John 8:33,34 - Slaves

8:33

We now see that the “believers” still had a lot of junk thinking to get rid of. The same applies to all of us, even if we have been Christians for many years. Jesus comes to renew our minds (Rom 12:2). As Jews they were proud of their Jewish heritage and saw themselves as being descendents of Abraham. As we know, Paul made great play of the role of Abraham in God’s plan, and how he showed us that God’s plan is based on faith (Galatians, Romans 3,4, 9-11 etc). So Abraham appears again here. The Jews thought that their natural lineage was what counted, and so were badly mistaken.

Notice their comment “we have never been enslaved to anyone”. Now think of the Old Testament! They were enslaved to the Egyptians. They were enslaved by the Assyrians and Babylonians, had been subdued or oppressed by various other nations, and now by the Romans. Our thinking gets badly distorted. It is possible that the Jews were talking about freedom purely in spiritual terms, but in this regard they were just as mistaken, in fact more so.

8:34

Jesus tells them that anyone who sins is a slave to sin. This is a fundamental truth that everyone needs to get hold of, and Jesus use of “truly, truly...” emphasises this. When we sin we think we are exercising our freedom to do what we want, but the end result is that we become enslaved, the sin takes over. It is like someone choosing to take drugs and then becoming an addict. We have a wrong view of freedom and slavery. We think freedom means the freedom to do what we want, but freedom is actually the freedom to be what we are meant to be. When we sin we become enslaved and we need to be set free. It is only when we make Jesus Lord that we are truly free, we then find that we start to live as we are meant to live.

The Jews were not willing to face up to their bondage to sin. This verse is also relevant in the Calvinist/Arminian debate. If we are slaves to sin then we are unable to set ourselves free, unable to believe in Jesus. The Calvinist view is that we need to the Holy Spirit to regenerate us, ie salvation is completely a work of God and this regeneration produces faith. The Arminian view is that God sets us free to be able to make the choice, but that we have to show faith in order for salvation to be complete.