Romans 14:5-9  

… ⁷ For none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself.  ⁸ For if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's.  ⁹ For to this end Christ died and rose and lived again, that He might be Lord of both the dead and the living.

It was Shakespeare who said, “Parting is such sweet sorrow.”  For the past sixteen weeks we’ve slowly and methodically made our way through Paul’s letter to the Romans; and today is the final day.  Today is the day we perhaps sweetly and sorrowfully part from Romans for a little while—at least in the public worship service.  And as we leave Paul today, it’s important to understand that he’s coming close to the end himself, the end of his letter.  He’s coming close to the end and he’s asking that all-important question, “What do I want to leave them with?” 

It’s interesting as you read through these last few chapters that you find that there were problems in the Roman church. The church in Rome was actually a collection of small churches, congregations that typically gathered in people’s homes.  The problem was that with all these different congregations, you had different practices developing between them to the point where these small congregations were not getting along with each other.  Some felt free to eat meat from the market.  Others didn’t want to eat meat if they were unsure of where it came from.  Some wanted to follow the old Jewish calendar and observe some of those old feast days and treat them as holy.  Others saw every day as being holy in the eyes of God.  These were differences over things that God had neither commanded nor forbidden by His Word.  They should not have been disrupting the unity of the Christian believers in Rome. 

And so as Paul’s closing out his letter, one of the things he wants to leave them with is a true understanding of the unity they have in their Savior:  that they truly are one in Christ, fellow members of His body, one in the faith as Paul has taught it to them, one in doctrine, and one in—the freedom they share.

You and I have the freedom that Paul is talking about here too, the freedom that is ours specifically because of Jesus Christ.   The freedom that sets you free (I) to live not only to myself, but also (II) to recognize the freedom of others. 

1. Free to live not only to myself.

When people say that human beings are born with a free will, they have no idea what they’re talking about.  A free will means that you have the ability to choose the good over the bad, the right over the wrong, the love over the hate, the faith over the unbelief.  And that is just not something we human beings have the natural capacity to do.  When you and I were born, we were born into the slavery of sin.  It’s a basic, biblical truth that the human heart is corrupt:  “In sin my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5).  “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies” (Matt. 5:19).  “The imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Gen. 8:21).  In that state of slavery to sin, our wills were bent inward, curved in upon ourselves and our own desires.  Not only were we incapable of choosing the good, we were incapable of choosing God.  And we were powerless to free ourselves.     

But then along came Jesus, our hope and our salvation.  “To this end Christ died and rose again, that He might be Lord of both the dead and the living.” At the cross His righteous life paid your ransom, along with the ransom for everybody else on earth.  You are free, set free from slavery to sin by His perfectly innocent death.  In fact we know that Jesus’ death frees us because He didn’t stay dead.  On the third day He was raised to life again—“raised for our justification” (Ro. 4:25).  The bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ stands as God’s announcement of pardon to a world full of sinners. 

That declaration of pardon and freedom came to you personally in the waters of holy baptism, when all your sins were washed away and you received the garment of Christ’s righteousness as your own.  You were baptized into Christ’s death so that now, like Him, by the power of the Holy Spirit you walk in newness of life (Ro. 6:4), awaiting the day of your own bodily resurrection. 

You are free.  And in Christ, that freedom is tremendous.  Everything is already done for you already.  Christ’s perfect obedience and fulfillment of God’s laws now counts as your own.  There is no more mandatory Sabbath day on which you must worship the Almighty God.  There are no more offerings and sacrifices that must be made for sin and guilt.  There are no stringent dietary restrictions that you have to follow in order to be a Christian.  You can eat pork and shellfish—you can even eat bugs and snakes and bats if you really want to.  All those Old Testament ceremonial laws were but shadows of the things that were to come.  Their reality—their fulfillment—is found in Christ (Col 2:8-9).  In Christ you have true freedom—the freedom of being a child of God in His kingdom. 

Yes, we still have the moral law—we still have the Ten Commandments—but according to the new man, the new creation we are through faith in Christ, the moral law is no longer our taskmaster, threatening us with punishment.  Instead the law is our guide to what is God-pleasing in our freedom.  Freed from the slavery to sin, you are free now to choose how you will give glory to God.  You are free to “eat and drink.”  If you’re over twenty-one you are free to have a beer while you watch the game—or to not have a beer.  You are free to observe certain customs in the church—or to not observe certain customs.  You are free to fast in preparation for the Lord’s Supper—or to not fast.   

Yet, be careful in how you choose to exercise your freedom.  As Paul says, “For none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself.  For if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's” (vv. 7-8).  No man is an island—and no woman for that matter.  We don’t live to ourselves—freedom is not a license to do whatever you want without thinking of others.  Temper your freedom with love for your brother or sister in Christ. 

In freedom, a Christian might choose to make the sign of the cross when she prays.  However, if her fellow believer is a former Roman Catholic and associates those kinds of things with the works-righteousness of his former faith, then perhaps, out of care and concern for his faith, she might want to exercise her freedom by not making the sign of the cross around him, at least for a while, until he understands why she does it.   And part of that freedom Christ gives us as fellow members of His body is not only the freedom to live for others, but also the freedom to recognize the freedom of others. 

2. Free to recognize the freedom of others.    

Back to the church in Rome again:  they were dividing themselves along practical lines—along the lines of things neither commanded nor forbidden by God.  The Christians in Rome had been told not to eat meat if they definitely knew it had been sacrificed to idols.  The trouble with the meat in the market was that you couldn’t always tell which was the “safe meat” and which meat had been used in a pagan ceremony.  Some Christians chose to buy and eat the meat.  On the other hand, some chose not to partake of meat anymore because they didn’t want to accidentally eat some meat that had been sacrificed.  And it was a similar problem over feast days. 

The problem was that each group didn’t recognize that the other was acting in freedom.  Paul wanted them to see that the same Lord was behind both choices.  “He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord; and he who does not observe the day, to the Lord he does not observe it. He who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives God thanks; and he who does not eat, to the Lord he does not eat, and gives God thanks” (v. 6). Whether they observed the feast days or not, whether they ate the meat or not, they were all doing it for the same reasons—all exercising their freedom to give thanks to God for His blessings in Christ.   

We still have similar disputes today, even within the Lutheran church.  Take the debate between using the common cup and the individual cup for communion.  There was an online discussion once where people even questioned the propriety of using plastic individual cups versus glass individual cups.  Yet something gets lost in the debate:  the recognition that not only do we all have freedom to make choices in these areas, but that the choices that are made are done “to the Lord,” to the glory of God. 

We, too, have lost that recognition from time to time.  Like when we get hung up on certain traditions being “too Catholic.” Or when we assume that because a church of our fellowship might do things differently than us, that it’s not right or that their decision to do so was poorly considered.  It’s a failure to look on our fellow believers in love and to take their words and actions in the kindest possible way.  It’s a failure to love.  A failure for which we deserve to be severed from the body of Christ forever. 

That’s why God sent His Son in the first place, though, wasn’t it?  So He could justify us freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.  His perfect love paid for our failure to love.  Your are forgiven, freed from sin’s guilt forever.  His peace now fills your life, the peace of being reconciled to God. 

And in that peace and freedom now we too recognize not only our own freedom but the freedom all Christians have to love and serve the Lord and one another.  To trust that fellow believers have good reasons for the choices they make.  To forgive when, perhaps, there wasn’t a good reason.  We don’t live to ourselves; rather, in our freedom we are bound to one another because we all belong to Christ.  Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s (v. 8). 

What do I want to leave you with today?  The Christian faith, one word at a time—today’s word is “freedom.” The freedom we have in Christ.  “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body… But God composed the body… that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another” (1 Cor. 12:13,24-25).  He is the one who keeps us free to serve one another, united in love for each other by binding us together in Himself through our baptisms.  We are one body in Him.  In Him we have true freedom—in His true grace and forgiveness.  Amen.