Since childhood, I’ve treasured what Jesus said in John 8:32. Yet somehow, till now, I have not seen this diamond in its setting. I have not heard the urgency in Christ’s heartcry to us all:

If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

I AM the Lord

The day Jesus made that promise, he was not walking the hills of Galilee, teaching his closest followers. He was standing near the temple in Jerusalem, speaking to a very divided crowd.

Some people were drawn to him. Some were wary. Some openly despised him.

Jesus said to them all:

I am the light of the world.
Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness,
but will have the light of life.
(John 8:12)

Immediately, religious leaders began to challenge him, trying to discredit him. Behind the scenes, they had begun plotting to kill him.

Undaunted, Jesus continued to convey to those with ears to hear:

I am the Messiah you have been seeking. And not only have I been sent from God in human flesh, I AM the Lord. 

He announced:

If you don’t believe that I AM,
you will die in your sins.

When the Human One is lifted up,
then you will know that I AM.
(John 8:24, 28 CEV)

As he was saying these things, many believed him. So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him:

If you abide in my word,
you are truly my disciples,
and you will know the truth,
and the truth will set you free.
(John 8:30-32 ESV)

If you abide

Nobody “walked the aisle” that day. Nobody even raised a hand. Yet in the big middle of a very divided crowd, many people believed Jesus. He saw their belief, and he knew what it lacked. This illustration comes to mind:

Imagine you’re standing before a narrow, swinging bridge spanning a deep, treacherous canyon. You believe that bridge can take you to a much better place. Yet you won’t get to that place until you trust that bridge enough to step out onto it, and keep going.

Jesus gave a challenge and a promise – to those who had, just that day, begun to believe him – and also, to us all.

His promise? Truth that sets us free. His challenge? Not to stop with mentally believing him, but instead to become his true disciples, by learning to abide.

We learn abiding as we learn to open ourselves fully to him who is the Light and who gives light. We learn abiding as we step out onto him who is the Word and whose words are spirit and life. For as we open ourselves to him, as we put our full weight on him, we find grace in him not to turn away, not to turn back.

When Jesus announced the astounding blessing that such abiding brings, those who had believed him could have cried, “Thank you, thank you! We want that!” They could have jumped up and down, yelling, “Yippee! We’ll be free!” They could have asked, “Lord, what does it mean to abide in your word? How does it look?”

But they didn’t say any of that. Instead, they replied:

We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, “You will become free”? (John 8:31-33 ESV)

Everyone who practices sin

What happened next tells us: The people who had believed Jesus were not perplexed. They were offended. And Jesus’ answer to their question offended them even more. He said:

Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave of sin.
(John 8:34 ESV)

People practice sin – and become enslaved by it – when we continue in attitudes, beliefs, words and behaviors that the Lord identifies as harmful and wrong.

What Scripture indicates, I’ve experienced:

We may practice sin willfully

Again and again, we may choose to act in ways that hurt us, hurt others and break God’s heart.

In the Old Testament, and in the New, God’s people willfully sinned. When they did, God cried:

Abandon all of your repeated sins … Change your ways, and live! (Ezek. 18:31, 32 CEB)

I correct and discipline everyone I love. Take this seriously, and change the way you think and act. (Rev. 3:19 GW)

We may practice sin naively

Again and again, we may embrace what we have never recognized as wrong in God’s eyes. Yet what we don’t know can hurt us, and can profoundly hurt others too.

I lived in such naïveté for a very long time. It took profound betrayal to show me that the Proverbs passages directed to “the simple” were God’s cries to me.

Wisdom calls aloud, … “How long will you who are simple love your simple ways?” (1:20, 22)

For the waywardness of the simple will kill them … but whoever listens to [wisdom] will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm. (1:32, 33)¹

You who are simple, gain prudence. (8:5)

Leave your simple ways and you will live; walk in the way of insight. (9:6)

We may practice sin unwillingly, too

Again and again, we may find ourselves doing what we know is wrong and hurtful, though we truly want to turn from it.

Paul himself experienced that type of bondage. In Romans 7:14-24, he cried:

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing.

What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! (vv. 15, 19, 24-25)

Yes! Thank God! Freedom from enslavement to sin comes through our Lord Jesus Christ.

That day in Jerusalem

Standing near the temple, still answering the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said:

The slave does not remain in the house forever;
the son remains forever.
So if the Son sets you free,
you will be free indeed.
(John 8:35-36 ESV)

But those to whom he spoke insisted: “Check our lineage. We are God’s people. We are already free. We know who the sinners are, and they are not us.”²

You are looking for a way to kill me

Suddenly, Jesus quit speaking in generalities. He pinpointed the sin he saw in their hearts. He said it aloud.³

He did not speak to slam them. He did not seek to shame them. Deeply loving them, deeply grieved, already preparing to lay down his life for them, Jesus cried out to wake them up:

You are looking for a way to kill me,
a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God.

Because I tell you the truth, you do not believe me!
(John 8:40, 45)

Wait! What? Hostile religious leaders were trying to kill Jesus. He knew it, and had already spoken up about it.⁴

But here in these verses, Jesus is not speaking to the people in the crowd who have openly rejected him. He is speaking to the people who have believed him.

You do not believe me

So … did they believe him – or not? Did they want to follow him – or get rid of him?

Both! They were double-minded. That day in Jerusalem, “many believed” the exciting things they heard Jesus say about himself. Ah, but they did not want to believe what he was actually making known:

→ The Messiah that they expected to be “lifted up” as king, and to deliver them politically, would instead lay down his own life and call his followers to give up all.

→ Their religious leaders, who hated him, would also hate anyone who followed him.

→ What’s more, his light would expose other grievous things in their lives and their world – things they did not want to see or give up. In short, they did not want to see how sin had enslaved them too.

Jesus already knew what choice the people in Jerusalem would make on the day of his arrest and crucifixion. He would not stop them from lifting him up on that cross. But also, the Father of glory would raise him up again.⁵

When Jesus continued to tell the people who had believed him what they did not want to know, they continued to insist that he had them all wrong.

When they could not talk him down, they turned on him. The situation escalated until leaders and people cried with one voice, “Now we know that you are demon-possessed!” (John 8:52).

And when Jesus insisted for the third time, “No. I AM,” they picked up stones, to stone the One who had come to set them free.

Still today

For decades now, God has taken me into various parts of our church culture – from the Southern Baptist crowd to the social justice crowd, from the evangelical crowd to the charismatic crowd, from the mainline church crowd to the house church crowd.

All along the way, I’ve been learning. Still, I’m learning.

I’ve learned important things from God’s people in each of these different groups. I’ve learned important things from God, as he has shown me what I am seeing, both in me and around me.

Again and again, to my dismay, I’ve seen a mindset I know all too well, an attitude that ruled my life for a very long time. It enslaved me so thoroughly that the Lord has had to take extreme measures in the lifelong process of setting me free.

We have never been enslaved

As we cluster in our church-related groupings, here’s how this attitude may look:

→ We may be very distressed about sin in the church – as long as we can attribute that sin to those with whom we do not identify or associate.

→ We may speak up about what we believe to be evil and wrong – as long as the ones missing the mark are that type person, that group, their leaders, them.

→ We may quote 2 Chronicles 7:14, without hearing what God is saying:

If you, my people, called by my name, will humble yourselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from your wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive your sin and heal your land.

→ We may pray fervently … confessing their sins.

In all these ways, we may say without saying, “We are God’s people. We don’t need ‘freeing’! We see clearly. We are doing right.”

In group after group, I’ve hit a nerve when I’ve dared to urge:

Please! Let’s let God show us any ways we are missing and misrepresenting Christ. Let’s keep looking, with our hearts wide open, as long as it takes to see.

Every time, the response has been swift, decisive, and united. But often it’s also been masked. That is, the group has said without saying:

We will not entertain that question. We will pretend you did not ask it. Oh, and anyone who asks such a question is not one of us.

How can you say that we will be set free?

The truth is: We are a hot mess.

→ We who identify as God’s people are not what Jesus created his church to be: one Body in the Lord, spending ourselves and being spent for one another, for the world, for him.

→ None of us sees everything clearly – no person, no group. None of us is doing everything right. Not even close.

Jesus knows exactly what is enslaving us, individually and collectively. He is faithful to tell us. When needed, he can be very stern, very direct. Not to slam us. Not to shame us. But to alert us to our ongoing, and sometimes urgent, need to be freed.

So, when do we not want what Jesus offers? When we do not see our need. When we will not see our need.

One of the things most likely to bar us from freedom, from blessing, from truth, from HIM, is pride.

That long-ago day, described in John 8:

• Pride told people that what they wanted to believe about themselves was true, and what they were determined not to see was a lie.
• Pride conned them into following leaders who were misleading them and trusting only the voices that agreed with them.
• Pride shipwrecked their faith in Christ.

Truly my disciples

Still today, the Lord who died in their behalf, and ours, cries out:

My people, who are called by my name, humble yourselves.⁶

Still today, he who conquered death declares:

If you abide in my word –
learning to know and hear my voice,
learning to recognize and receive what I say,
not refusing what may be hard to hear,
finding in me abundant grace to live from what I’ve said –
you are truly my disciple,
and you will know the truth,
and the truth will set you free.

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“The truth will set you free” is excerpted and adapted from a Key Truths e-newsletter column titled, “Deliver us!” published June 15, 2006.

Image by Elias from Pixabay

See also

• Heartcry of one who overcomes: “Are we here? Can we possibly be here?”
• Trauma and truth-seeking: Desperation, spirit, life
• I choose light: “I’m Deborah, and I have been so blind.”
• When Christian leaders reject God: It may not look as you may think.
• Journey to a divided heart: And this may not either.
• Spiritual schizophrenia and the two-headed snake
• I AM the one you seek

Footnotes

1. See all of Proverbs 1. ↩︎
2. See John 8:39, 41. ↩︎
3. See John 8:39-47. ↩︎
4. See John 7:19. ↩︎
5. See Ephesians 1:17-23; Acts: 2:24, 32-33; 13:32-34. ↩︎
6. See James 4:6-10; 1 Peter 5:6. ↩︎