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They answered Him, "We are Abraham's descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can you say, 'You will be made free.'?"
Jesus answered them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. I know that you are Abraham's descendants, but you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you. I speak what I have seen with My Father, and you do what you have seen with your father."
They answered and said to Him, "Abraham is our father." Jesus said to them, "If you were Abraham's children, you would do the works of Abraham. But now you seek to kill Me, a Man who has told you the truth which I heard from God. Abraham did not do this. You do the deeds of your father." Then they said to Him, "We were not born of fornication; we have one Father -- God." Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God, nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me. Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word. You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell you the truth, you do not believe Me. Which of you convicts Me of sin? And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me? He who is of God hears God's words; therefore you do not hear because you are not of God."
- John 8:33-47
In recent readings, Jesus has been speaking in the temple to the leadership. They tried to seize Him and arrest Him, but this has failed. He has been giving them a discourse on His identity. In yesterday's reading, Jesus said to them again, "I am going away, and you will seek Me, and will die in your sin. Where I go you cannot come." So the Jews said, "Will He kill Himself, because He says, 'Where I go you cannot come'?" And He said to them, "You are from beneath; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins." Then they said to Him, "Who are You?" And Jesus said to them, "Just what I have been saying to you from the beginning. I have many things to say and to judge concerning you, but He who sent Me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I heard from Him." They did not understand that He spoke to them of the Father. Then Jesus said to them, "When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing of Myself; but as My Father taught Me, I speak these things. And He who sent Me is with Me. The Father has not left Me alone, for I always do those things that please Him." As He spoke these words, many believed in Him. Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, "If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
They answered Him, "We are Abraham's descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can you say, 'You will be made free.'?" Again, they take His words at their surface value. This is a device used often in John's Gospel, when Jesus uses words to teach of deeper meanings and values. The leadership turns to Abraham to express their identity as free men.
Jesus answered them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. I know that you are Abraham's descendants, but you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you. I speak what I have seen with My Father, and you do what you have seen with your father." Jesus proclaims His doctrine of freedom: true freedom is freedom from sin. Moreover, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. This tells us something about the "ruler of this world" and what kind of regime and power that evil uses, in contrast to the love of God. We are invited into sonship by adoption, through the Son who makes us free -- and therefore, the Son makes us "free indeed." Jesus contrasts fatherhood between that of God the Father and the one who makes slaves of others. Freedom is inextricable from this struggle between two choices, one Way or another.
They answered and said to Him, "Abraham is our father." Jesus said to them, "If you were Abraham's children, you would do the works of Abraham. But now you seek to kill Me, a Man who has told you the truth which I heard from God. Abraham did not do this. You do the deeds of your father." Who are Abraham's true descendants? For what is Abraham known, and how did he become the Patriarch of the people of God? If they therefore do not do as Abraham did, who is their father? My study bible quotes St. John Chrysostom: "[Jesus] wished to detach them from this racial pride and to deflate their excessive conceit, and to persuade them no longer to place their hope of salvation in Abraham, or in nobility of race according to nature, but in that according to free will. For, this was the thing that prevented them from coming to Christ; namely, they thought their descent from Abraham sufficed for their salvation."
Then they said to Him, "We were not born of fornication; we have one Father -- God." Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God, nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me. Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word." My study bible says, "They are not able to listen to His word because they are not willing to learn from Him. Spiritual truth can be genuinely heard only if there is willingness to know God and to do His will."
"You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell you the truth, you do not believe Me. Which of you convicts Me of sin? And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me? He who is of God hears God's words; therefore you do not hear because you are not of God." Jesus speaks of our basic choices in life. How are we going to hear? What do we love and what do we worship? It's a link here between whether we love truth, or we do not. What do our hearts desire most? Jesus alludes to their desire to murder Him, to suppress what He is saying and doing, to rid themselves of His presence. And what is their motive to do this? He asks, "Which of you convicts Me of sin?" for an important reason. Their desires do not stem from a love of truth, nor a love of true justice. In this way, they are not like their ancestor Abraham; they do not do as he did.
Jesus ties in truth and lies together with the love of God the Father, the willingness to commit sin and therefore be a slave of sin, with murder, and with the capacity for embracing true freedom. All of these things are tied together and bound by an understanding of what we love in our hearts. There's a song written by Bob Dylan that says, "Gotta serve somebody." Succinctly put, the point is that we are creatures all made with a capacity for worship, and one way or another we have to choose what we really love, and where our true treasure is, what we are truly going to worship in our hearts. If we don't do this consciously, we will engage unconsciously in things we hold dear, things we worship. In the case of the leadership, there are reasons that have nothing to do with justice or truth why they wish to purge Jesus from their midst. He's a threat to their authority. He criticizes the ways in which they do things. (See the cleansing of the temple; in John's Gospel this becomes one of His first acts of ministry.) When anything gets in the way of the love of God in our hearts, we begin to serve that goal. Here, it is the jealous guarding of position that is rooted in their compromises with integrity: they will believe lies about Jesus, they wish to murder Him, they will seek to justify themselves even by avoiding what is written in the Law which they are supposed to uphold for the people. When Jesus speaks of their "father" who was a murderer from the beginning, who is a liar and the father of lies, He's referring to the alternative to God's love and truth, and what we serve when we put obstacles to that love in our hearts. We can become a slave to this type of sin: where vanity and selfishness and envy and arrogance and all the whole host of things that cloud our capacity to find where God would lead us get in the way of living a righteous life, then we are slaves to something that is unwilling to allow us the freedom to make the choice for love and truth. We limit ourselves by such choices, and fall into a trap which refuses to let in the light that would take us beyond ourselves, and broaden the persons that we are with love and with understanding and wisdom. This is the trap of the "slavery" Jesus is speaking of here. With these limiting passions there is no compromise, but with God there is love and forgiveness and a gentle leading forward into a deeper sonship. Let us consider that the examples that we find in the Gospels are here not because they simply want to tell us a story about other people, but because we are vulnerable to the same things reported here. Our slavery can come in all sorts of forms depending on circumstances. Therefore let us not separate ourselves from the very contemporary lessons of relying on an ancestor or a heritage or even an environment to claim that we are in the light of truth. Let us instead remember that to carry the cross is an act for which each of us is responsible. To choose what we will truly serve and worship, to guard our own hearts with truth and the humility to accept it and to "change our minds" when necessary, is something each one of us must always do.
