Before we leave John chapter 8, let’s look at verses 34-36 and 42-47. We would do well to review cross-references for these verses, particularly verse 34.
Romans 6:16: Do you not know that when you offer yourselves as obedient slaves, you are slaves to the one you obey, whether you are slaves to sin leading to death, or to obedience leading to righteousness?
Romans 6:20: For when you were slaves to sin, you were free of obligation to righteousness.
Romans 7:14: We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.
2 Peter 2:19: They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves to depravity. For a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him.
Galatians 5:1: It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not be encumbered once more by a yoke of slavery.
1 John 3:8: The one who practices sin is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the very start. This is why the Son of God was revealed, to destroy the works of the devil.
William Barclay writes, “Josephus writes of the followers of Judas of Galilee who led a famous revolt against the Romans: ‘They have an inviolable attachment to liberty, and they say that God is to be their only Ruler and Lord’ (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 18: 1, 6). When the Jews said that they had been no man’s slaves they were saying something which was a fundamental article of their creed of life. And even if it was true that there had been times when they were subject to other nations, even if it was true that at that very moment they were subject to Rome, it was also true that even in servitude they maintained an independence of spirit which meant that they might be slaves in body but never in soul. Cyril of Jerusalem wrote of Joseph: ‘Joseph was sold to be a bond slave, yet he was free, all radiant in the nobility of his soul.’”
Using the life of Joseph as an example, there is a vast difference between being enslaved physically and being enslaved spiritually to sin. Joseph’s brothers put him in a pit and sold him to traveling traders (Genesis 37:23-28). The traders sold Joseph to Potiphar in Egypt (Genesis 39:1). However, “the Lord was with him and … caused all that he did to prosper in his hand” (Genesis 39:3). In spite of the troubles Joseph experienced in Egypt in the remainder of Genesis chapter 39, he remained righteous before the Lord, and the Lord prospered Joseph.
Egypt itself is a metaphor in Scripture, and the metaphor represents evil and the world. Israel ultimately lived alongside the Egyptians. Yet though Israel would be physically enslaved, God brought them out of Egypt. That Israel wanted to look back or go back to Egypt on multiple occasions represents our interest in engaging in the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye, and the pride of life (1 John 2:16).
John 17:13-18: But now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves. I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.
In this world, we will have trouble, even those who believe on Christ. However, we need not be slaves to the world and to sin. In John 8:34, Christ is telling the Jewish leaders that they are enslaved to the world of sin because they practice sin. As we read in Romans 6 above, the one enslaved to sin cannot but sin. In bondage, we can only do what our captor allows, and those who practice sin are captive to the devil.
Only when we have been regenerated in Christ, justified by faith through the blood of Christ, and born again through the Holy Spirit into a new nature are we set free from the bondage of sin.
The point Christ is making in John 8 is that the Jewish leaders are not free in God because they do not practice the righteousness of God. They are instead living unto their own fleshly desires, which is living in bondage to sin. Thus, Christ instructs them that if they are Abraham’s children to “do the deeds of Abraham” (John 8:39). Abraham believed God, and his faith was credited as righteousness. God instructed Abraham to walk before Him and be blameless. Thus, if we claim to be Abraham’s offspring, we will believe in Christ through faith and walk before Him in blamelessness.
One is only blameless before God if he is not engaging in the practice of sin. If we engage in the practice of sin, then we are in bondage to sin. Our freedom is only found through Christ.
John 8:36: So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.
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