The Truth Will Set You Free

So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never yet been enslaved to anyone; how is it that You say, ‘You will become free’?”

Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.
(John 8:31-36)

Don: The wider context for the statement “The truth will make you free” is as follows:

But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the people were coming to Him; and He sat down and began to teach them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery, and having set her in the center of the court, they said to Him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in adultery, in the very act. Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women; what then do You say?” They were saying this, testing Him, so that they might have grounds for accusing Him. But Jesus stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground. But when they persisted in asking Him, He straightened up, and said to them, “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again He stooped down and wrote on the ground. When they heard it, they began to go out one by one, beginning with the older ones, and He was left alone, and the woman, where she was, in the center of the court. Straightening up, Jesus said to her, “Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more.”] (John 8:1-11)

Jesus went on to talk about the law regarding adultery, before delivering his “”the truth will make you free” speech. The law of Moses (set out in Leviticus 20 and Deuteronomy 22) indeed demanded stoning. But the “slavery to sin” he spoke of is not merely a matter of being trapped in a life of Mosaic law-breaking; it is a slavery that results from our Fallen condition. It contrasts the capital-T Truth of Jesus personified with the small-t truth of the law of Moses. Jesus was putting that truth on trial, as the scribes and Pharisees clearly knew.

Jesus did not interrogate the woman about the offense. There was no inquiry, of the defendant or of her accusers, into whether there were any mitigating circumstances, whether there were witnesses (as required by law), and whether due process was properly observed. On the face of it, these legal matters were apparently of no consequence to Jesus. The woman herself did not enter a plea nor offer any explanation. The point is that for both Jesus and the scribes the real trial was about Truth and truth. The woman represents all of us, who are trapped in the net of sin into which we fell from the Garden. The hypocritical scribes and Pharisees chose to use the law to condemn the giver of the law, using words taken, as it were, from his own mouth.

The irony of the story, the reason why it is such a perfect metaphor for salvation, is that it  begins with the scribes and Pharisees wanting to stone the woman; but at the very end of the chapter, they tried to stone Jesus instead:

Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple. (John 8:59)

The woman being a metaphor for all of us, the punishment that was our due was instead diverted, by Jesus, to himself. It is a masterfully crafted story. It marks the third and last time in scripture when God wrote with his hand; the other two being to write the law of Moses on the stone tablets (Deuteronomy) and the other being the finger writing on the wall at the judgment of Belshazzar (Daniel 5).

This time, he wrote not on stone or on plaster but in the dust—the ephemeral substance from which we came and to which we shall return. It is as if he were writing the judge’s opinion at the conclusion of a trial, establishing new law. As usual with God, the opinion was given in the form of questions. In essence, he asked the jury “Is there any one of you who does not sin?” He asked the woman “Where are your accusers? Did no-one condemn you?”

Note, too, that he stooped to write in the dirt with his finger—the most personal way possible, with no intervening medium; and with the greatest humility (stooping). What did he write? It has been thought that he wrote down the sins of the scribes and the Pharisees, but whatever it was, it was clearly at least a part of the Truth. In standing to give voice to the Truth that he had written in the dust, he asserted his authority, and the scribes and Pharisees started to slink away. It’s not clear why, but they did so in order of seniority—the older ones first; leaving him and the woman alone.

She made no move toward Jesus; rather, he went to her, and delivered the judgment that he did not condemn her. In sum, we see a woman being liberated, set free from the bond of sin, by the Truth. Are there truths that are not liberating; that, rather, bind and enslave?

David: It seems to me Jesus was not stating an hitherto unknown Truth; he was telling the scribes and Pharisees (and all of us) what they already knew by virtue of their inner light. But they had thrown a blanket over their light. By pulling it back, Jesus pricked their consciences enough to make them go away speechless.

Don: Many translations of this story use the word “conscience.”

Jay: If Jesus was writing the woman’s (i.e., our) sins in the dust, then what set the woman free was the realization that she was a sinner (i.e., that we are all sinners, therefore none of us can stand in judgment over others.) The Truth is that we are all imperfect, and to accept that Truth is liberating.

Jeff: According to the law, there would need to be two verifiable witnesses in order to condemn her, but when everyone left there were no witnesses. Jesus said he was not a witness; and in any case, the witness of one man was not enough according to law.

Jay: Jesus found the loophole in the law. He did not explicitly reject the law, but showed that it could not be implemented.

Robin: A law that God wrote with his own finger had to be true, but it seems true with a small “t”. The capital-T Truth of Jesus demands forgiveness, thereby nullifying the consequences of breaking the law. He might as well have said “The way shall set you free” or “The life shall set you free”—they are also Jesus, they are also Truth.

Charles: The problem began in the Garden, when Adam and Eve, who knew and “walked with” God made a free-willed choice to become spiritually (and physically) separated from God. God was quite explicit about the cause and consequence of a prideful Man to attempt to take upon himself the knowledge of good and evil. I believe the fact that this was the singular prohibition from God in the Garden demonstrates foreknowledge that humanity is incapable of making consistently sound moral judgments apart from God. And this fact was reflected most poignantly in the most momentous trial in history: Jesus’ trial before a Pilate where a human jury remanded to execution the one man who was God and without sin, and chose instead a murderer. Hanging on the cross is the enduring Christian symbol of God’s capacity for unconditional love and man’s capacity for absolute evil. Separated from God, the human “heart is desperately wicked” and prone to errors that can and do lead to heinous abominations. So the existential question, from the Garden, has been whose will would be done? Whose morality will prevail? Who will be the ultimate judge?  God or Man. Pride led man to choose to decide for himself and to judge morality accordingly to his own will. The ultimate result of that choice can be seen hanging from the cross.

By “The truth will make you free” Jesus may mean that if we understand and know him, we understand this Truth about morality and judgement. Faith in Jesus frees us of both the burden and the consequence of our corruptible morality apart from God.  To avoid the consequence of human judgement we need only accept that there is only one, exclusive and immutable source of ultimate Truth and Morality manifested in the flesh as Jesus Christ.

Don: Indeed, Jesus was very clear that the distinction between good and evil is not for humankind to determine. It being the responsibility of s/he who is without sin to throw the first stone, there is no mortal body to throw it. The Truth—Jesus—freed not just the woman (us) from responsibility but in some sense it freed the scribes and Pharisees as well.

Jay: Truth is clearly tied to judgment. If you know what is right and what is wrong—what is the Truth—then you can judge. But we don’t know, and therefore we cannot judge validly and reliably so we should not judge.

Chris: Judgment is the application of Truth. The law as given in Leviticus demanded that both the man and the woman involved in the act of adultery should be punished, but the man is nowhere mentioned in the story. So the scribes and Pharisees were misapplying their own acknowledged law/truth.

Don: And Jesus himself seems unconcerned about this and other misapplications of the law in this case.

David: I don’t think too much should be read into what is not there. Don called it a “well-crafted” story—the craft lies partly in the editing, and whoever wrote this scripture was perhaps just a good editor who focused on what was important and cut all the trivial issues. We can’t know; but we can be aware of the dangers of making something out of nothing!

Robin: Obviously there must have been a man involved, so why would he have been cut? Perhaps he was standing among the accusers?

David: We can speculate and conjecture all we want, but we still have no way of knowing the truth about the man. He might have been stoned earlier, and is now out of the picture. Who knows? But if I were editing the story, trying to make it “well-crafted,” I might well have simply left him out of it because he was not important to it.

I’d like to clear up this issue of the “human heart”—by which I think Chuck means the inner light mentioned quite often in scripture as something we all have but we all more or less suppress. The inner light of scripture is the holy spirit, it is God. So what I get out of this story is the Truth that we have never really been separated from God because although we left him at the Fall, he never left us! It is a very personal Truth in the sense that each of us has it inside us—each of us knows it and always has—and if we turn to that inner light as our source of Truth then we cannot go wrong. It is not a matter of “our” heart; the inner light is an entity separate from and yet integral to the mortal being. It is our conscience; it is what decides (or should be allowed to decide) what is moral and what is not. It is something we know without being able to articulate it (if we can articulate it, it is probably our mind, not our conscience, speaking.) This is the Truth that sets us free from making judgments. By turning to our inner light for direction, we are accepting the will of God.

Robin: The roles of faith and grace in salvation are explained in this passage:

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. … Therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called “Uncircumcision” by the so-called “Circumcision,” which is performed in the flesh by human hands—remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were near; for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:8-22)

Don: What is the truth that does not set one free?

David: Small-t truth.

Robin: Anyone or anything that is not Jesus.

Alice: Only the Truth inside sets us free, so any external truth does not.

Charles: Worldly, material truths do not; only spiritual truths about God can set us free. Truth by definition is exclusive.  Absolute Evil assumes absolute Good.  There has to be an ultimate determiner of which is which—and the Truth that will set us free is faith that Jesus is that judge. To truly accept him and know him is to avoid the consequence of our flawed human moral judgment. The cross is an indelible reminder of the consequences of flawed human judgment apart from God in terms of knowledge of Good and Evil. The gift of the Holy Spirit may be different concept than David’s concept of the Inner Light. Based on my understanding of scripture, faith in Jesus is a necessary prerequisite for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Jesus promised that to the Apostles. The coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost established his church. When God the father told Peter, James and John to listen to his son, he announced the transition from the Law of Moses to the Truth of Jesus. In the person of Jesus humanity can know God. It is my understanding that it is through faith in Jesus that we receive his gift of the Holy Spirit and become part of the body of Christ (his Church). We are “saved by grace through faith”.

David: My understanding from scripture and my belief is that the inner light comes not through faith but through grace. It is gifted to Jew and Gentile, circumcised and uncircumcised, alike. God’s grace reaches every human being on earth, regardless of whether or not they have even heard the name Jesus. To those who do know it and know of his life then faith may well follow; but the Truth that matters, the truth that sets all God’s children free, is that God exists. If God is a trinity, then fine; it just means that if you recognize and accept any one of the three then you recognize and accept them all, Jesus included, whether you know it or not. The trinity is a detail that an editor might simply choose to leave out of the story, because only one thing, one Truth, really matters: I Am.

Charles: What does scripture say about grace vs. faith as the source of the gift of the holy spirit, the inner light?

Don: The light was distributed, at least as an opportunity, to “every man”:

There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. (John 1:9-11)

He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end. (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

Whether or not every man makes something of it is another matter.

Charles: I understand the universal access; everything is God’s creation. But I remain concerned about the role of faith in receiving the gift of the holy spirit.

Robin: The holy spirit perhaps has different roles: Conviction (that Jesus is who he said he is), power (such as the power to speak in tongues, as at Pentecost), and is also referred it as our comforter and our teacher.

Don: Perhaps there is a sense in which we all have an individual quota of spirit. The Pentecostals had more of it than most of us do, for example. But perhaps there is a baseline amount we all have.

David: The Bible is such a troublemaker! 🙂

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