Dr. Sproul explains that there is enough material to write a book packed into Jesus' statement that "If you abide in My word, you are my Disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." After investigating this statement, Dr. Sproul considers the complaint from the Jews that they have never been in bondage to anyone and the response Jesus makes to them including the statement they "are of your father the devil."

I ask that the congregation stand for the reading of the Word of God. Our text this morning is from John 8:31–47:

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.”

They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can You say, ‘You will be made free’?”

Jesus answered them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.

“I know that you are Abraham’s descendants, but you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you. I speak what I have seen with My Father, and you do what you have seen with your father.”

They answered and said to Him, “Abraham is our father.”

Jesus said to them, “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. You do the deeds of your father.”

Then they said to Him, “We were not born of fornication; we have one Father—God.”

Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me. 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. Which of you convicts Me of sin? And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me? He who is of God hears God’s words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God.”

He who has ears to hear the Word of God, let him hear. Let us pray.

Father, we need help in understanding the words of Jesus that we have just read, and so we invoke the help of the Holy Spirit, who would illumine for us, for our understanding, and for our edification, the words of this text. For we ask it in the name of Jesus. Amen.

True Disciples Remain

We have already seen, in chapter 6 and going back to the earlier portions of chapter 8, how the hostility of Jesus’ contemporaries is escalating against Him. He is relentlessly moving toward His final hour, when He will be betrayed and crucified. But in the passage we have read today, there are some important insights for our understanding as Christians that come out of the context of debate.

Although we know that debate sometimes generates more heat than light, one of the singular benefits of debate throughout church history is that when issues are debated, important distinctions and clarifications are made so that we can get to the heart of the matter. So, we need to listen attentively to the key points that Jesus is making in this debate with His adversaries in the first century.

Last time, we read verse 30, “As He spoke these words”—that is, that the Father had sent Him, and so on—“many believed in Him.” But we pick it up today, where Jesus says to those who did believe in 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.”

I believe there is enough in that one sentence to last us in our examination of Scripture easily for the next six weeks. But we do not have six weeks to spend on that verse, so I will try to get to the gist of it as quickly as I can. First, Jesus makes a distinction between those who are indeed His disciples and those who are not His disciples. He puts a necessary condition on what it means to be a true disciple of Jesus, and it is the condition of remaining, or staying, or abiding in His Word.

That is important for a couple of reasons. We have already seen, back in chapter 6, that when Jesus gave His Bread of Life discourse and talked about their natural inability to come to Him apart from the Word of God, many of the disciples who flocked around Him in the earlier periods of His ministry walked no more with Him. They left. Do you remember that?

Those people had been “believers,” not believers in the New Testament sense of those who possess saving faith, but rather believers in the ordinary sense of those who agreed with the things they heard from the lips of this itinerant rabbi. They believed what Jesus had been teaching up to a certain point; but once He got to the crux of the matter, they left. Their discipleship was a temporary discipleship. It was not genuine. It was not lasting. We would have to say, from the vantage point of our day, it was not saving.

I run the risk of irritating the congregation by repetition because I do not know how many times I have said that we must understand the difference between saving faith that is possessed by the true believer and a profession of faith. Many people mistakenly think that they enter into the kingdom of God simply by making a profession of faith.

“But pastor, I went to an evangelistic meeting. I raised my hand. I answered the altar call. I prayed the sinners’ prayer. I signed the card. Doesn’t that make me a Christian?” The only answer I can give is “Maybe,” but it is not the profession that gets you into the kingdom. It is the possession. We must possess what we profess.

That is what Jesus is saying in this text. He told the parable of the sower, where many people come quickly and embrace Jesus initially, but it is superficial. It never penetrates to the heart. The test Jesus puts before the people is the test of staying power. In other words, He is saying: “Not everyone who comes out of the crowd and says, ‘I’m with You, Jesus,’ is My disciple. Not everyone who raises their hand the first time they hear My Word is My disciple. But if you remain in My Word, then you are My disciple, and if you remain in My Word, you will know the truth.”

There is a series of consequences here: Remaining makes you a disciple. By remaining, you will know the truth, and by remaining and knowing the truth, you will be set free. Jesus promises those who have responded to Him initially that if they stay with Him, if they abide in His words, they are going to know the truth, and they are going to be set free.

Slavery to Sin

The Pharisees hear Jesus talk about being made free, and they say: “What? We are going to be set free? How can a person be set free when he is not imprisoned? Doesn’t being set free presuppose that the person is in some kind of bondage, some kind of incarceration?” The Pharisees are furious with Jesus for suggesting that they need some kind of liberation.

The Pharisees say: “We are Abraham’s descendants. We haven’t been in bondage to anyone. Come over to my house, and I’ll show you my birth certificate. I can tell you the tribe of which I’m a member. I grew up in the covenant community. My father was a descendant of Abraham; my mother was a descendant of Abraham. My grandfather was a descendant of Abraham,” and on it goes.

So many times I have heard people say: “Of course, I’m a Christian. I was born a Christian. My father was a Christian; my mother was a Christian; my grandfather was a Christian. I come from a long line of Christians.” Oh, beloved, no one is born a Christian. No one has ever entered the kingdom of God through biology. But the Pharisees did not understand that. They were Abraham’s descendants, and they were counting on their biological lineage, their family tree, to get them into the kingdom.

Jesus gives a powerful statement in verse 34 when He begins by saying, “Most assuredly.” Now, imagine if you came into church, and the guest teacher were Jesus Himself, and when the service was over, He stayed after church to answer your questions. Imagine you came to Him with your questions, and said: “Jesus, I don’t understand this business of being a slave. What are you talking about?” Then He prefaced His answer by saying, “Most assuredly.” Our Lord is not giving an opinion here. This is not an off-the-cuff, casual remark.

Jesus never uttered a desultory word in His entire life. Everything He ever said was important, but by His own standards of importance, He is underlining this sentence that He is about to give by using a grammatical technique to show great emphasis. When our Lord says, “Most assuredly,” then most assuredly, we need to listen carefully.

He says: “Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.” Jesus is saying: “I’m not talking about slavery to the Romans or to some master to whom you are sworn as an indentured servant. I’m talking about a different kind of slavery. I’m talking about slavery to sin.

Moral Bondage

The question I get perhaps more than any other in theology is the question of free will: “Don’t we have free will?” I warn people all the time, “Be careful how you understand the concept of free will.” If there is any idea that has permeated the Christian world, coming out of paganism and secular culture, it is the idea that we are born with wills that are ethically neutral and indifferent. You have been taught from the day you went to kindergarten that you have free will.

The church has labored the point with its greatest thinkers throughout history that, of course, when God made Adam and Eve, He endowed them with a faculty of choosing. They were free moral agents. They were responsible for their actions, and they had the moral power within them to choose what they wanted to do apart from external coercion. Theologians have labored from the beginning that even after the fall, the power of making choices remains intact. You are not robots. You are not puppets. You still have minds that think, wills to make choices, and hearts that have affection. You have all of that, and you know you have all of that, so, you think you are free. “No,” Jesus says.

Indeed, you still have wills, but so does a slave on a galley ship. He still makes choices. He still has a mind, even though his arms are chained to the oars. Your arms are chained by nature to sin. When Jesus describes the human condition, He says, in essence: “By nature, you’re slaves. You’re slaves to your own wicked desires, your own wicked impulses. No one else is forcing you to sin the sins that you commit, but you sin because you’re a slave to sin.”

The pagan believes that a person’s will is unaffected by the fall, but Christianity teaches that by nature, you have a sinful and corrupt nature that keeps you in moral bondage.

Children of the One You Obey

Jesus says, in effect: “I know that you are Abraham’s descendants. You’re not telling Me anything I don’t already know. You’re trying to kill Me because My Word has no place in you. I speak what I’ve seen with My Father, and you do what you’ve seen with your father.” Again, they say, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus answers, “No, if you were Abraham’s children, you would do the works of Abraham.” Jesus defines sonship not in terms of biology but in terms of obedience. You are the children of the one you obey.

Jesus continues: “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. You do the deeds of your father.” Again, they said: “Wait a minute. We’re not children of fornication.” Now they elevate it to another degree: “We have one Father—God.” Jesus answers: “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me. Why do you not understand My speech?”

What is behind this confusion? Jesus is clearly the best communicator in the history of the world, and they are not getting the message. What is it that they cannot understand? He says, in essence: “Why can’t you understand what I’m talking about? Listen to Me. I’ll tell you why you don’t understand My speech: because you can’t, because you’re not able to listen to My words.” Do you hear that? Jesus says: “You won’t hear Me because you can’t hear Me. You’re not able.”

This is a point that Saint Augustine labored his entire life and ministry to make, when he said that the fall leaves us morally impotent. We do not come to the Word of God because we have no taste for the things of God. By nature, the things of God are foreign to us. We do not want God in our thinking; we refuse to have Him in our thinking. We have no desire for the things of God. By nature, our desires are only wicked continually. That is why God has to change the disposition of your heart before you will ever respond to the Word of Christ. The Spirit has to set you free.

“You are of your father the devil”—now listen to this—“and the desires of your father you want to do.” This is what is meant by spiritual bondage, by bondage to sin. Notice how Jesus describes it. He does not just say, “You do the works of the devil,” so that they could appear on judgment day and say: “Lord, I’m sorry, but the devil made me do it. What could I do? He’s more powerful than I am. He’s the prince of the power of the air.”

Notice what our Lord says here: “You do the works of the devil and the desires of the devil because you want to do the desires of the devil.” By nature, we are Satan’s slaves willingly. We are volunteers in the kingdom of darkness. By nature, we love the darkness rather than the light because we want to do the desires of Satan. That is what sin is. Sin is not making bad choices. Sin is not making mistakes. Sin is having the desire in your heart to do the will of the enemy of God. That is who we are by nature.

That is what Paul labors to the Ephesians. In essence, “We once walked among those who fulfill the desires of the flesh and of the mind, who were by nature the children of wrath.” That is what Jesus came to deliver us from. That is what Christmas is all about: liberation, being set free from Satan.

“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.” His resources for dishonesty, falsehood, and perversion are almost inexhaustible. This is supply-side sin; Satan has such resources for evil. Jesus says: “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.”

You Must Love the Word

Jesus continues: “Which of you convicts me of sin?” How hard is it to convict Satan of sin? Now Jesus is saying, essentially: “Name one. Show me one time where I violated a single jot or tittle of the law of God.” Imagine if I stood up in front of you on Sunday morning and said, “I’ve never sinned.” I would hope that you would make a beeline for the exit and go listen to a preacher you could trust.

Jesus says: “Which of you convicts Me of sin? And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me? He who is of God hears God’s words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God.” Do you see the two things He says to them? “Don’t tell Me you’re children of Abraham, because if you were children of Abraham, you would do the things that Abraham loved. But you hate the things that Abraham loved. You claim to be children of God. How can you call yourself children of God when you hate the things of God? How can you love God and not believe Me?”

Once again, what Scripture says here comes as a freight train against the basic, precious platitudes of American culture. We are told that God has many faces, and that you can choose to believe in Mohammed, Buddha, Confucius, or one of these other avatars, as well as Jesus. It does not matter what you believe, as long as you are sincere.

But if you reject Christ, you reject the Father. You cannot have the Father and not have the Son, and you cannot have the Son and not have the Father, because the Father sent Him, “and he who is of God,” Jesus says, “hears God’s Word. Therefore, you do not hear because you are not of God.”

Do you realize that every time I read the Scripture on Sunday morning, I always say the same thing? What is it? “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” That is not part of the liturgy. That is not an empty ritual. I take very seriously that this Word of God, which we read and proclaim, will fall on deaf ears unless God Himself attends that Word by the Holy Ghost and opens your ears.

There is no greater gift you could ever receive from God than to have your ears opened, to have the scales taken from your eyes, to have your stony heart, which the Word of God bounces off, changed so that your heart of stone begins to become a beating, pulsating, responding heart of love, where you love to hear the Word of God.

What is it like for you, standing while I read twenty verses of Scripture? Are you saying, “I can’t wait for this preacher to stop reading so I can sit down”? Or are you saying to yourself: “I could listen to that all day long, because I love it, because it’s the Word of God, and He’s given me ears to hear and eyes to see. He’s given me the truth that sets me free”? May you have those ears today. Let us pray.

Our Father and our God, how we thank You for the unspeakable gift of grace that You have given us through Your Word and Your Spirit. You have awakened us from spiritual death, flung wide the gates of the prison, set us free, and made us sons and daughters in Your house. Father, forgive us for ever wanting and desiring to do the work of the devil. Thank You for giving to us a desire to please You. Please strengthen that desire every moment, that we will delight in hearing Your Word and in doing those things You call us to do. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.