The truth will set you free.

John 8.30-47.

We Christians love to quote the passage, “The truth shall set you free,” or “The truth will make you free,” or however your favorite translation renders it. It’s a reminder of how truth’s a good, liberating thing. Truth will set us free. Sometimes we aren’t particular about which truth, and figure any truth will set us free. Well, truth is always better than error and lies.

But in context, Jesus was speaking of something more specific. We Christians don’t always care so much about the context whenever we quote it, but today I’m writing about its context: In the verse right before it, Jesus speaks about if μείνητε ἐν τῷ λόγῳ τῷ ἐμῷ/meínite en to lóyo to emó, “y’all might abide in the word, in mine.” The truth will set us free, but we won’t even know what’s true unless we first have a lifestyle of following Jesus.

Yep, a lifestyle. It’s not enough to believe Jesus is Lord, say the creeds, and pay the appropriate lip service. We gotta actually follow him. We gotta do as Jesus says. Christ Jesus’s teachings about loving God and our neighbors have to be the entire foundation for our way of life. When they’re not, we’re gonna know truthy things; they’ll certainly resemble truth, or certainly feel like truth. Won’t always be truth though. They’ll have just enough truth in ’em to help lead us astray.

So when Jesus taught in temple, and talking about how he’s the world’s light, many chose to trust Jesus… and Jesus had this message for those who trusted him. Also applies to those of us who today claim we trust him.

And, sad to say, our reaction to Jesus’s teachings will often be the very same as that of the Judeans who balked at this teaching.

John 8.30-34 KWL

30In saying these things,

many trust in Jesus.

31So Jesus is saying to those Judeans who trusted him,

“When you² abide in my word,

you’re² truly my students.

32You’ll² come to know the truth,

and the truth will free you.”²

33The Judeans answer Jesus, “We’re Abraham’s seed.

We were never, ever enslaved.

How can you¹ say we’ll become free?

34Jesus answers them,

“Amen amen! I promise you:²

Anyone who commits sin is sin’s slave.”

Pharisee synagogues taught by the Socratic method: The teacher would make a statement, and his students would test it by vigorously questioning it. Thats why you see Jesus get so much pushback from Pharisees in the gospels: That’s how they were trained to deal with teachers. Don‘t just take Jesus’s word for it; question him! Most teachers today don’t bother to teach Socratically, and get offended when you challenge them—and we get offended on their behalf when we like the teacher. So this is why Christians get offended on Jesus’s behalf whenever Pharisees responded, “Hold up; what about this?” Jesus could discern whether these were honest questions, or whether they were trying to undermine him any way they could, and this is why sometimes he responded to questions positively, and other times he didn’t. We’re not always so great with discernment.

So yeah, the whole of John 8 is a really good example of a Socratic dialogue gone awry. Jesus said the truth would free his followers; his followers responded, “Wait, we’re not slaves; we’ve never been slaves; what’re we gonna be freed from?” And Jesus’s response: “Sin. If you sin, you’re its slave. I’m here to free you from that.”

Well duh. But we would say, “Well duh” because we’re used to 20 centuries of hearing Jesus and Paul’s teachings about sin and being slaves to it. For these first-century Judeans, this was a new idea… and it offended them, because the Pharisees had taught ’em all the loopholes which meant they could “follow” the Law without actually following it… so they weren’t sinners. Weren’t slaves to sin. Yet that’s kinda what Jesus was calling them.

John 8.35-38 KWL

35“The slave doesn’t abide in the house in the age to come.

The son abides there in the age to come.

36So when the son frees you,²

you² will truly be free.

37I already know you’re² Abraham’s seed,

but you² seek to kill me

because my word has no place among you.²

38I speak of whatever I saw from the Father,

so you² should do whatever you hear from the Father.”

I should point out the Textus Receptus renders verse 38 a bit differently:

John 8.38 KWL (from TR)

38I speak of whatever I saw from the Father,

and so you² do whatever you² saw from your father.

Rather than encouragement to follow our heavenly Father, Jesus appears to already jump forward to his conclusion in verse 44 how these are the devil’s kids. But nope, he’s not there yet. In any event the discussion goes downhill from here.

These are believers?

John identifies these listeners as τοὺς πεπιστευκότας αὐτῷ Ἰουδαίους/tus pepistefkótas aftó Yudéus, “the [ones] trusting in him, Judeans.” In this story, though, they certainly don’t act like believers. They come across as downright hostile. A few verses down, we see them passive-aggressively call Jesus a bastard, Jn 8.41 then full-aggressively call him a heretic and demoniac, Jn 8.48, 8.52 then actually pick up stones to throw at him. Jn 8.59 In turn, Jesus calls them Satan’s children. Jn 8.44

Hence interpreters tend to skim over verses 30-31 which identify these Judeans as believers. Easier to ignore what John called them… than deal with the fact they acted like antichrists. The few times interpreters do deal with this idea, they take one of three routes:

FAKE BELIEVERS. They claim these people claimed to believe in Jesus, or thought they believed, but clearly they didn’t. So when John called them “Judeans who’d believed him,” he meant it ironically: They only believed in Jesus superficially. You know, like American hypocrites who claim they’re Christian but don’t act it, and when you quote Jesus to them they wanna know where you got “all that woke nonsense.”

You might recall the people who bailed on Jesus after he talked about the living bread. Those people believed in Jesus too—but their faith only extended so far. When Jesus pushed them farther, as he does, they responded with all the rage of demoniacs.

BELIEVERS, BUT LEGALISTS. Another popular theory is these Judeans really did believe Jesus, but their Pharisee upbringing had so corrupted them, made ’em so legalistic, they couldn’t fully accept Jesus’s teaching. As soon as he started talking about how his words, his truth, freed them, their knee-jerk response was to insist the Law freed them.

To which I point out in this discussion, they never, ever brought up the Law. They only brought up Abraham ben Terah. Abraham doesn’t represent the Law in Pharisee thought; that’d be Moses. Abraham represents God’s grace.

Genesis 15.6 KJV

And [Abram] believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness.

It’s why Paul kept pointing back to Abraham when he was trying to explain grace and justification. Abraham’s relationship with the LORD—and ours too—isn’t based on obeying the Law; there was no Law yet in Abraham’s day. (True, some Pharisees tried to retcon parts of Genesis so the Law did exist in Abraham’s time, taught to his ancestors by angels. Ac 7.53) But whenever Pharisees brought up Abraham, it was to point out their relationship with God predated Law and obedience to the Law. God didn’t grant them the Law, and establish a formal relationship with them, because they were a great and righteous people. It was only because of his pre-existing relationship with Abraham. Dt 7.7-8 His grace towards Abraham extended to Abraham’s descendants.

If anyone brought up the Law, it’d actually be Jesus. Because Abraham’s faith, Jesus pointed out, led to good works. People with Abraham’s faith should similarly produce Abraham’s fruit. Jn 8.39 The fact the Judeans produced no such fruit, meant they took God’s grace for granted, and weren’t Abraham’s spiritual descendants as much as they imagined.

If these Judeans were legalists, they’d have brought up Moses, not Abraham. They wouldn’t have objected, “We’re Abraham’s seed; Abraham’s our father.” They’d have said, “We uphold the Law, and that makes us free.” Legalists have no objection to good works. Likewise they have no objection to anything Jesus said here: “Everyone who commits sin is sin’s slave? Darn right. That’s why we don’t sin.” Jesus would’ve had an entirely different discussion with legalists. That’s why this isn’t that.

THE AUDIENCE DIDN’T SOLELY CONSIST OF BELIEVERS. The other popular theory is some of Jesus’s listeners were believers. The rest, especially the ones who started arguing with him, weren’t. So when Jesus said, “When you abide in my word,” he was directly addressing those who believed him. But the unbelievers mixed in the crowd were the ones who piped up, “Waitaminnit, we’re Abraham’s seed, and we’re already free,” and started this whole debate.

To a large degree this interpretation makes sense. Even in our churches, not everybody in attendance wholly trusts Jesus. They’ll fake it Sunday mornings, and say amen along with the crowd, but the rest of the week they’ll behave like the pagans they really are. They don’t make a stink because our lecture-style sermons don’t push back at them like Jesus’s discussion-style lessons. “When you remain in my word… you’ll know the truth,” immediately offended those people who thought they already had truth. “And the truth will free you” immediately offended those people who thought they already were free. People who trust Jesus accept these statements; people who don’t really trust him will reject ’em as quickly as these folks did. So they aren’t believers. Not fake believers, not compromised believers: Unbelievers.

Lastly I’ll bring up those commentators who love to point out the Judeans’ objection, “We were never, ever enslaved,” Jn 8.33 strikes them as ridiculous. At that time Judea was occupied by the Romans, which gave them the illusion of freedom by letting the Judeans keep their senate and temple and police, and by letting the Herods run the other parts of Israel. By our standards, they were totally slaves; they were a conquered nation. But by ancient standards, where nobody lived under democracy anymore, they were as “free” as they could imagine freedom. They weren’t slaves, directly owned by somebody who profited by their servitude: They were freemen, able to come and go as they pleased… till they reached Roman checkpoints and had to pay tolls or they couldn’t travel further, but whatever. Close enough.

“Abide in my word.”

Back to those of us who do trust Jesus: If we wanna be free from sin’s slavery, we need to remain in his word.

I frequently translate λόγος/lóghos, “word,” literally. It means a lot of things, and if I translated it as only one of those things, it might miss one of the other things it might also mean. In this case it means Jesus’s message, lesson, or teaching. If we stick to what Jesus teaches, we’re truly his students. At the same time Jesus himself is God’s word, incarnate, so sticking with him as a person is just as important. It’s not enough to revere his teacings; maintaining a relationship with Christ Jesus Jn 15.4-7 is also vital.

So how do we maintain that relationship? We obey him; duh. Jn 15.10, 1Jn 3.24 We aren’t just Jesus fans; we don’t just like him a lot, or have warm fuzzy feelings towards him. We do as he says. And since Jesus calls such people μαθηταί μου/mathité mu, “my students,” it’s appropriate to focus on our master/pupil relationship. Students remember and follow their teacher’s lessons.

Bad Christians don’t bother. They appeal to cheap grace, kinda like Jesus’s opponents: “We’re saved by grace. We’re Abraham’s seed. We believe, really hard. That’s the only thing which matters; we never need to do anything.” They refuse to acknowledge any connection between obedience and freedom. To them, “freedom in Christ” means precisely the opposite of obedience: Freedom to dismiss Christ, and get forgiven anyway. It’s entirely wrong—and kinda dickish, really. You know those kids who get spoiled rotten, who scream and yell till they get whatever they wish, and have their parents wrapped round their little fingers? Do these kids actually love their parents? Obviously they don’t, and it’s just as true of Christians who take God’s grace for granted.

Plus wen we sin, especially as much as a person who takes grace for granted, it demonstrates we’re still enslaved to sin. Doesn’t matter what we claim to be. Bad fruit proves otherwise.

Jesus added an analogy: “The slave doesn’t abide in the house in the age to come.” Jn 8.35 Slaves seldom lived in their masters’ houses in that age. They had their own houses, and at the end of the day, same as an employee, they went home. Here, Jesus says this’ll be just as true in New Jerusalem: Slaves will never live in his Father’s house.

So wait, there’ll be literal slaves in New Jerusalem? Not like you’re thinking. We who follow Jesus often call ourselves his slaves, Ro 1.1, Jm 1.1, Ju 1.1 because he bought us from sin. So he could free us, but y’notice Christians still call ourselves his slaves and servants. But yeah, everybody’s getting freed in New Jerusalem. Don’t get off track.

Anyway, sometimes Romans adopted their slaves. Didn’t happen often, but it did happen: They trusted and loved their slaves so much, they freed them and declared them daughters and sons, and heirs. And in Roman adoption, heirs didn’t just get their parents’ stuff after they died; they got access to their stuff now. Everything you owned, your heirs likewise owned. Lk 15.31 All your authority, your heirs shared. So if your master’s son freed you, it was as if your master freed you: You were free.

Same with Jesus freeing us from sin. He’s fully authorized by his Father to do so.

So when we enslave ourselves to sin, and dismiss Jesus’s lessons as unnecessary ’cause grace, we’re not truly his students. We’re still slaves. We should be resisting sin, because we belong to Jesus now. When we don’t, it simply proves we haven’t remained in Jesus’s word.