Slaves to Sin

March 12 Slaves to Sin John 8:31-47

“(Jesus) commends the knowledge of the Gospel from the fruit we receive from it or, which is just the same, from its effect; namely, it restores us to freedom. This is an incomparable blessing. Hence it follows that there is nothing more excellent or desirable than the knowledge of the Gospel.” John Calvin “Commentary on John” Vol. 4:221

Among those who listened to Jesus, many must have believed that hell would be closed to the people of Israel. It was believed that, should any Jew be found at the gates of hell, Abraham would meet them there and restore them to their rightful place. Jews were to be saved from the terrors of hell solely because of their birthright as descendants of Abraham. Often, this would be couched in terms of slavery. No true slave could be a slave to sin and death because the Jews were the chosen people of God. Though, physically, they had been slaves to many oppressors, from Pharaoh to the King of Babylon, spiritually they had been declared free. Abraham was their father; how could they be slaves?

And yet they were slaves, just as we can be enslaved by our captivity to the seduction of sin. We may think ourselves free, but our actions declare otherwise. We are held fast in our sins. Freedom eludes us. The only way for us to know true freedom is for us to give ourselves willingly to Jesus Christ, effectively becoming His slaves! Yet, in this voluntary constraint we find our greatest freedom, for to know Christ is to know the truth, and it is the truth that sets us free.

Jesus’ words make it clear that it is not just any truth that can liberate us. This is not an aphorism that can be applied generally, especially when the words are stripped of spiritual content. It may be enlightening to know the truth, but it is not really liberating unless the truth we receive is the truth about Jesus. It is in recognizing Him as the Word made flesh, the Redeemer come from the Father, that we are able to loose the bonds that hold us and gain true liberty as the sons and daughters of God.

It is tempting for us to make the same mistake as those who heard Jesus two thousand years ago, and to assume that we have no need of further freedom, that we shall be turned away from the gates of hell, almost as a birthright. Although we no longer believe that salvation is attained on the basis of race, we sometimes behave as though that were the case. The Jews pointed to Abraham; we may point to ancestors who pioneered a local church, or to a distant relative who was a preacher. But we are not saved from our sins for any reason other than our belief in Jesus as Savior and Lord, that is, by our dependence upon the mercy of God through the finished work of Christ.

Go back to the beginning of the text. Notice that Jesus was speaking to those who believed in Him. Does this mean that He condemned those who already believed? Not at all. They may have believed that Jesus was a prophet, or even that He was the Messiah; but the text does not necessarily mean that they accepted Him as the Son of God, at one with the Father. Their belief was partial. They failed because they only believed what they wanted to believe. They closed their ears to God’s self-revelation in Christ, and so remained slaves. And we will remain slaves, if we choose to cherry-pick the Gospel, instead of falling to our knees before God’s only Son.

For further reading: Psalm 90