Free indeed
May 23
John 8: 34Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. 35Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. 36So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
Whenever Jesus emphasises a point by starting with the words I tell you the truth, then we need to sit up and pay attention. Jesus does that right here. He says that everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now everybody knows what a slave is. A slave is someone who has no rights of their own, but belongs entirely to someone else and you must obey every command that he is given at his master. His freedom has been removed and he no longer has any free will of his own to do as he likes, but his entire life must be spent serving the will of someone else. And Jesus says that everyone who sins is a slave to sin.
You may ask yourself the question therefore “do I sin”? Well the question of whether or not you sin has got to do with your place in Christ at not so much about the actual things you do on a day-to-day basis. We know that Romans 3:23 tells us that all have sinned. So surely it would be accurate to say that we all are slaves to sin?
This now comes down to the teaching of Jesus about our place and the outstanding in Christ. We read in 1 John 1:9 that “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”. So to truly understand what happens to us when we come to Christ in repentance, we need to realise that when we are in Christ we are truly a new creature. We have already been forgiven for all sins that we have done in the past as well as all the sins that we or currently going to commit today and all those sins that we will still commit in the future. This is a truly amazing thing about being born again. Some people who do not love Jesus may be tempted to say “I am free to sin whenever I want because I know that my sins have already been forgiven”. Paul tells us that this would be making a mockery of the grace that God extends to us.
Here is the truth.If son sets you free you will be free indeed.