Freedom From The Blinders

February 28, 2011

In a recent reading from John 8:31-38 I noticed a few things that really stood out to me. The passage is always quoted using the cliche notion of “The truth will set you free”, but there is so much more than that in this passage.

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you abide in my word,
you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set
you free.” 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’?”
Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin
is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son
remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that
you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds
no place in you. I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what
you have heard from your father.”

(John 8:31-38 ESV)

The one thing that stands out the most to me is the line that the Jews say to Jesus. They respond to his offer of freedom with, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?” What stands out is that these Israelites seem to think they have never been enslaved.  Its funny how they seem to have forgotten the time they spent in Egypt, and in exile with the Babylonians. And more so they seem to not see that their country is occupied by the Romans at the very time they say these things. It’s no wonder most Jews at the time didn’t recognize Jesus as the Messiah because they didn’t even realize they needed to be delivered from anything.

We must take our blinders off and realize that when we sin we are indeed enslaved. But Jesus comes as one who will save us from our sin. Jesus offers us freedom. Sin puts us in slavery but Jesus frees us from the slavery of sin.

The problem is that when we are freed from sin, we are not free to sin again. Paul writes in Romans 6:18 that once we have been set free from the slavery of sin, we become slaves to righteousness. The truth is that if we are not slaves of righteousness we are still slaves to sin.

The good news is that God’s grace is what we need in order to become slaves to righteousness. Without help that comes from God we can not overcome sin. The common mistake we make as Christians is that we try to Undermine the consequences of our sin with the application of grace. The truth is that we can never undermine the consequences of our sin, even with grace. The good news is that we can overcome the consequence of sin with the application of grace

Again I say, We can overcome the consequences of our sin with the application of grace!!! And that is good news.

The choice that we must then make is whether we will take our blinders off and see the sin that traps us. Then we can choose to accept our Messiah and allow him to set us free.