Freedom
So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.”
John 8:31-32 (NASB)
One of the most famous lines in all of Christendom, spoken from nearly every pulpit and proclaimed to every man or woman of God who seeks the life of God: You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.
In fact, this simple phrase isn’t just spoken in the world of Christians, but even in the world. To people facing unjust accusations, many will say, “Truth will out,” or “Stick with the truth”, meaning that the truth will always reveal itself, and bring about it’s nature. Parent’s tell their children to “tell the truth” and even warn them that their punishments for misbehavior will be much worse if they lie about it! We are a culture that, though in the midst of dishonesty and sin, demand a respect for the truth.
In a world ruled by sin, we have not failed to appreciate the power of the truth, as a culture. Yes, our politics, and even our citizenship, is plagued by dishonesty and manipulation; but even in the midst of an atmosphere of dishonor, we believe that there is freedom in the truth. Why? Because its true! Truth is freedom!
In itself, this is great news! However, when you firmly realize what I am going to spend this chapter talking about, what began as great news will become revolutionary!!!
Before we go any further, or examine your life and faith in any way, let’s examine this whole idea of truth.
What Is Truth?
The Websters dictionary has several definitions for the word truth. For instance, one of its definitions is sincerity or honesty. Another being an established or verified fact. My absolute favorite, however, is: Conformity with fact.
Many times, when we think of the word truth, our thoughts immediately go to our testimony (meaning what we say). We think about honesty and dishonesty; we think about white lies and goody-two-shoes and all that jazz. We daydream about times we got away with telling a lie, and even times when we failed and had to suffer the consequences. I don’t know why it is, but when we think of this whole idea of truth, it seems that for most of us, our minds focus in on the definition of the word honesty, rather than truth.
It is for this reason, in my opinion, that so many of us have failed to come into the freedom that accompanies truth. We don’t understand what truth really is. Which is why I want to help you understand it a little better.
Rather than associating the idea of truth with the idea of honesty, I want to challenge you to associate it with the concept of reality. When Jesus said that we would come to know the truth and the truth would set us free, He wasn’t talking about honesty at all. He was saying that you will come to understand reality, or God’s original design, and would be free from the results of living life under a broken and inaccurate reality, or design.
Does this make sense? God created mankind, and all of creation, to exist in a certain way. When sin and death entered the world, mankind and creation were subjected to a lesser, and broken, reality. Man no longer lived in the nature of God. He was no longer holy, and pure, and filled with power. Creation no longer obeyed him. He worked hard and received little fruit and failed to know God. This became man’s reality. What Jesus was teaching is that when we come to really understand the way God actually designed things, and embrace that, we will no longer be subject to the lesser and broken reality of sin and death. We will once again know God. We will once again live in holiness and purity. We will once again walk in authority over creation. We will once again be what we were created to be.
The truth, or an accurate understanding of God’s design, has power to set us free from every result of walking in a tainted reality.
With this understanding, the question becomes: If we are born into a broken and faulty reality, how do we come into the kind of truth that sets us free? Where does this truth exist?
“I am the Way, the Truth, and the life”
John 14:6b (NASB)
God created humanity to exist in Him and to be ambassadors for Him in the earth. When we submitted ourselves to the inappropriate reality that the serpent made available to us, we forfeited our place in God. We no longer existed in God, but found our identity in ourselves. We made ourselves free from truth, and slaves to a reality of sin and wickedness, which obligated us to make decisions and to live our lives according to the way of sin and wickedness. Do you see the dilemma here? Being free from God’s design (which is righteousness), and slaves to sin, we were unable to see truth.
Where God allowed us to have the ability to reject His ways, sin left us no such option. Once a slave to sin, we were stuck. There was no way for us to break through the veil of our perceived reality. There was no way to freedom; no option of rejecting our flesh and coming into the truth. Even those who God set aside as His own found themselves unable to effectively reject the reality of sin and embrace the way of God. They tried their hardest. They were even aware that they would face God’s discipline when they sinned, but they continued to sin regardless.
Even having the ways of God written out for them in the law, and being provided with the blood of animals as a covering for their sin, they continued on, fighting for freedom but being unable to completely attain it.#
In sin, we were slaves to a broken world; unable to return to the ways and design of God. So what did God do? He sent His only Son to do two things: To come into the world and reveal the nature of God to a people who, long in sin, had forgotten what it really meant to be like God; and to ultimately die at the hands of man, shedding His blood for the remission of sin.
Without going into why His blood set us free from sin (assuming you already know the story of the gospel), let me say that Jesus is the truth. He is the image of God (Colossians 1:15) and a complete account of the true design of God. Jesus is the truth. When He said that those who continue in His Word would come to know the truth and the truth would make them free, Jesus was saying that we would come to know Him for who He was and would find freedom in that revelation of Himself.
Intimacy with Jesus is our freedom.
I believe there is great need for the body of Christ to understand that their freedom does not exist in theological knowledge, but in the unveiling, and drawing near, of the Person of Jesus Christ.# We must resist the urge to jump into the Word with the intention of unveiling the secrets it holds, and must instead jump into the Word with the intention of unveiling the person of Jesus.
Unveiling The Person of Jesus
You know, going back to our opening text, a lot of people assume that Jesus was talking to His disciples when He announced that those who continue in His Word would know the truth and be set free. I mean, He said, “If you continue in My Word”. It seems safe to conclude that He was talking to people who were already in His Word. Right? Nah!
If you read the text carefully, you will notice that the very people He was talking to were offended by what He said! Look:
They (notice it says they, not ‘and the Jews who didn’t believe’) answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been enslaved to anyone; how is it that You say, ’You will become free’?”
John 8:33 (NASB - Parenthesis added)
Jesus wasn’t talking to His disciples. He was talking to the very Jews who had, moments before, accused Him of lying about who He was after trying to trick Him into condemning Himself. You see, they brought Him a woman who had been caught committing adultery, asking Him what they should do. You all know the story. They wanted Him to get His hands dirty and to give them reasons to accuse Him; but instead, He caused them all to understand their own sinfulness and to leave the woman alone. You all know the line, “He who is without sin may cast the first stone…”
First they tried to trick Him, but when that failed they accused Him of making Himself out to be more than He was. This is where it got interesting. At their accusation, Jesus began to help them understand who He really was. With the exception of the cross, He spoke to them of the gospel that has since come to change the entire planet!! He told them that He had not come to judge them, nor to brag about Himself, but that God testified for Him. He boldly declared that He was one with God and that one day, He would return to the Father and that, catch this, the Jews listening would die in their sin.
Jesus, in short, announced to these accusing Jews that He was the Messiah, and that only those who believed in Him would see eternity with God. He was not talking to His disciples, He was talking to His accusers. However, as our opening text suggests…some of them believed Him. Which brings a whole new meaning to His use of the word “continue“.
In my time as a youth leader and preacher of the Word, I have had many, many occasions where I have preached the gospel and someone has believed in Jesus, only to go back to the lifestyle they lived before. Some would argue that if they turned back to the world, they must of never believed in the first place. I would argue that maybe it is not that they never believed, but that they never continued in the Word of Christ.
Jesus openly confronted His accusers with the truth of who He was, and some of them believed Him. However, that wasn’t enough. Jesus went on to say, “Continue in My Word, and then you will be disciples of mine…”
The question was not whether or not they believed that He was who He said He was, it was whether or not they were willing to submit themselves to His teaching and come to know Him for who He was.
Friends, I want you to understand that the qualifier for discipleship was not believing that He was, but coming into who He was. Why do I say that? Simple: He was talking to the Jews! These were people who had probably spent their entire lives learning and obeying the Word. They may not have been as educated as the Pharisee’s, Sadducees or the Rabbi’s; but they were probably still more educated in the Word of God than almost any other people on the planet, seeing as most people groups did not serve God in that day. They knew the Bible. Therefore, I can’t logically believe that Jesus was saying, “If you continue in the Bible, you will be disciples of Mine.”
There are millions of Jews all over the world who read the Bible and are headed to hell. In fact, Jesus told that very group of Jews that they would die in their sins. It couldn’t be that reading the Bible qualified them as disciples of Jesus. Therefore we have to take another look at the text. We have to ask ourselves, what exactly, did Jesus say?
He said, “If you continue in My word…”
The qualifier was not the Word, but rather, His word. Once again, it is not about education, but about relationship. It is not the knowledge we gain from the Word of God that set’s us free, but the understanding we find about the nature of God that drives us into the Person of God and clarifies His purpose and design for our lives and for creation itself. It is as we cherish the Word of God, as a revelation of Jesus and not as an educational textbook, that we come into a full revelation of who He is, and we can be (as Websters put it) conformed to fact…
Whoever you are, and wherever you are in life as you read this book, know that I am not telling you that if you want to know Jesus you have to work harder at reading the Bible the right way. That’s not what I’m saying at all. What I am saying is that if you have actually come into a genuine relationship with Jesus Christ, your life will reflect it in how you approach the knowledge of God and in the fervor with which you do that.
If you want to test your faith to see if you are in the Lord, you can do so by observing your habits when it comes to the knowledge of God. Those who have come to be intimately attached to the Lord, which is a fruit of salvation, begin to naturally approach the knowledge of God with a new hunger, and a deep desire to know God.
It is no longer about learning doctrine and growing in stature and wisdom, but about knowing God for who He is. Yes, they do grow in wisdom. They do grow in understanding. Their theological and doctrinal intellect does indeed expand…but their theology and their doctrine and their study is all centered around this one concept: Hunger for God.
For those of you who find yourselves uninterested in the Word, let me ask you to please not take offense and make excuses. It is our nature, when confronted with our shortcomings to immediately find justification or to shift blame.
I’m just not a reader. The Bible isn’t modern enough. I couldn’t find a translation I liked. No one told me that the Bible was supposed to teach me about Jesus, I thought it was supposed to be about theology.
Friends, all of these seem like just reasons to be a less than passionate reader of the Word; but I would challenge all of them with a single thought: What happens to a baby who chooses not to drink milk? He dies.
No one has to teach an infant the importance of drinking. All they have to do is hand the baby a breast, he’ll drink. Well God has done the same for us. He gave us Jesus, and offered us life at His side, and then He handed us the Word to bring us revelation of Jesus, so that we can enter into, and sustain, that life. The Word is our lifeline to God and when we are genuinely born into this life of faith, no one has to teach us the importance of drinking. They simply have to hand us the book and give us a sip. When we’ve tasted of life, our spirit will begin to hunger for more.
Friends, hunger for the Word is naturally developed by everyone who has genuinely come into the life of God; and with that hunger for the Word comes revelation of God that draws us deeper and deeper and deeper into who He is, conforming us to His nature and enabling us to return to the design of God, freeing us from the reality we have come to know as normal.
Sin begins to die, addictions dry up, worldly thinking disappears and we begin to naturally walk and talk and think holy and pure. Who we were created to be is who we begin to naturally become.
The point I am making, and that many Christians fail to grasp, is that the freedom that comes from embracing this grand and powerful revelation of Jesus is not something that must be strove for. When we are genuinely connected to Christ, we will naturally seek out who He is, and will find freedom in that revelation. Meaning that anyone who lacks a real interest in knowing who God is, and doesn’t seem interested in seeking the truth of God, has never genuinely been connected to the life of God.
Maybe they, like the Jews Jesus addressed in our opening text, believe He really is who He says He is. Maybe they really do believe He is the Son of God. Maybe they even believe He died for their sins and opened the window of heaven for them to see God. Maybe they do believe…but they have not continued in His Word. They have not sought Him out and feasted upon His flesh (His Word, being Himself, is the bread of life); and their lack of hunger for a revelation of who Jesus really is identifies them as people who are not intimately attached to Him, and therefore not a part of Him.
I do not say any of this to condemn you or even to convict you if what I am saying applies to you. I am saying it because I desperately desire for you to know God if you don’t, and to not waste even one more minute with a faith that isn’t attached to the life of God.
For many of you, you are not far from the life of God, and just need that little nudge. Let this be it! Go past simply believing He is, and seek out who He is!
Closing Thoughts:
If you were paying close attention to what I have been teaching you in this chapter, you will notice that I use the “Word of God” and the “knowledge of God” interchangeably. That is because I’m not just talking about the Bible! The majority of Christians do not get saved and instantly crack open their Bibles and read for a week straight. Some do, but its certainly the exception and not the rule. What I am telling you is that when you are connected to the life of God, you will begin to desperately desire to know God, and that desire will lead you to embrace every facet for understanding God that is available to you. Meaning that you will find yourself devouring the Word and spending as much time as possible in His presence. It isn’t something you have to learn to want. You will just naturally begin to desperately desire to know God, and you wont reject the tools He has given you to satisfy that desire.
You will find yourself praying like never before, without having to struggle for words or feeling like your talking to the air. You will find that worship will become natural for you, and you wont feel like its weird or difficult to connect to God. The Bible will have greater significance for you, and you’ll begin to want to read it, because when you do, you will find life! Your time and your thoughts will be focused on God, and who He is; rather than on what you desire in life or the road your going down.
Even more exciting, as this life progresses as I have described, freedom will never be far behind. I have seen dozens of programs designed to help people get out of sin and dangerous habits; and more often than not, they fail. I have seen person after person get “freedom” in their programs and recovery groups, only to spend their lives in a cycle of falling into it again and again and again, never finding lasting freedom. It isn’t so with God.
When you come into the life of God, and begin to really seek out the knowledge of Jesus Christ, you will find that God’s design for your life is clearly displayed in who He is, and you will naturally begin to conform to fact. Without striving and contending, holiness will become your desire as you seek out the truth of God. You wont want the same things, you wont seek the same things…you wont be the same thing.
You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.
So, with this in mind, let me ask you a couple of questions: Are you free? Have you grown in your understanding of the truth of God since being “saved”? Are you desperate to know God? Do you find yourself wanting His Word? Wanting to pray and worship? Longing to find Him and love Him for who He is? Has sin become a thing of the past? Do you walk in holiness and purity? Do you know who God is, and what He is like?….are you like Him?
If the answer to these questions is yes, by all means, celebrate with me as a brother or sister! However, if you have to ignore the truth about yourself in order to maintain a good conscience…consider that today is the day to get right with God. Don’t ignore the truth for even one more second. Cry out to God and ask for a drink of His life!! Embrace the truth of God, and begin to seek Him out for who He is. Let’s pray:
Father, search my heart and tell me, am I Yours? I desire to know, with all truth, am I connected to who You are? Or am I still held captive to a very compelling lie? Help me to honestly search out my life and to face the truth. In Jesus’ name, give me revelation.
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