On this fourth of July holiday the United States of America observes her freedoms including freedom of speech, freedom to worship, freedom to carry guns that kill and others too numerous to list. We really are wallowing in our freedoms nowadays. Courts interpret law and culture with an eye to allowing Americans to do as we please as long as we are observing the basic boundaries established by consenting adults. Restraint of any sort has become an enemy of personal freedom. Murdering a child is an approved legal practice as long as the mother desires to do that! I think I will learn to sleep with one eye open because someone may deem my life worthless before the hour appointed in heaven.
If one has been in the church very long, he has heard misrepresentations of a solitary line by Jesus who made the statement while contesting a series of arguments by an arrogant group of hostile religious professionals, "So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed" (John 8:36 (NIV). As an aside, religious professionals can be among the most difficult people in the world.
The statement, "So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed," has been used to encourage demonstrations and to incite and satisfy rather carnal desires. I have seen out-of-control contorted bodies and enthusiastic church members sprinting about a church, expressions of "freedom in worship" when the "Spirit moved." Other excesses infringe on moral and ethical standards with which even agnostics agree. In the worst scenarios to be "free indeed" is interpreted to mean, "I have a license to do what I want," under the cover of religious jargon. Purveyors of television religion assure their constituents, "You are free to expect God to answer your demands. You are the head, not the tail!"
The vast majority of Americans understand freedom. They dutifully pay their taxes, obey government statutes and live respectfully and honestly in community. The same kind of obedience to Jesus’ teaching makes one "free indeed." The huge transformation of the new birth is the freedom from self, our own desires, standards of achievement and success imposed by peers, and an encyclopedia of fears. All tyrants to freedom come to nothing indeed as we say "YES!" to Jesus.
Yes, when Jesus told the Jews in Jn. 8 about his truth and freedom, they claimed they (their people, their nation) were already free (8:31-33). So Jesus told the truth: they were still slaves to sin; it was freedom from lives of sin that Jesus could give. And in 8:37-59, Jesus is opposed by those slandering him and conspiring to kill him; they would remain slaves to such sin if they pursued national freedom at the expense of Jesus' truth and love.
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