FREEDOM IS A TRADITIONAL CHRISTIAN VALUE
(Saturday, May 13)
In today’s Gospel-reading, from John 8, our Lord talks with “those Jews who believed Him,” and yet wanted to kill Him, about freedom. “Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, ‘If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’” (Jn 8:31-32) They respond that Abraham is their father, that they were never in bondage to anyone, (even though the Jewish people had been in bondage under Egypt and the Philistines; under Babylon, Persia, Syria, and Rome), but our Lord points out their spiritual reality: “whoever commits sin is a slave of sin.” When we are committing “sin,” (*amartia*, which means “missing the mark), it makes “slaves” of us, doing work for an abusive someone without getting paid for it. Further He adds that they are not Abraham’s children in the spiritual sense: “If you were Abraham’s children, you would do the works of Abraham. But now you seek to kill Me, a Man who has told you the truth which I heard from God. Abraham did not do this.” Indeed, Abraham received the messengers from heaven when they came to him (Gen 18), but these people sought to kill the One sent from heaven. Finally, our Lord tells them whose “children” they really are, – not in a genetic sense, but in the spiritual sense, because of their own choice to remain committed to their own delusions and ideologies, rather than embrace the truth being offered to them in Christ: “Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word. You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me.”
Today I take pause and think about this shocking message, which the Lord might say to any of us “who believe Him,” and yet may be seeking to *kill* Him and His truth in our midst, because we are afraid to part with *our* delusions and ideologies. But can we possibly know “truth,” we might ask, when we live in a “post truth world” with fake news, etc.? Yes, says the Lord to us, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” That is a promise, made by One who does not break His promises. Let me “abide in His word” today, and let Him set me free, not only “from” certain attitudes and delusions, but “to” embrace the dignifying “power to become” what I am created and called to be, a child of God, “born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” (Jn 1:12-13)
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