Practicing Freedom


Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?”

Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are descendants of Abraham; yet you look for an opportunity to kill me, because there is no place in you for my word. I declare what I have seen in the Father’s presence; as for you, you should do what you have heard from the Father.”

Jesus and Abraham

They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing what Abraham did, but now you are trying to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are indeed doing what your father does.” They said to him, “We are not illegitimate children; we have one father, God himself.” Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now I am here. I did not come on my own, but he sent me.


John F. Kennedy, who was the 35th President of the United States, once said that “the great revolution in the history of man, past, present and future, is the revolution of those determined to be free.” There have been nations that have sought to be liberated from the yoke of foreign rule. There have been races who have struggled to gain equality from those who would choose to subjugate them. There have been other struggles throughout human history where the oppressed have fought for freedom until it was secured.


But the strongest chains ever put on mankind were those that made him a slave to Satan and sin. These weren’t chains that any of us could break, so Jesus came and broke them for us, setting us free. It came at a tremendous cost—every drop of his blood was the price paid for our liberation—but despite that many of us don’t live in freedom and this baffles me! Why would we want to continue to remain in slavery?


We continue to sin shamelessly and mindlessly, justifying it by claiming we are weak and helpless human beings incapable of doing otherwise. Is that really what we are? Weak and helpless? Do we not know that we are temples of the Holy Spirit who lives in us, whom we have received from God? Isn’t that what Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians  6:19. And isn’t the Holy Spirit this powerful person who breathed life into the entire universe?


Jesus came to set us free and gave us the Holy Spirit to keep us free. Unless we prefer to be a slave to the devil, letting him bind us to alcohol and drugs, to nicotine and pornography, and hundreds of other things that destroy our health, devastate our families, rob us of peace of mind, and generally cause ruin to us and those around us, let us walk in the freedom that Christ has secured for us.


“The truth shall set us free,” Jesus says in today’s gospel, but there is a conditional clause there. “If you continue in my word,” he says, “you are truly my disciples. Then you will know the truth and this truth will set you free.” The enemy is still able to hold us captive because we don’t know the word. Get to know it and see what starts to happen. These reflections are only intended to give you a taste for the word, but please do bite into it yourselves every opportunity you get.  


Let me conclude with the words of William Faulkner: “We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.”


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