Abraham and Freedom (John 8:31–47) — A Sermon by R.C. Sproul

0:00 I'd ask now that the congregation will stand for the reading of the Word of God. Our text this morning is from John chapter 8, and I'm going to begin at verse 31. 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.

0:36 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 the slave of 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. And they answered and said to him, Abraham is our father.

1:35 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. And they said, we were not born of fornication. We have one father, God. And Jesus said to them, if God were your father, you would love me, for I proceedeth forth and came from God. Nor have I come of myself, but he sent me. Why do you not understand my speech, because you're 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.

2:36 And 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 you 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 them hear. Let us pray. Father, we need help in understanding the words of Jesus that we've just read. And so we invoke the help of the Holy Spirit who would illumine for us, for our understanding, for our edification, the words of this text.

3:33 We ask it in the name of Jesus. Amen. You may be seated. We've already seen in the earlier portions of chapter 8 and even before that, going back to chapter 6, how the hostility of Jesus' contemporaries is escalating against Him, and He is moving relentlessly toward His hour, His final hour, when He will be betrayed and crucified. But in the passage that we've read today, there are some very important insights for our understanding as Christians that come out of the context of debate. One of the singular benefits of debate throughout church history is that sometimes we know debate generates more heat than light, but also when issues are debated, important distinctions and clarifications are made so that we can get to the heart of the matter. And so we need to listen attentively to the key points that Jesus is making here in His debate with His adversaries in the first century. Last week we had read verse 30 as he spoke these words, that is that the Father had sent him and so on, many believed in him. But now we pick it up today where Jesus said to those who did believe in him, if you abide in my word, you are my disciples indeed.

5:20 You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. Now I believe there's enough in that one sentence to last us in our examination of Scripture easily for the next six weeks. We don't have six weeks to spend on that verse, and so I'll try to get to the gist of it as quickly as I possibly can. The first thing, Jesus makes a distinction here between those who are indeed His disciples and those who are indeed not His disciples. He puts a necessary condition in front of what it means to be a true disciple of Jesus. And that necessary condition that He gives here is the condition of remaining or staying or abiding in His Word. Now that's important for a couple of reasons. We've 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 a work of God, we read that many of those disciples that had flocked around Him in the earlier periods of His ministry walked no more with Him. They left. Remember that? Now, they had been, quote, believers, not believers in the New Testament sense of those who possessed saving faith, but rather believers in the simple ordinary sense of those who agreed with the things that they heard from the lips of this itinerant rabbi.

7:17 They believed what Jesus had been teaching up to a certain point. But once he got to the crux of the matter, they bailed out. so that their discipleship was a temporary discipleship. It was not genuine. It was not lasting. And we would have to say from the vantage point of our day, it was not saving.

7:50 Now, I run the risk of irritating a congregation by repetition, because I don't know how many times I've said from this pulpit that we have to understand the difference of saving faith that is possessed by the true believer and a profession of faith. That many people mistakenly think that they enter into the kingdom of God simply by making a profession of faith. Preacher, I went to an evangelistic meeting. I raised my hand. I answered the altar call. I prayed the sinner's prayer. I signed the card. Doesn't that make me a Christian? And the only answer I can give is maybe. But it's not the profession that gets you into the kingdom. It's the possession. We must possess what we profess. And that's what Jesus is saying here.

8:55 And he told the parable of the sower, well, many people come quickly and embrace Jesus initially, but it's superficial. It never penetrates to the heart. And so the test Jesus puts before these people is the test of staying power. Not everybody 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's a series here of consequences. Remaining makes you a disciple. Remaining, you will know the truth. And by remaining and knowing the truth, you will be set free.

10:11 And so Jesus promises those who have responded to Him initially that if they stay with Him, They abide with his words. They're going to know the truth, and they're going to be set free. And the Pharisees hear him say that. And I said, what? We're going to be set free? How can you be set free when you're not in prison? Doesn't being set free presuppose that you're wrapped in some kind of bondage, some kind of incarceration? The Pharisees are furious with Jesus for suggesting that they may need some kind of liberation. And so they said, we're Abraham's descendants.

11:10 We've never been in bondage to anyone. Come on to my house, I'll show you my birth certificate. I can tell you which tribe I'm a member of. 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. How many times I've 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… I come from a long line of Christians. Oh, beloved, nobody's born a Christian. No one has ever, ever entered the kingdom of God through biology. But the Pharisees didn't get that. They were Abraham's descendants, and they were counting on their biological lineage on their family tree to get them into the kingdom.

12:18 Now, Jesus gives a powerful statement in verse 34 when He said, most assuredly. Now, if you came into church this morning and the guest teacher were Jesus Himself, and when the service was over, He stayed after church to answer your questions. And you came to Him with your questions, and you said, Jesus, I don't understand this business of being a slave. What are you talking about? And he prefaced his answer by saying, most assuredly, our Lord's not giving an opinion here. This is not an off-the-cuff, casual remark. Now, Jesus never uttered a desultory word in his entire life.

13:17 Everything he ever said was important. but by His own standards of importance, He's underlying this sentence that He's about to give by using a grammatical technique to show great emphasis and importance. And so, when our Lord says, most assuredly, then most assuredly, we need to listen carefully. For He says, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin.

13:50 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, most assuredly. 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.

14:23 I'm talking about a slavery to sin. Now, a question I get perhaps more often than any other in theology is the question of free will. Don't we have free will? And I warn people all the time, be careful how you understand that concept of free will, because if there's any idea that has permeated the Christian world coming out of paganism and out of the secular culture is the idea that we are born with wills that are ethically neutral and indifferent. and you've been taught from the day you went to kindergarten that you have a free will.

15:10 Now, 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, and that they were free moral agents, they were responsible for their actions, and that they had the moral power within them to choose what they wanted to do apart from external coercion. And the theologians have labored from the beginning that even after the fall, that power of making choices remains intact. You're not robots, you're not puppets, you still have minds that think and wills that make choices and hearts that have affection. You have all of that, and you know you have all of that. and so then you think you're free. No, Jesus says, you still have wills.

16:08 But a slave on a galley ship still has a will. He still makes choices. He still has a mind, even though his hands are chained to the oars. where your arms are chained by nature to sin.

16:38 See, when Jesus describes the human condition by nature, He says, by nature, you're slaves. You're slaves to your own wicked desires, your own wicked impulses. Nobody else is forcing you, to sin the sins that you commit. But you sin, Jesus says to these people, because you're a slave to sin. The pagan believes that your will is unaffected by the fall, but Christianity teaches you that by nature you have a sinful and corrupt nature that keeps you in moral bondage. Jesus said, I know you're Abraham's descendants. You're not telling me anything I don't already know, but you're trying to kill me because my word has no place in you.

17:36 I speak what I've seen with my father, and you do what you have seen with your father. And again, they say, Abraham's our father. Jesus said, no, no, if you were Abraham's children, you would do the works of Abraham. See Jesus defines sonship not in terms of biology but in terms of obedience. You are the children of the one you obey. If you were Abraham's children, you would do the works of Abraham. But now you seek to kill me, a man who's told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham never did that. You do the deeds of your father. Wait a minute. Again, they say, we're not children of fornication. Now they elevated up another degree. We have one Father, God. Oh. Jesus said, well, if God were your Father, you would love Me,

18:39 for I came from Him. I have not come of Myself, but He sent Me. Why don't you understand My speech? What's behind this confusion? Why can't Jesus clearly… He's the best communicator in the history of the planet and they're not getting the message. What is it that they can't understand? And he's frightened. Why don'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 word. Did you hear that?

19:20 Jesus said, you won't hear me because you can't hear me. You're not able. This is the point that St. Augustine labored his entire life in his ministry when he says that what the fall does as leaves us morally impotent. We don't 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 don't 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.

19:59 That's why God has to change the disposition of your heart before you'll 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 the bondage to sin. Notice how Jesus describes it. Jesus doesn't just say, you do the works of the devil. so that they could maybe appear on judgment day and say, Lord, I'm sorry, but the devil made me do it. What can I do? He's more powerful than I am. He's the prince of the power of the air.

20:52 But 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. See, by nature, we are Satan's slaves willingly. we're 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's what sin is. Sin's not making bad choices. Sin's not making mistakes.

21:52 Sin is having a desire in your heart to do the will of the enemy of God. That's who we are by nature. That's what Paul labors to the Ephesians, where we once walked among those who fulfill the desires of the flesh and of the mind, who are by nature the children of wrath. That's what Jesus came to deliver us from. That's what Christmas is all about.

22:28 Liberation, being set free from Satan. the desires of your father the devil, you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning. He does not stand in the truth because there's no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources. His resources for dishonesty and falsehood and perversion are almost inexhaustive. This is supply-side sin, that Satan has such resources for evil. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar, and he's the father of lies. But you see, because I tell you the truth, you don't believe it.

23:27 Listen to this. Which of you convicts me of sin? How hard is it to convict Satan of sin? Now, Jesus is saying, Name one. show me one time that I've violated a single jot or tittle of the law of God. Can you imagine if I stood up in front of you on Sunday morning and I said, I've never sinned.

24:04 I would hope that you'd make a beeline for the exit and go listen to a preacher you could trust. But Jesus said, who convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why don't you believe me? He who is of God hears God's words. Therefore you do not hear because you're not of God. You see the two things he said to them? Don't tell me you're children of Abraham because if you're children of Abraham, you would do the things that Abraham loved. But you hate the things that Abraham loved. And 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? Again, I repeat that.

25:01 This comes as a freight train against the basic precious platitudes of American culture. We're told that God has many faces and that you can choose to believe in Mohammed or Buddha or Confucius or one of these other avatars as well as Jesus. It doesn't matter what you believe just as long as you're sincere. 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 words. Therefore, you don't hear because you are not of God.

26:03 You realize that every time I stand up here and read the Scripture on Sunday morning, I always end up by saying the same thing. What is it? He who has ears to hear, let them hear. That's not part of the liturgy. That's not an empty ritual. I take very seriously that this Word of God that we read and that we proclaim will fall on deaf ears unless God Himself attends that Word by the Holy Ghost and opens your ears. And there is no greater gift that you could ever receive from God than to have your ears opened.

26:54 To have the scales taken from your eyes. To have your stony heart from which the Word of God bounces off and off and off, and that stiff neck changed so that that heart of stone begins to become a beating, pulsating, responding heart of love where you love to hear the Word of God. What's it like for you standing when I read 20 verses of Scripture? Are you standing there saying, I can't wait for this guy to stop reading so I can sit down? where you're saying to yourself, I can 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.

27:52 He's given me the truth that sets me free. May you have those ears. Let's pray. Father and our God, how we thank You for the unspeakable gift of grace that You have given us that through Your Word and through Your Spirit, You've awakened us from spiritual death, flung wide the gates of the prison. and set us free and made us sons and daughters in your house.

28:37 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 doing those things you call us to do. For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.