You've heard this one. It's on coffee mugs and it's carved over the entrances of buildings that have nothing to do with church.
And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
John 8:32
Wow. Okay. But what does that actually mean?
Some pastors talk about preaching every word. Slow down and take the verse a piece at a time instead of swallowing it whole. I'm not preaching here, but there are some words in this one worth stopping on.
First, the part everybody skips
Verse 32 gets quoted by itself constantly. But it starts in verse 31, and the sentence doesn't work without it.
Jesus said to the people who believed in him, "You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."
John 8:31-32
There's a condition on it. Remain faithful to my teachings. The knowing comes after the following, not before it.
That's worth sitting with. You don't get handed the truth and then decide whether to follow. You follow, and then you come to know.
And you
You is us. Not scholars, not pastors, not people with the right background. Us.
A guy in a bunk at eleven at night with a dome light on. That's who this was said to. Regular people who believed him.
Will know
Not might. Not could, if you work hard enough at it.
Will.
The truth
Here's where we get in trouble.
We think we know the truth. We've got our truth. Everybody's got their truth now, and we're told to live it and speak it and honor everybody else's while we're at it.
That isn't what this says. It says the truth. One of them.
And a few chapters later Jesus says exactly what it is:
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me."
John 14:6
The truth isn't a concept. It's a person. So let's read it again with that in mind.
You will know Jesus, and Jesus will set you free.
That hits different than the coffee mug.
Set you free
Free from what, though? I've got a mortgage and a schedule and a truck I have to be in at four in the morning. What am I being set free from?
Free from wondering what's true. From the exhausting work of assembling your own truth out of whatever the world handed you this year, and then defending it.
Free from doubt about where you stand.
Free from a life of never repenting, where you carry every bit of it yourself because there's nowhere to set it down.
Free from not being saved. Free to be saved, through Jesus Christ.
That's not freedom from your obligations. You'll still be in that truck at four. It's freedom from carrying what was never yours to carry.
Put it together
C.S. Lewis wrote a book called Mere Christianity. Not the impressive kind, not the credentialed kind. Just Christians.
That's us. Mere Christians. And if mere Christians remain in his teaching, we come to know the truth, and the truth is Christ, and Christ leads us to salvation.
That's the whole verse. It just takes a minute to get there.