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Truth Will Set You Free Bible Verse

A Thousand Miles From Myth

The Truth Will Set You Free: Jesus, the Reformation, and John 8

These accounts of what happened in the life of Jesus are a thousand miles removed from myth say like Greek or Roman mythology shrouded in a distant past that does not connect with real history. The New Testament books are talking about real history. Pilate, the Roman governor, Herod the king from Galilee, Caiaphas, the High priest. These are not mythical figures. These people are known from history outside the Bible.

The accounts of the New Testament were all written while eyewitnesses were still alive. Pauls letters were written fifteen to thirty years after the death of Jesus. In one of them, he mentions the fact that 500 people had seen the risen Jesus at one time and that most of them were still alive . Most of the books, maybe all of them were written before AD 70, forty years after the death of Jesus. And even if John was written by the aged apostle around AD 90, the time is short.

What Does The Truth Will Set You Free Mean For Christians Today

The truth, which will set us free, still applies the same way today. Although today we dont seek safety from the corruption of the Roman empire, we still all suffer under the bondage of sin. Perhaps today we seek safety from debt, stress and anxiety, lack of discipline, or a number of other issues. If we are focused on these wordly needs, then we will likely limit a verse like the truth will set you free to the things we want or need. However, what Jesus taught us in John 8:32 hits our soul, not only our minds, and is greater than our emotions.

What Does It Mean To Know The Truth

Bringing a spiritual perspective to daily life

Christ Jesus said, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” . That’s a wonderful promise that can be taken seriously, especially when you feel the need for some sort of healing – whether the difficulty is injury, illness, financial hardship, a troubled relationship, or anything else. But just what does it mean to know the truth?

For something to be known, it really has to be true. You can’t know – correctly – that the earth is flat or that the sun revolves around the earth, although for centuries people thought they knew those fallacies to be accurate. They didn’t know they believed.

The Bible has much to say about truth and directly relates it to God. In fact, the definition of truth in “Harper’s Bible Dictionary” includes the statement that “God is truth.” And this is how He is understood in Christian Science, the Science by which Jesus healed. “Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures,” written by Mary Baker Eddy, frequently uses Truth as synonyms for God. Knowing the truth, then, is knowing God in some degree. Daily study and prayer to understand Him better are the best means to this end. He is and knows only good. The Bible says that God is “of purer eyes than to behold evil” . And you can find specific truths God knows about His creation, which will abolish any evil belief that is troubling you – as well as the physical effect of that belief.

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What Is Truth Pilate

It is often referred to as “jesting Pilate” or “What is truth?”, of Latin Quid est veritas? In it, Pontius Pilate questions Jesus’ claim that he is “witness to the truth” . Following this statement, Pilate tells the complainant authorities outside that he does not consider Jesus guilty of any crime.

The Human Tendency To Self

The truth will set you free John 8:32 Bible verse Scripture

What happened that makes him say in verse 45, You do not believe me? What happened was a refusal to hear his words , and a desire to kill him , all the while claiming to be children of Abraham and children of God and free from slavery, when, in fact, murder and a refusal to receive the truth are the marks of slavery to sin and Satan.

So what we have in verses 3347 is a painful and precious warning how we human beings tend to justify ourselves before God on the basis of our ethnic or religious or moral pedigree. In other words, Jesus is digging into the real condition of the human heart behind self-justifications that we come up with when confronted with Jesuss absolute claims on our lives. And he is naming the condition we are in, and it is frightening. The realities here are not funny, theyre not light, theyre not easy. They are dreadful and weighty and overpowering apart from Gods grace which Jesus is full of .

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Not Wackos But Witnesses

No these apostles of Jesus were not wacko they were witnesses. What we have in the New Testament is not mythology, but the Jesus as eyewitnesses remembered him. Richard Bauckham, former professor of New Testament at the University of St. Andrews, put it this way in his book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony: The Jesus the Gospels portray is Jesus as these eyewitnesses portrayed him, the Jesus of testimony . That is the conclusion of almost 500 pages of painstaking historical study.

One of those witnesses the one we are studying, John Bauckham devotes another whole book to, The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple: Narrative, History, and Theology in the Gospel of John. And the point of the book is that the author is an eyewitness and, He intends to be faithful to the history .

What Does Bridleth Not His Tongue Mean

Those, who bridle not their Tongue, are vain in their Pretences to Religion. James I. 26. If any man among you seem to be reli|gious, and bridleth not his tongue this man’s religion is vain. … The thing supposed is, that persons may seem to be religious, while yet, they have, in reality, no true religion.

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Our Attempt At Religious Justification

So we are not surprised then when we read in John 8:4142, We have one Father even God. Jesus said to them, If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. First, it was their ethnic connection with Abraham that justified them. Now it is their religion, their God. We are children of God! And Jesus says , No, you arent.

If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

Until the Son sets you free, you are not children in the house you are slaves. Verses 3435: 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. If you want to be a son a son of Abraham, a son of God, you must be born again into the family. A true Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not the letter . But, as it is now, you are a slave, not a son.

And the fact that you want to kill me, Jesus says , and wont receive the truth , shows who your father is. The devil was a murderer and a liar from the beginning . And in your sin, he has you by the throat. And you do his will. Just like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. . . . Because his own deeds were evil and his brothers righteous . And Cain was not a Jew.

Why Jewishness Matters In This Text

The Truth Shall Set You Free

Jewishness is the issue here because Jesus was Jewish and came to Jews to the lost sheep of the house of Israel . But suppose Jesus was presented among Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists or Animists or secular materialists the way he presents himself here: Only the Son can set you free from your bondage to sin. You must believe in the Son and abide in his word. Then you will truly be his disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Only through the Son, Jesus Christ, who came to give his life for sin and rise again only through the Son can you be set free. If Jesus were presented that way among any of those religious groups, the same response would happen as happened here unless God intervened with sovereign grace. Religion, ethnicity, and morality would be called in for self-justification.

Thats why Jewishness matters here. Its an illustration of the way all of us try to evade Jesus and his words of indictment that we are slaves of sin without him, and will perish if we dont believe . It isnt Jews only who dont want to hear that they are slaves its all humans who dont want to hear it. Im offended if you tell me I am a slave. And the point of this text is that when we are offended like this, we will use any religious or ethnic or moral self-justification we can.

Look how it happens, and pray that you will be able to spot this sort of thing in your own life, if you are ever tempted to do it.

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What Full Freedom Is

Now let me step back relate this kind of liberation to the freedom that we really long for. It may be that you hear all this and still say, Im already free. Its you Christians who are all tied up in moral knots. I just do what I feel like doing. And Im thankful for a country where I can do it. And thats all the freedom I care about.

So lets end this message by making as clear as we can what full freedom is. Free indeed, Jesus says. Thats what he alone can give. So what other kinds of freedom are there? What freedom comes short of free indeed?

What Does The Truth Shall Set You Free Mean

Beginning in John 8:12, Jesus teaches in the Temple treasury, beginning with the declaration that He is the light, and the people walk in darkness. As happens throughout the Gospels, the Jews question Him.

Its like theyre having two different conversations. Weve all been in that situation, havent we? One side cant seem to make out what the other is saying, their perspective, even though they are using the same language, and theres no communication.

This is what happens here. The teaching continues, and Jesus makes the two different perspectives clearIm from above and youre from below. Jesus is from Heaven and they are from the Earth, this world of corruption and death.

Because of the vastly different perspectives , the Jews are more confused and ask an important questionWho are you?

Identity is the most central and revolutionary truth we must wrestle with if we are to go from bondage to freedom. Yet it is the most difficult to address because we cling to our identities more than anything in this world our racial, national, political, gender, sexual, religious designations are the place from which we understand everything else. When our identity gets challenged, it offends us to the extreme, and we are lost and hopeless. It is like deathit scares us. We avoid it at all costs.

Jesus had already answered that question of identityHe is the Son of God. Jesus then tells them that they will understand who He is when He is lifted up on the cross. When He is killed.

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A Biblical Example Of Truth And Freedom

At the beginning of this same chapter in John, Jesus encountered a woman who had been caught in the very act of adultery and brought before Him for judgment . The scribes and Pharisees were hoping to trick Jesus into saying something they could officially accuse Him of, but He maintained control of the situation and turned it into this beautiful picture of spiritual freedom.

When they reminded Jesus that the Law required she be stoned, His response was simply, Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her .

This simple declaration reminded these religiously learned men that they were all living under the same bondage to sin as the woman.

When her accusers had all slunk away, Jesus spoke two things to her:

  • Then neither do I condemn you.
  • Go now and leave your life of sin.
  • He freed her from the derision of her accusers, the condemnation of the Law, and the domination of sin. Were not told what happened to her after this, but I dont believe for a moment that her life was ever the same.

    Jesus Christ, the truth, frees us from the damnation of sin and the power it has over our lives, just as He did for this woman and countless others. And if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed .

    Tensions Between Jews And Christians

    The truth will set you free John 8:32 Bible verse Scripture

    And, of course, there was hostility. Recall, for example, that Jesus said in Mark 13:9: They will deliver you over to councils, and you will be beaten in synagogues. And recall that Saul the Pharisee , before his conversion, was breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord . . . so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem . So the relationship between Jews and Christians after the days of Jesus on earth were very strained.

    Its a great sadness that Christian teachers would slander the word of God.

    And no one can seriously deny that in the history of the church there have been horrible centuries of Christian hostilities toward the Jewish people. When I was preparing my message on Robert Murray McCheyne for the pastors conference, for example, I read the journals of his trip to Israel in 1839. Several times he groaned at how hard evangelism was among the Jewish people because of these hostilities: The Jews mistrusted the Christians, especially the Roman Catholics, because of the indignity and persecution they had suffered at their hands for centuries .

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    Bible Commentary For John : 32

    Wesley’s Notes for John 8:32

    8:32 The truth – Written in your hearts by the Spirit of God, shall make you free – From guilt, sin, misery, Satan.

    People’s Bible Notes for John 8:32

    Joh 8:32 And ye shall know the truth. Disciples are learners. Their object is to know the truth. The way to know the truth is to obey the truth. The truth shall make you free. The Gospel obeyed, frees–frees from the yoke of Satan, from spiritual task-masters, from fear, fills the soul with hope and the free spirit of a son who serves the Father from love.

    Sin Enslaves In Two Ways

    So sin enslaves in two ways. And, therefore, freedom comes in two forms. First, sin enslaves us by producing compelling desires. Sin enslaves by making anything look more desirable than Jesus. Thats what sin is: desiring something above Jesus and then acting on it.

    And the second way sin enslaves is that it eventually damns us. Unless something intervenes, it leads to hell. I call this slavery because someone might say, Im fine with desiring things more than Jesus. Sounds free to me. But you wouldnt say that if you saw clearly that the end of that road was destruction.

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    A Walloping Statement: Everyone Enslaved To Sin

    Let him speak to you about freedom. In John 8:32, he says, You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. The people answered him, just as some of us might: We are already free! They say in verse 33, We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, You will become free? They are focusing on some aspects of freedom, but not the one Jesus has in mind.

    Sin is desiring something above Jesus and then acting on it.

    So Jesus clarifies in verse 34, Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. Now that is an absolutely walloping statement. We need several weeks just to unpack the foundations and implications of it. But we dont have time. We will just say it, and let his word stand as one who knows us better than we know ourselves. Everyone sins. Therefore, Jesus is saying that everyone is a slave of sin. This means that sin is not just a bad act, but a power underneath in our hearts that makes us do back acts. We sin because we are sinners.

    So our slavery is slavery to this power inside of us. There may be kinds of freedom that we can make for ourselves, but not this one. Thats Jesuss point. This slavery is too deep. And all of us have it. Jesus alone can set us free. So he says in verse 36, So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

    A Prayer To Know The Truth That Sets You Free

    The Truth Will Set You Free (Aliston’s Bible Study)

    Dear Lord, I praise You for Your holiness. All Your ways are good, right and true. In our unfaithful world, only You offer us the truth. Open my eyes to understand Your truth and apply it to my life. I pray for a renewed love for Your Holy Word, where the truth that sets us free is found. In Jesus Name, Amen.’

    This article is part of our larger resource library of popular Bible verse phrases and quotes. We want to provide easy to read articles that answer your questions about the meaning, origin, and history of specific verses within Scripture’s context. It is our hope that these will help you better understand the meaning and purpose of God’s Word in relation to your life today.

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