the Gospel by our own efforts. We as Lutherans are not New Age spiritualists who believe there is some hunk of the holy or divine that is left in us that has not been corrupted or tainted by sin. As Luther has said in the explanation of the 3rd article of the Apostles Creed in the Small Catechism, being delivered from sin means being brought to faith by the Holy Spirit through the Word and Sacraments.

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