June 25, 2017

John 8:31-38: What It Really Means to Be Free

Preacher: Josh Tancordo Series: The Gospel of John: That You May Believe Scripture: John 8:31–38

John 8:31-38: What It Really Means to be Free

Please turn in your Bibles to John 8. If you’re using the Story Bibles we provide, that’s on page 741. We’re going to continue our series of sermons going through the Gospel of John passage by passage. And today’s passage is John 8:31-38: 31 So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” 33 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’?” 34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. 35 The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. 37 I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. 38 I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.” 

Like many people, I have a lot of fond memories from my childhood, but I also have a lot of memories where I got very frustrated with my parents because of all the rules they made me follow. And looking back, I don’t think they made me follow a lot of unreasonable rules, but they definitely seemed unreasonable at the time. So sometimes, I protested the rules. And whenever I did that, my parents would tell me something I imagine a lot of parents have told their children: “As long as you’re living under our roof, you’re going to follow our rules.” Not exactly what I wanted to hear. So as a child, there were times when I longed for the day when I wouldn’t live under their roof any more. I wanted it to come so badly—because then I could do all the fun things I wanted to do without anyone telling me I couldn’t do them. If I didn’t want to eat my vegetables, I wouldn’t have to eat my vegetables. If I wanted to have ice cream for dinner, I could have ice cream for dinner. I could stay up as late as I wanted, play all of the video games I wanted, and do all the fun things my parents wouldn’t let me do. I would be free. 

And I think that basic idea is what a lot of people in our country are chasing after, especially in recent decades. People of all ages want freedom. They want the freedom to be themselves and express themselves and do just about anything they want to do without anyone telling them that it’s wrong or that they can’t do that. I mean, if there’s anything that characterizes American society right now, especially among those who are more secularly minded, it’s probably that impulse right there. People want to be free. They want to throw off many of the moral restrictions that have traditionally characterized society, and they want to be free.

And that’s actually what Jesus offers in our main text of Scripture this morning. He offers freedom. But as we’ll see, the freedom Jesus offers turns popular ideas about freedom inside out. And it’s infinitely superior to any other kind of freedom that out there. So here’s our main point this morning: Jesus offers a new and vastly superior freedom. Jesus offers a new and vastly superior freedom. And there are three steps for experiencing this kind of freedom Jesus offers: recognize your slavery, know the truth of Christ, and abide in the word of Christ.

Recognize Your Slavery 

So first, we have to recognize our slavery. The people Jesus was talking to in this passage thought they were free. In verse 32, Jesus says to them that “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free,” and look how they respond. In verse 33, “They answered him, ‘We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you can say, “You will become free”?’” So they thought they were free because they were descendants of Abraham. After all, didn’t God make a covenant with Abraham and choose Abraham’s descendants, the Israelites, to be his people? Doesn’t God favor them above all the other nations in the world and give them all kinds of spiritual privileges other nations don’t enjoy? So how in the world can Jesus refer to them as slaves? That’s what they want to know.

So Jesus explains it to them. In verse 34, he states that “Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.” In other words, even if you think you’re free, everyone who lives a lifestyle characterized by sin is actually enslaved. They’re a slave to sin, Jesus says. So without blinking an eye, Jesus exposes their false view of freedom. True freedom isn’t about your genealogy—being “offspring of Abraham.” It’s about whether or not you’ve gained freedom from your sin. Needless to say, the way Jesus talks about freedom not only turns first-century Jewish thought inside-out, it also turns twenty-first century American thought inside-out as well. Because just like these ancient Jews, we think we’re free. We think that since we live in a society in which more and more of the traditional moral restrictions are being done away with and we’re able to live however we want to live without anyone telling us that we’re wrong—we think that because that’s the case, we’re free. But Jesus, with nine penetrating words, turns all of our thinking about freedom inside out and tells us that we’re not free. “Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.”

I have a neighbor a few houses down that has a dog they sometimes have chained up in their front yard. And this dog doesn’t seem to be a very smart dog. Every time we walk past their house or even drive past their house, the dog runs pretty quickly from wherever he is in the yard right up to the edge of the road before the length of his chain runs out and immediately jerks him by the collar right back into the yard. I mean, it looks painful. This dog basically chokes himself thinking he’s going to be able to run out into the road before he’s reminded, quite suddenly, that he can’t do that. But it seems like no matter how often he chokes himself, he never seems to learn. So this dog apparently thinks he’s free, but he’s not. His chain is very real, and as I’ve seen firsthand, very strong. And in a similar way, a lot of people today think they’re free, but they’re not. They’re actually enslaved by the sinful desires that are ruling their lives. 

The politician is enslaved by his desire for more power. The middle class stay-at-home mom is enslaved by her desire to one-up her friends. The businessman is enslaved by his desire for more money and more prestige. The woman who has a problem with eating too much is enslaved by her desire for more food. The woman who obsessively looks at her figure in the mirror is enslaved by her desire for a different body. The man who’s addicted to pornography is enslaved by his desire for explicit images. The couple who buys a house that’s way too expensive for their income is enslaved by their desire for a higher status. The parents that make their kids miserable by pushing them to unreasonably high academic standards are enslaved by their desire to make their family prominent. 

These are everyday people—“normal” people—the kind of people you encounter just about wherever you go. But they’re enslaved. And if you haven’t yet trusted Jesus and if you continue to live in a way that’s contrary to the way Jesus tells you to live, you also are enslaved. You’re not free. You’re a slave—a slave of sin. The sins you commit are both a symptom of the fact that you’re enslaved to sin, and they cause you to become progressively more enslaved as you continue to commit them. So if you’re going to be free, the first step—as the cliché goes—is to admit that you have problem, right? It’s kind of like at the AA meetings where people introduce themselves by saying, “Hi, my name’s so-and-so, and I’m an alcoholic.” Just like that, you have to come to the point where you say, “Hi, my name’s Drew or Nancy or whoever you are, and I’m a slave to sin.”

Know the Truth of Christ

Then after you’ve recognized your slavery, the second thing that has to happen is coming to know the truth of Christ. That’s the second step. And that comes straight from verse 32, where Jesus says that “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” You have to know the truth of Christ—the truth of the gospel. That involves coming to the realization that not only are you enslaved to sin, but there’s also nothing you can do to rescue yourself. Isn’t that part of slavery? You’re trapped—you’re being oppressed by sin—and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it in your own strength or through your own abilities. You need a Savior. And thankfully, that’s exactly what Jesus is. As he says in verse 36 about himself, “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” You see, Jesus took the punishment for all of your sins when he died on the cross. Because here’s the situation: every individual sin you’ve ever committed is committed against a God of infinite worth, infinite glory, and infinite holiness. And because of that, every sin deserves infinite punishment. But Jesus took all of that punishment on himself when he died on the cross. That’s how much he loves you. That’s how kind and compassionate he is. He took it all on himself so it wouldn’t be on you any longer. You were a slave, but he purchased your freedom. And then he secured your freedom when he resurrected from the dead. And you can experience that freedom if you’ll simply turn toward him and put your trust in him as the only one who can help you. 

But not only does Jesus offer us freedom from the consequences of sin, he also offers us freedom from the power of sin. And he does that by changing us from the inside out and actually making us into new people. In 2 Corinthians 5:17, Paul states, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” We’re new people. And as new people, we have the ability—for the first time in our lives—to be free from the power of sin and to live instead in a way that pleases the Lord. Because that’s what true freedom is. And this is so important to get. True freedom is living our lives according to the teachings of Jesus. It’s not a freedom from restrictions. It’s a freedom to embrace the right restrictions. In the words of Tim Keller, “Freedom, then, is not the absence of limitations and constraints but it is finding the right ones, those that fit our nature and liberate us.” And that’s kind of counterintuitive, so Keller then gives us an illustration to help us understand. He says, “A fish, because it absorbs oxygen from water rather than air, is only free if it is restricted and limited to water. If we put it out on the grass, its freedom to move and even live is not enhanced, but destroyed. The fish dies if we do not honor the reality of its nature. In many areas of life, freedom is not so much the absence of restrictions as finding the right ones, the liberating restrictions.” So a fish isn’t free on land. It’s dead, or soon to be dead. The only way that fish will be free—that is, free to live and move and be happy—is if it limits itself to the water. And in the same way, if we want to be free, we have to embrace the right limitations. And those limitations are given to us on a silver platter in the pages of the Bible. Jesus tells us how to live, and in so doing, he guides us to the path of true freedom. That’s how the truth sets us free.

So it’s a paradox. In order to be free, we have to make Jesus our Master. You and I are wired in such a way that we’ll always be mastered by something. We can’t help it. But Jesus is the only Master who will never be a tyrant. Sin will tyrannize you and oppress you to no end, but Jesus will only love you and show you how to be free in the truest sense of that word. His freedom is true freedom. 

Abide in the Word of Christ

And that leads us to the third step for experiencing the freedom Jesus offers. Not only do you have to recognize your slavery to sin and then come to know the truth of Christ, but number three, you have to abide in the word of Christ. In verse 31, Jesus says, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples.” So we have to do more than just profess faith in Jesus and profess that we embrace him as the path to true freedom. We have to actually “abide” in his teachings. 

Unfortunately, most of the people Jesus was talking to in this passage didn’t truly do that. Back up in verse 30, it says that “As [Jesus] was saying these things, many believed in him,” which sounds really good. It sounds like a positive thing. And then in verse 31, the text states that Jesus starts teaching who? “The Jews who had believed him.” So it sounds like they’re true Christians. But then in the second part of verse 31, we start to get a clue that something about their supposed “faith” may be deficient. Jesus finds it necessary to warn them, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples.” So it’s like he’s saying, “Okay. You say you’re my disciples. You’ve professed that you believe in me. But if you really believe in me, you’ll abide in my word.” And then, as we see, things go downhill from there. Jesus tells them how they can be free, they respond that they don’t need his freedom because they’re already free, and then Jesus calls them slaves to sin. And in the passage we’ll read next week, he actually says that they’re children of the devil. That’s pretty intense. 

But here’s the point: just because someone professes to be a disciple of Christ, that doesn’t mean they really are a disciple of Christ. In addition to professing him, they also have to abide in him. During my college years, I used to work at a Christian summer camp called Snowbird. This camp was nestled in the mountains of North Carolina, and it was a beautiful place. And for each of ten weeks during the summer, we would get around 400 students at this camp—all of them in either middle school or high school. And as these students would attend two worship services each day for five days, many of them would feel deeply moved emotionally. They would be in tears many times, and they were often ready to make an incredibly passionate commitment to Jesus. But there was only one problem. We knew the statistics, and statistically, the majority of them would go back home after that week of summer camp was over and be excited for a few days, maybe even a few weeks. But then they would revert right back to their old way of living. And I would even tell them as I counseled them and made sure they understood the gospel and tried to help them express repentance and faith toward Jesus—I would tell them that if this “salvation” didn’t last, then it wasn’t real. It’s only real if it lasts. And I would tell them to examine their lives in the weeks and months that would follow. And if they weren’t living differently, then it didn’t matter how emotional they got at summer camp—nothing really happened. And unfortunately, from reports I heard and from my encounters with them the next year at summer camp, many of them had still reverted back to their old way of living. They didn’t take to heart my words and Jesus’ words here in this text, that “if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples.” So we would be very justified in wondering whether they were truly saved to begin with. 

And listen, I know that’s a difficult thing to hear. Many of you probably know people who claim to be Christians and had what they believe to be some kind of conversion experience, but they’re not abiding in Jesus’ word. Maybe those people are in your own family. Maybe it’s your children. Is it really possible that they’re not truly saved? That’s a very difficult question to ask. And it’s important to remember that we don’t know their hearts. We can’t say for sure whether they’re saved or not. But I do know that this teaching is found not only in verse 31 of our main text but all over the rest of the New Testament as well. To give you just a few of the overwhelming number of other verses that teach this: Jesus says in Matthew 10:22, “The one who endures to the end will be saved.” Then he teaches in Matthew 24:12-13, warning that “the love of many will grow cold” but then saying again that “the one who endures to the end will be saved.” In John 15:6, Jesus states, “If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.” Then listen to what Paul says in Colossians 1:22-23. He says, “[Jesus] has now reconciled [you] in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel.” That’s one very important “if” we find in that verse. And there are an exhausting number of other examples we could point to that all teach this same thing. Fickle faith doesn’t save. You have to abide in Jesus’ word.

Conclusion

And if you’ll do that, you’ll be free. If you’ll abide in Jesus’ word, committing yourself to follow his teachings and making him your Master, you’ll be free. Maybe this morning, you’ve been feeling the oppression of sin in your life. To state it bluntly, sin has made you absolutely miserable. It’s left you broken and hurting and perpetually dissatisfied and empty. And yet, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t seem to shake yourself free from it. I have good news for you: Jesus can do for you what you can’t do for yourself. He can set you free. He can set you free from bitterness and shame and fear and pride. He can set you free from drug addiction, alcohol addiction, and pornography. He can set you free from your obsession with what other people think about you and with gaining a higher status in society. He can set you free from anything. 

But it all begins with you facing the very difficult truth that you’re enslaved. If you don’t have Jesus—if you’re not saved—you’re just as enslaved to sin as any drug addict walking the streets of Pittsburgh. You may look at the drug addict with pity as you see what their addiction has cost them and how, in a certain sense, it’s even robbed them of their humanity. It’s such as sad sight to see. But that’s you apart from Christ. You may not be robbing people’s vehicles or passed out in an alley, but you’re enslaved. You have to realize that. And just like drug addiction will one day kill the addict unless they do something to put a stop to it, your sin will destroy you. It’s like a spiritual cancer that’s eating through you inwardly, even as I speak. It’s metastasizing and making you more and more of a slave to its sinful desires. But Jesus can help you—he can save you—if you’ll simply look to him.

I love that song, “Come Ye Sinners.” It says:

Come ye sinners, poor and needy
Weak and wounded, sick and sore
Jesus ready stands to save you
Full of pity, love, and power

Come ye thirsty, come and welcome
God's free bounty glorify
True belief and true repentance
Every grace that brings you nigh

I will arise and go to Jesus
He will embrace me in His arms
In the arms of my dear Savior
Oh, there are ten thousand charms

Come ye weary, heavy-laden
Lost and ruined by the fall
If you tarry until you're better
You will never come at all

Let not conscience make you linger,
Nor of fitness fondly dream.
All the fitness He requireth
Is to feel your need of Him

I will arise and go to Jesus
He will embrace me in His arms
In the arms of my dear Savior
Oh, there are ten thousand charms

So, come to Jesus, and he will set you free. 

other sermons in this series