Free and Not Yet Feeling It

If therefore the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. (John 8:36, WEB)

Jesus said to men who thought they were already free, and were not, a sentence that cuts through every counterfeit version of the word. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. The men he was speaking to bristled, insisting they had never been slaves to anyone, which was exactly the blindness he was addressing. The word indeed is doing quiet work in his answer. It marks the difference between the freedom people talk themselves into and the real thing that only Christ can hand a man.

Here is what a struggling man needs to hear carefully, because he will be tempted to measure his freedom by the wrong ruler. This freedom is not primarily a feeling, and it is not measured by your best week or undone by your worst night. It is a status the Son confers, an actual change in who owns you. You were a slave to something, sold under it, unable to walk out on your own, and Christ purchased you out of that ownership. The purchase holds even on the days the old master still shouts as if he had rights over you, because the transaction was settled at the cross and not at the mercy of your feelings.

That means your freedom does not evaporate the moment you feel bound again. This is the thing to hold onto after a fall. The feeling of bondage after a fall is real as a feeling; you are not imagining the pull of the old chain. But it is false as a verdict on your standing. The Son has set you free, and what the Son does, he does indeed, all the way, for keeps, with nothing left half done.

So you fight from freedom rather than for it. That single word turns the whole battle around. The war is real and the temptations are real, but you are a free man walking into them, not a slave trying to buy his way out. You already belong to Christ, and you stand your ground as a man who is owned by him and by no one else.

Jesus, I confess I often feel like a slave still. Remind me that you have already made me free, and teach me to live today as the free man you say I am.