Monday, October 19, 2020

“So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” —John 8:36

In 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt laid out four essential freedoms that he argued should be universal: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. No doubt we all agree that these are important goals. And no doubt we all lament that we’ve yet to see these freedoms be guaranteed to every person in this broken world.

But even those of us who are more or less free to speak and worship, free from want and fear, experience bondage. In John 8, Jesus says that “everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” Not only that, he says that “a slave has no permanent place in the family.” So we, who are sinners, are not only in bondage but also without permanent family.

Or we would be, if it were not for Jesus’ intervention. Jesus, the Son of the Living God, has invited us into his own life, has claimed us with his own identity. So we are forgiven and set free from sin and joined to the family of God. The freedom of Jesus is true freedom, lasting freedom, freedom from the ultimate enemies of sin and death and destruction. You have been made freed by the Son, and you are free indeed.