From License to True Liberty
This sermon was preached by Pastor Ted Carnahan for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost on July 5, 2026.
Grace, mercy, and peace be with all of you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. Amen.
Unless you have been living under a rock this weekend, you know that the Declaration of Independence was signed 250 years ago yesterday afternoon. The consequences of signing that declaration for those whose names were on the dotted line, those who put their John Hancock on it, were dire.
(When people use John Hancock as a replacement for their signature, it is because John Hancock signed the declaration in very big letters. He did not want the king to be unable to read his handwriting. He wanted the king to say, “Oh, I recognize that name.”)
Those signers endured flight from capture. They endured burned homes. They endured imprisonment and lost loved ones. They did that for the sake of political freedom, which they saw as a natural right given by God and acknowledged by government. They were willing to fight. They were willing to suffer and sacrifice and even die for the sake of freedom from tyranny. We owe them a tremendous debt.
Reverend Johann Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg throwing off his robes, by Stanley Massey Arthurs, circa 1920.
I want to direct your attention to our bulletin this morning. One of the most famous Lutheran pastors in North America may very well be Henry Melchior Muhlenberg. This is not him. This is his son, Johann Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg. He was a Lutheran pastor in Virginia. At the coming of the revolution, he preached a sermon on the book of Ecclesiastes chapter three, the passage that speaks of a time to be born and a time to die, a time for war and a time for peace. He declared at the end of that sermon that he was sure the time had come in the colonies to fight for freedom. In a dramatic moment at the end of his sermon, he opened up his black Geneva gown (the typical dress of colonial Lutheran pastors) to reveal that he was already wearing his revolutionary uniform. He had been commissioned by General George Washington to raise up a regiment and lead them in battle against the British. The painting in our bulletin commemorates this act, because there was a time to do what must be done.
Freedom is important. Political freedom is necessary for the flourishing of the human person. One cannot have true freedom without freedom of conscience, the freedom to gather as we have right now. Without the ability to think and express oneself publicly, without a free press, there is no true freedom, because these things are necessary for free people to know the world and to share ideas.
A Revolution of a Different Kind
Today I want to speak to you of a freedom which is different from political freedom but which has become confused in the American conscience.
Today, it is not necessary for us to take up arms to defend our political liberty. As much as you might be expecting the dramatic reveal at the end of this sermon, I am not wearing a military uniform under my vestments.
No, today we need a revolution of a different kind. We have changed the definition of freedom in this country. Freedom has become something our Founding Fathers would not have recognized. Freedom has become comfort. It has become ease, the ease of a people who have not had to fight a war for over 200 years, the comfort of living under the umbrella of the most powerful military in human history, and the ability to be continually absorbed with distractions instead of what is truly important.
Unfortunately, that freedom has become license. License is the root of the word licentiousness. Licentiousness was a form of freedom that would be foreign to our Founding Fathers. Licentiousness says, “I can do whatever I want to do.”
Today we have become a people of license:
- License to do whatever I want as long as I am not “hurting somebody else,” the only standard for which is my own personal opinion.
- License to act without reference to virtue or national values.
- License to be and do what I want and the right not to face judgment, criticism, or condemnation for it.
Political liberty may be necessary for human flourishing — and we should be grateful for the liberties given by our Founding Fathers and those who have found to preserve those liberties in this country — but political liberty is not sufficient. Many people in our country are free — truly free! — from all obligations and connections to one another, yet if you examine their lives, you'll find they exist in deep bondage. As St. Paul says in our reading from Romans today, “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” Or as we confessed earlier, “I confess that I am captive to sin and cannot free myself.”
The True Freedom Christ Brings
The solution to this license is not greater license. The solution to this abuse of freedom is not greater and greater forms of freedom. The solution is for us to acknowledge the truth about ourselves, that even in our best moments, with our most applied effort, with our greatest striving after doing what is right in our own eyes, that we are captive to sin, enslaved to that which is in defiance of God. The heavy burden of its cost weighs upon our shoulders, and we carry it with great difficulty. We feel deep in our bones that things are not as they ought to be.
Acknowledging that truth and trusting in the grace and love of Jesus Christ, we lay down our sin at the foot of his cross. Christ comes to fulfill what God promised through the prophet Zechariah. The Jews expected a Messiah who would come with great power and cast the Romans out, giving them political liberty. Jesus fulfills this prophecy by coming in on a donkey, the colt of a donkey:
- He comes not to bring political liberty that leads to license — not to bring the kind of freedom that, apart from God, leads only to license — but to bring a different kind of freedom that opens us to a different kind of responsibility.
- He brings us his righteousness and takes our burdens upon himself.
- He brings us salvation that we could never earn.
- He does so not with pomp and circumstance, but with humility, riding not on a grand war horse but on a donkey.
- He comes to bring a rule expressed in humility, in making ourselves less for the sake of making God and neighbor more.
He will rule not by strength of arms, not "by the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air," but by his self-sacrificed blood of the covenant, which gives true freedom.
Freedom for Love of God and Neighbor
Christ our King comes not to demand that you bear some new burden or work harder, but to declare freedom to you, true freedom that makes you truly free. Not licensed to do whatever you like, but love that directs you toward God and neighbor.
We are weary with the burden of trying to make ourselves right by obeying the law and insisting that everybody affirm us in our rightness. Here, Christ invites us to give that burden to him, not seeking after our own righteousness, but knowing that already "it is finished." That on the cross, Christ has completed all things for us. Instead of trying to obey the Law in a way that we can never fully attain, Christ instead invites us to give the burden of our sin to him.
He says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” He takes our burden upon himself, goes to the cross, and dies for us. The yoke he puts across our shoulders is easy and his burden is light.
Jesus Christ has come to give us true freedom, freedom from sin, freedom for love of God and neighbor, not license, not a freedom to do whatever we want, but freedom for serving and loving God and neighbor. That is what brings true hope and peace and human flourishing. That is what will truly bring rest for your soul.
On this Fourth of July weekend, give thanks for the gift of political liberty in this country, purchased at the terrible price of blood by patriots across the generations. But also give thanks that the freedom we truly and ultimately need is given to us in the person and work of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord to life everlasting. Amen.
