What Freedom is the Lord Offering?

“Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. (John 8:36 NKJV)

The Jews

They say they were never in bondage to any man.  How can they say that when they were in bondage in Egypt, in Babylon and they are now serving the Roman government?  But that is not the real problem.  They do not see that they are in bondage to sin.  It seems to me that they were in bondage to sin because they were still trying to please God by keeping the law of the Old Testament.  Yet the law never saved, it only condemned.  Paul reminds us, “Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin (Romans 3:20 NKJV).”

How does the Son make us Free?

When we trust in Christ we become sons in God’s family.  As I understand Paul, before we are saved we are slaves to sin, or in reality slaves to Satan.  After we are saved we are sons of God. Paul says, “But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed. Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:23-26 NKJV).”

Paul deals with this same concept in Romans 6 where he says, “But now having been set free from sin (Satan), and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:22-23 NKJV).”  In Romans 6, Paul makes it clear that the saved have changed masters; but, unfortunately, they don’t always act like the Lord is their master.  When we voluntarily sin after we are saved (and we do) we are not being loyal to our new master.  Romans 6:19, seems to imply that even though we have a new master, we don’t always serve Him.  The verse says, “I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness, and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness (Romans 6:19 NKJV).”

My Take on The Lord making us Free Indeed

Freedom always involves liberation from one master to serve another.  The Jews in their pride wanted to think that they were free, but, in fact, they had never been free.  They had many masters and their latest one was pride in keeping the law.  The whole of the New Testament is a treatise on how the law condemns but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.  The Jews needed to be freed from the ritual and legalism of the Old Testament so that they could serve the Lord in the newness of the Spirit. Paul says, “But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter (Romans 7:6 NKJV).”

My take on John 8:36 is this:  “So if the Lord shall make you free (from the bondage of the law), you shall be free indeed (that is, free to serve the Lord Himself).”  That doesn’t give us the license to sin, but the privilege of pleasing Christ. This is why I try to obey without question, New Testament explanations of how to please the Lord.  But having said that, I am not quite ready to greet my fellow believers with a holy kiss.  I hope the Lord will forgive me.

P.S.

The question might be asked (it has been asked by me), weren’t there some aspects of the Old Testament law that are carried over into the New Testament?  In Acts 15:29 we read that the gentiles were to abstain from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality.  Now these things were prohibited by the Old Testament law for good reason.  They were unhealthy and in some cases immoral practices.  But I think the key to this prohibition had to do with making sure that new Christians abstained from the practices of pagan idolatry rather than implying that some of the Old Testament law was applicable to their new lives in Christ.  Many of them had been saved out of pagan idolatry, and these four things were associated with the pagan worship of that day.

Bruce Collins

Meditation for the week of July 20, 2025

If you would like further conversation about the issues in these meditations, contact me at collinsbd@yahoo.com and I will try to accommodate you with a virtual Bible Study.