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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 it. But because I tell 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 yesterday's reading, Jesus continued His discourse to the leadership at the temple in Jerusalem. He is attending the Feast of Tabernacles, an autumn festival. It is the last year of His life. 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'?" 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." In yesterday's reading and commentary, we discussed what freedom Jesus offers. Jesus offers truth -- spiritual truth, an understanding of this basic gospel message that God loved the world so much that the Son was sent to us; He's not sent here for immediate judgment. He's sent, not to condemn, but to save. And that is the freedom we have in Christ. We are liberated from sin, from the lies that teach us that we are incapable of being the ones He calls to Himself. We are liberated in His love and light. To be a slave of sin is to be locked in behaviors that keep us limited and bound, that keep us from being the "sons of light" He calls us to be and to become. We are not free in such a state; we are bound and slaves to the limitations and lies of sin. Evil makes slaves of human beings; Christ sets free and teaches us about the choices we make.
"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." My study bible tells us that to be a child of Abraham, it's not enough to be simply related by blood. The kinship Jesus always speaks of is spiritual. Abraham's true children share his faith and virtue (Luke 3:8). My study bible says, "St. John Chrysostom teaches that our Lord wanted to detach the Jews from racial pride and to teach them no longer to place their hope of salvation in being of the race of Abraham's children by nature, but to come to faith by their own free will. Their idea that being a descendant of Abraham was enough for salvation was the very thing that prevented them from coming to Christ."
"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." My study bible tells us that here "proceeded" indicates not the Son coming eternally from the Father, but rather Christ sent from the Father to His Incarnation in the world, on the earth. Again, everything here is related to the core gospel message: God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten, so that we may have life eternal.
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 it. But because I tell 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." My study bible says that just as being a child of Abraham is based on sharing his attributes, likewise, those who reject Christ share the same attributes as the devil (in particular, a hatred for truth), and therefore are rightly called "children" of the devil. Kinship in the gospel message is all about a spiritual connection, a reality of shared attributes. We repeat our paraphrase of St. Athanasius, found throughout the history of the Church in different expressions: "God became man so that man could become God." We become children of God in the spiritual action of this Kingdom within us, bearing fruits that make us "like God" (for in this viewpoint, a child is one who shares attributes of the parent), who is love.
What are the attributes of God? St. Paul tells us what the fruits of the Spirit are within us, evidence or signs of participation in this spiritual kinship: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22). As an interesting note, if we look at these words in the Greek, we see that the words for kindness and goodness are essentially two kinds of what we might say are "goodness" in English. There's goodness in action: kindness. And there's the goodness that is an intrinsic quality, a kind of virtue that prompts the action of kindness. It's very interesting how the two are present together (they're really two separate words in Greek, χρηστότης and ἀγαθωσύνη). This word for kindness comes from a root that indicates value in a sense of usefulness, providing what is truly necessary. So what we have is the love in action that God declares necessary to the Kingdom, to the people of God. Interestingly enough, its root sounds exactly like the word for Christ when pronounced: Christos. It's even a variant spelling. And it also resembles (and sounds like) the word for gold: χρυσός, chrysos. So, what we're given here is in some the currency of the Kingdom. Love, kindness, and all the things that are based on this: all the things that we can be and become in all forms from the basic goodness (and that's such a dull word for so much beyond it!) of God, and what it means to be "God-like:" children of God. Love and truth are inseparable in this realm of the Kingdom that Jesus brings to the world, and that's something that we have to keep in mind. If goodness is the essence of God, and the root of all the things that we can become as children of God, then truth must be based in this root. It's a given, it seems to me, love and truth are rooted together in something that defies conventional "worldly wisdom." A merely material point of view tells us only that what we need are material things. We may even quantify how many times we're hugged or touched as sort of "signs" of love even if there is no love in them. This is a world whose truth without God, without love. Truth is not about manipulation. Manipulation is for magic tricks, to pull the wool over someone's eyes. God's love takes us to a different reality of truth, love, goodness, kindness, an impulse to mercy: these are the currencies of that world. They are the one thing necessary. They make us "like God." A lie is what tells us that we can't do this, we're not made of this same stuff. Or that it's not worth it. Or even that Christ is lying when He teaches what He teaches, or that St. Paul is lying when he writes about these fruits of the Spirit. The lie is that we're so much "less than" and that the only way to live our lives in a fallen sort of a world is to be just that limited, and not what Christ calls us to be. The lie is that we're really no good anyway, so we might as well not bother with all of this. The lie is that we're not worth it, when God gave us His Son in the grandest, greatest, most overwhelming validation that God believes we're worth it! What's evil is slavery to limitation, that refuses the salvation, the mission, this gospel message of love that calls us forward out of slavery to lies that tell us otherwise. What's it going to be? Whose child do we wish to be? Who are our mother, and brothers, and sisters? Whose heirs are we? Let us remember the fullness of this gift of love of truth, of Christ, and how it calls us to be "like Him."
