Lesson 26: John 8:31-38 - The Light of the World (part 2)
31 So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples,
32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
33 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’?”
34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.
35 The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever.
36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
37 I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you.
38 I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.”
The effect of light in the midst of darkness can be many things – surprising, comforting, or even unwanted.
Think of a time you were walking somewhere in the dark. Maybe it was outside at night and you had nothing you could touch to tell you where you were. Maybe it was in your house and you touched a wall but you couldn’t tell which wall it was so you didn’t know where you were. In either case you had no idea what was before you if you took a step, so you reached out carefully with your foot to see if you could feel something that would make you fall down. Were you afraid?
Jesus said here that truth can set someone free, but truth can only set us free when we can see it or recognize it - this is why His statement that He is the Light of the World is so very important. We cannot see or recognize truth which will set us free until we are ABLE to see, and He makes it possible for us to see and understand.
Jesus’ Light is so powerful it can show the truth of even hidden things. His statement about slavery to sin is one of these hidden things. When we come to Jesus we often believe all His promises will be ours immediately. We think we will be free of the sins that have haunted our life for so long, and then we are disillusioned when we find ourselves doing the same things we did before we came to Jesus. We must understand the truth of this slavery to sin before we can be set free. When Jesus gives us His salvation He sets us free from the penalty of sin – see Romans 8:1. We are set free from the dominion of sin (Colossians 1:13) which means we now have the ability to choose if we sin or not. Before we were saved we did not have the ability to choose if we would sin or not. We are not, however, set free from the presence of sin, because God gives us a choice whether we will walk with Him by faith or whether we will trust in ourselves to defeat a problem that is bigger than we are. We can choose to try it on our own, but when we do so we make ourselves slaves to sin by our choice – we are choosing to go our way rather than His.
*What do the words of Romans 8:1-2 mean in your life?
31 So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples,
32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
33 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’?”
34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.
35 The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever.
36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
37 I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you.
38 I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.”
The effect of light in the midst of darkness can be many things – surprising, comforting, or even unwanted.
Think of a time you were walking somewhere in the dark. Maybe it was outside at night and you had nothing you could touch to tell you where you were. Maybe it was in your house and you touched a wall but you couldn’t tell which wall it was so you didn’t know where you were. In either case you had no idea what was before you if you took a step, so you reached out carefully with your foot to see if you could feel something that would make you fall down. Were you afraid?
Jesus said here that truth can set someone free, but truth can only set us free when we can see it or recognize it - this is why His statement that He is the Light of the World is so very important. We cannot see or recognize truth which will set us free until we are ABLE to see, and He makes it possible for us to see and understand.
Jesus’ Light is so powerful it can show the truth of even hidden things. His statement about slavery to sin is one of these hidden things. When we come to Jesus we often believe all His promises will be ours immediately. We think we will be free of the sins that have haunted our life for so long, and then we are disillusioned when we find ourselves doing the same things we did before we came to Jesus. We must understand the truth of this slavery to sin before we can be set free. When Jesus gives us His salvation He sets us free from the penalty of sin – see Romans 8:1. We are set free from the dominion of sin (Colossians 1:13) which means we now have the ability to choose if we sin or not. Before we were saved we did not have the ability to choose if we would sin or not. We are not, however, set free from the presence of sin, because God gives us a choice whether we will walk with Him by faith or whether we will trust in ourselves to defeat a problem that is bigger than we are. We can choose to try it on our own, but when we do so we make ourselves slaves to sin by our choice – we are choosing to go our way rather than His.
*What do the words of Romans 8:1-2 mean in your life?