John 8:31-32 English Standard Version

The Truth Will Set You Free

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.”

We read the Word in a time when the Holy Bible has been canonized, translated, studied, taught, discussed endlessly and published more often than any other document on earth. We have the distinct pleasure of doing so in what we like to think of as enlightened times.

The Jews that Jesus was addressing here in chapter 8 of the gospel of John remained with Him after many stopped following Him in John 6:66. These Jews accepted the hard saying of Jesus that went against their religious training. They had one thing we do not. They had Jesus in the flesh in their presence, they got to see God in the flesh.

What had not happened yet was foretold by Jesus and the loss of His presence did not diminish their believing in Him. We do not know how His death and resurrection might have changed their understanding but there came a time in their lives when their reality had to give way to faith in His absence. What did not go away were His words.

Now nearly two thousand years later we have the opportunity to receive His Word into our hearts and allow His Word to regulate our life in Christ. Doing so allows us to discover the abiding presence, the indwelling Word, Jesus Christ.

What is different for us and the believing Jews of John 8:31-32 is the Comforter who has been sent because we placed our faith in Christ. It is the Spirit of Truth that testifies of Jesus and helps us through every doubt and fear.

Doubt and fear are tools of the enemy.

Psalm 139:15-16 English Standard Version

¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. ¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

Since all of our days are written in His book, then we can ask Him to show us!

How many of us have discovered His explicit instructions for our life in Christ from the bible?

History has shown us that false prophets have used the bible to cherry pick scripture to manipulate and control a class of people who are in desperate need of leadership. Those false teachers and preachers have taken advantage of people who have not learned to use the bible correctly to regulate their lives in meaningful and purposeful faith in Christ.

The bible is God’s message to us for more than just instruction. We come to know about every aspect of who God is in all three persons of the Trinity. Getting to know God in form and character is one way to weed out false teachers and preachers. That means we have to discover this personal relationship with God through His Word.

One of the most difficult things in establishing this relationship is in the spirit and not subject ourselves to the ways we did things in our past. The passage that says we shall worship Him in spirit and truth is the key to this relationship.

It is more than a feeling.

Deep in our hearts is the indwelling presence of God in spirit and truth. He is at work in us developing a path to right understanding, discernment of spirit, not emotions, not to be tossed back and forth but to be led by faith in Jesus Christ who is the Word. He is revealed by the Holy Spirit who reveals Christ who is True and Righteous.