What Does The Truth Set Us Free From?
I like to listen to a podcast called The President’s Daily Brief, by Bryan Dean Wright. Wright, a former CIA officer, closes each episode with the Bible verse John 8:32, ‘and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ The CIA is far from the only organization to inscribe this verse somewhere, and people everywhere love to misuse this verse for their own purpose. Why do I say ‘misuse?’ Well, if we look at the verse in context, we will see clearly what we are being set free from. Do you know? We should!
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.” They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?” Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. 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. I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.”
— John 8:31-38
What are we set free from? Sin! See, we like that ‘truth will set you free’ part without focusing on 1) the preceding verse, and 2) what we are actually being set free from. Look at the first verse I highlighted above which is John 8:31 — If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth… Many versions have ‘continue’ instead of ‘abide’ which really shows the ongoing nature of coming back to God’s Word. We had a debate/conversation last week in our men’s group over one sentence in a Tozer book we are reading which stated, ‘Truth is not the assimilation of facts.’ Our pastor suggested it would have been better to say, ‘Truth is not JUST the assimilation of facts,’ which we all seemed to agree with. As followers of Christ, we should consider that the words which God gave us to follow and words He said are true are the gold standard when it comes to TRUTH. An assimilation of facts, which may be truthful, is certainly preferable to lies, but they aren’t THE TRUTH. Why does that matter? Because it’s THE TRUTH, that sets us free…FROM SIN!
You see in the passage how the Jews are basically like, 'Jesus, what are you talking about? We’re not slaves. We’re already free.’ They clearly missed the point. Too often, so do we. Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. If you are one who missed/is missing the point, this may seem like an even stranger follow-up response. Jesus goes on to call them out for basically being children of the devil, which we’ll look at more tomorrow, but for now let’s consider the fact we are slaves to sin. Without Jesus, THE WORD and THE TRUTH, setting us free from sin, that’s how we’ll remain — slaves to sin. If we believe in Jesus, abide in His Word, and follow Him then we’ll begin to know THE TRUTH, and experience true freedom. Let’s contrast that with simply knowing some things that are true and knowing that some guy named Jesus had some good things to say and do. What does that gain us? Nothing! We would only be able to tout the fact we knew a few more nuggets of truth and heard some guy named Jesus taught some good stuff and supposedly helped some people. What’s special about that? Nothing! Tons of people have done those same things throughout history and currently do that now. The problem is that version of Jesus doesn’t exist. We’ve created our own version of events, our own version of truth, and our own version of Jesus. Those are all lies. Those of you who are familiar with the next passage are probably smiling as you think, Yeah, that’s appropriate for people who belong to the father of lies. Again, we will be looking at that tomorrow.
I’ll close with this. It’s one thing for the Jews and people who don’t accept Jesus to act in this way. They don’t take Jesus at His Word. They don’t believe THE TRUTH. But Christians, what’s our excuse? Believing from a distance, without getting into His Word, and without sincerely following Him is meaningless, is it not? Our lives would remain unchanged, right? And indeed some of our lives do remain unchanged. It’s because we don’t abide in Jesus and His Word. We’d rather sit and watch than actually follow. Well, how is that working for us? Do we look more like slaves to sin or those who have been freed from sin by THE TRUTH?