John 8:31-47,

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.”

39 They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, 40 but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. 41 You are doing the works your father did.” They said to him, “We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father—even God.” 42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. 43 Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word.

In recent days, many of us have heard stories of the senselessness of evil. Not just faraway in Charlotte and Colorado and Utah, but right here in our own Twin Cities.

Our family spent much of our summer with four dear Annunciation families on our sons’ baseball team. All of them had kids in the room where the gunman opened fire. One little girl, a friend of our daughters, was shot three times. And all our Annunciation friends know well the students who died and others who were injured. 

What’s been so unsettling is the sheer senseless evil of shooting up a room of children. It is profoundly wicked, like the devil himself, to go after children.

Sensible people understandably look for motives and rationale. But it’s not always so easy. Someone read aloud to me some of the gunman’s words, and I don’t know what to say but senseless. Irrational. Sheer evil — that would open fire on children, and be so deeply deceived as to pretend in writing the day before to be a good person.

We might wonder if such an evil person is possessed by the devil. The better answer, I think, is to say that such a person, like the devil himself, has become deeply enslaved to his own evil and indwelling sin. The deep anti-God and anti-Christ impulse in the devil himself is the same anti-God and anti-Christ impulse in all sinners, but for God’s common and saving grace. It’s called sin. Left unchecked, it will devolve into senseless anti-God evil and the ultimate slavery.

Which relates to our passage this morning. As the back and forth escalates, let’s go first to where the dialogue ends up in verses 44–47. Jesus says,

You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. 45 But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. 46 Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? 47 Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.

Last week Jonathan said, Wait till you hear what Jesus says next week. He was talking about verse 44: “You are of your father the devil.” And then the end of verse 47: “The reason why you do not hear [my words] is that you are not of God.”

So, that’s where this is going, but look where it begins. Verse 30: “As [Jesus] was saying these things (verses 12–29), many believed in him.”

Verse 31: “So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him . . .”

Jesus is talking to believers — at least people who have believed thus far. They’ve started to believe, but the question before us this morning is whether they will keep on believing as Jesus keeps speaking. Many of them have fickle faith. We’ve seen Jesus confront groups like this already in 2:23–25 and chapter 6. 

Isn’t Jesus’s instinct with a crowd amazing? A crowd gathers, and Jesus doesn’t think, Hmm, this is a thrill. I better not mess it up. How can I lower the bar so that every stays and even more come? 

Rather, Jesus’s instinct seems to be, There’s a crowd; they can’t all be real. I need to raise the bar. Whittle down the crowd; narrow it down to genuine believers, to true disciples. Jesus doesn’t cater to those with fickle faith; he challenges them. If they stay fickle, they’ll spoil the movement, not help it. But if you challenge their faith, some will go, but some will stay — remain, hang on, hold fast, and be true disciples.

So, let me pause at this point to ask: What would this be for you? For Jesus’s audience, it’s their Jewishness. They are sons of Abraham, which they retreat to twice in verses 33 and 39. Very few in this room are counting this cost: if I believe and keep believing in Jesus, then my life of faith and faith-community as I’ve known it will be upturned. Or is it?

Social appeal is powerful; community pressure is real. That might be the challenge for you this morning. Your people are secular to the core. Or Muslim. Or Buddhist. Or just unbelieving American conservatives or progressives. Or professing Christians who are fickle in their faith. Whatever level of interest in or openness to Jesus you have this morning, what group tempts you to not believe and stay with Jesus? (So many today are slaves of their own conception of others’ opinions, whether adopting it or reacting to it; either way you’re a slave to your own sense of what’s mainstream, what the majority thinks, where the trends or counter-trends seem to be going.)

And the main point for us this morning in John 8 is that those who are “of God” stay with Jesus. They bear with his word, and no matter how uncomfortable, his words find place in them, and he bears fruit through them.

The main claim in this passage is verses 31–32, then the rest fleshes this out or defends this leading claim. Look there:

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.”

Jesus makes the claim, then they go back and forth about it. And in verse 47, we find that, at bottom, to stay with Jesus shows one is “of God” or not. So, that’s how I’d like to frame it for us this morning, very personally. I take it that this room is filled with people who have believed in Jesus, but the emphasis this morning is on staying, remaining, abiding, holding fast. 

And for those who haven’t yet believed, you get an inside look into what Christian belief is. It is not a past belief or a momentary belief that makes you a Christian, but an abiding belief, a belief that remains, a belief that holds fast to Jesus, a belief that persists and endures and perseveres the ups and downs of this life and keeps believing in him — stays with him.

So, here’s how we’ll ask the question, to get at the three parts of the text: How do I know if I’m “of God” or not? Or how do I know if my belief is real and will endure?

The realities of this text fall neatly into two columns: “of God” and “not of God.” That’s the bottom-line reality, and this is what we’ll spend the next few minutes filling out. So, here are three questions to confirm you are “of God.”

1. Are you getting free from sin and enjoying it?

Oh we love this word “freedom.”

Verse 32,

“You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

But the question to ask is, Free from what, and free for what? We get a piece of it in verses 31–34:

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.”

Jesus offers freedom, and they hear in that offer that he’s implying they are presently enslaved. They take offense at this, and retreat to their ethnic status: “we’re offspring of Abraham; we’ve never been enslaved.” Which, of course is ridiculous. Ever heard of Egypt? How about the Philistines? And Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome. There’s hardly any power in the ancient world that Abraham’s offspring weren’t enslaved to at some point. But it’s a senseless diversion. Irrational. And Jesus doesn’t take the bait by arguing about it. He brings it back to the point: “everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.”

Freedom from sin is the freedom from that Jesus is offering.

But what about freedom for? Freedom from sin. But free for what? Now, verses 38–41:

I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.” 39 They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, 40 but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. 41 You are doing the works your father did.”

Doing matters. Last week, Jonathan talked about not having a do-have-be mentality, but be-have-do. And he didn’t say no doing. He said get the doing in the right place. And this first question is about the doing. The unbelieving show they do not have faith and they do not belong to God by what they do. And so too, those of God, who have faith in Jesus, get free from sin which is freedom to do good for others. This is the right place for good works. Your life matters. What you do matters. And freedom from sin doesn’t mean you just sit around and watch clean videos, but that in freedom you love others and seek to do them good.

But don’t miss the greatness of Jesus in this. He is the one who sets free for real, free from sin, free to actually do good, to love others, to get past self and see others’ needs and take initiative and expend effort and experience the joy and reward of doing someone else in need some genuine good, in the name of Jesus. And now we’ll see in verse 36, that it is not only sons who are free but “the Son” who sets them free. Which leads to our second question.

2. Does Jesus’s word find place in you? 

Now, we come to the main focus on abiding or staying with Jesus. It’s one thing to believe in a moment or believe in the past or believe initially in Jesus with fickle faith. But it’s another thing to keep believing, to abide, to remain with him, stay with him when challenges come — for Jesus’s words to “find place in you.” 

Jesus first mentions “abiding” or “remaining” in verse 31, but then he comes back to precisely this in verse 35, and it’s easy to miss because the word changes in our English. Verse 31 has abide. Verse 35 has remain. But it’s the same word in the original. Look at verses 35–37:

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.

Jesus speaks to room full of people who “have believed” so far. And he says, if you don’t remain with me, stay with me, you’re a slave. Slaves come into a household for a time, but don’t stay. They’re not really part of the family. They’re temporary members of the household. Eventually the slaves leave, but the sons stay. They abide. Sons remain.

The word to us is this: if you stay with Jesus, if his word “finds place in you,” if you remain by faith in the house with him, you show yourself to be sons, true disciples. And those who seem to believe but do not stay reveal their ongoing slavery to sin.

Over the years, we’ve sung together “He will hold me fast.” One of the most unnerving things in our life together as a church has been those who have sung with us and slowly walked away. And we ask, Did he not hold them fast? Will he hold me fast?

Based on John 8, and the book of 1 John, and Hebrews, and elsewhere in the Bible, here’s how I sing “He Will Hold Me Fast.” As I stay with Jesus, as I hold him fast, he holds me fast. And it’s not that my holding fast causes him to hold me fast. It’s the other way around. His holding me fast is manifest, in part, through my ongoing holding him fast. From my finite, limited, human perspective, I don’t know for certain that I’ll always hold him fast. If I give myself to sin and its slavery and do not hold fast to Jesus, it will be revealed that I wasn’t “of him,” and he wasn’t holding me fast. But right now, as I sing this song, I hold him fast, and as I sing, I resolve afresh and pledge anew to keep holding him fast — and as I hold him fast in faith I see and show that he is holding me fast.

And there is something more we can say here about those who stay with Jesus and remain in him and have his word “find place” in them. This is one of the most shocking things Jesus says to these Jews. Not only does he call them to believe in him and abide in that belief, but he says in verse 42:

“If God were your Father, you would love me.”

Love me, he says! Perhaps the one question that would clarify that your faith is not fickle, but that you truly are his disciple, is this: Do you love him?

Which leads to our third and final question.

3. Can you bear to hear the words of Jesus? 

In these three questions, we’ve worked from the outside in, or from the top to the bottom: from doing good, to staying with him, and now back to where it all begins: believing in Jesus, hearing his words with faith. Believing his words that he came from God, and shares in the divine identity, even as he stands before us as fully human. And not just believing some of what he says about himself, as we find it convenient and socially acceptable. But believing all of what Jesus says about himself even and especially when it’s at odds with whatever social group appeals to us most. Let’s finish with verses 42–43:

Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. 43 Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word.

When Jesus says that he “came not of my own accord” (literally, “not from myself I have come”), he speaks as man who is no mere man. Jesus is no mere human, putting himself forward, saying, Hear me, believe me, love me, stay with him, do others good in my name. No, this man “came not of his own accord” but is God the Son sent by God the Father. (For Jesus’s various “not my own” claims in the Gospel of John, see also 5:30, 43; 6:38; 7:28; 8:50; 12:49; 14:10). 

To hear Jesus and believe Jesus is to hear the one sent by God to speak for God and who is God himself (as we saw in verses 24 and 28, and will see next week in verse 58).

To hear the word of Jesus is to hear the word of God. To believe what Jesus says about himself, and everything else, is to believe what God says about Jesus and everything else.

So, in this sermon, we’ve worked backwards, in a sense. We started with true freedom, then came back to staying with Jesus, then came to the bottom and center: how you hear Jesus’s voice.

Now we’ve worked through the chart, and I’ll fill it in:

And if you’re really struggling with the question, Am I of God or not? I have good news for you: if you are genuinely asking and genuinely concerned, that’s a first indicator you’re of God. Those who are not of God don’t spend a lot of time worrying about it. Thank God you’re concerned, and lean into Jesus. 

At the end of the day, the question for you, and for everyone in this room is, What do you do with Jesus? What do you think of him? Do you believe him? Do you love him? Do you fully intend to stay with him? How you respond to Jesus is the test, is the indicator, of whether you’re “of God” or “not of God.” There’s no way around Jesus to figure out if you’re of God or not apart from how you orient on Jesus.

So, here’s my prayer for you and for us as a church: that we (those “who have believed” till now) would keep hearing Jesus even (and especially!) when it’s uncomfortable and we don’t like it at first (because we think other people in our lives won’t like it), and so love him and stay with him (through life’s trials), and so enjoy freedom from sin to do others good.

Table for the Free

This is the Table of those set free, and being increasingly set free, by the Son, from sin and for enjoying him and for expressing that love for him in doing good for others. This is a Table of true freedom. It celebrates his victory over death, our liberation from sin by his offering of himself for us at the cross, and our tasting and seeing that he is good.

True freedom is from sin and its misery. True freedom stays in Jesus’s word and loves him, which overflows into the freedom to love and do good for others.