We are descendants of Abraham
They didn't realize that merely being sons of Abraham according to the flesh was not enough. They needed to be his sons by having a faith like his.
Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham (see Galatians 3:7).
They went on to prove precisely the degree to which sin held sway over their minds.
They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham
and have never been enslaved to anyone.
How can you say, ‘You will become free’?”
What sort of delusion could allow them to say this? Israel was enslaved and subjugated by one nation after another, Egyptians, Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians, and now they were in the power of Imperial Rome. They pushed back so strongly against the words of Jesus as to clearly contradict reality.
Jesus answered them, “Amen, amen, I say to you,
everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.
Jesus was speaking of a deeper lack of freedom than merely that of politics or self-governance. He was inviting his listeners to a freedom of soul, from domination by sin, in order to love and follow God. But for those enslaved to sin it was often a sunk cost fallacy. They had already invested so much of themselves in the compromise and complicity with their true captor that they were willing to create excuses after the fact to justify their compliance, willing to turn a blind eye to anything that looked even remotely like evidence that contradicted their desire to believe in their own freedom.
So too does sin make foolish all those over whom it gains mastery. It drives us to tell implausible stories to justify ourselves and makes us willfully blind to any evidence to the contrary.
“If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples,
and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
The way to ensure that we are not fooled by the lies of sin is to be firmly rooted in the words of Jesus. The way to freedom is not a new philosophical strategy or historical paradigm for reinterpreting the evidence by our own intellectual might. Without Jesus we always have a tendency to pervert the truth and twist it to serve our preexisting stories. Sin makes absolute objectivity more of a theoretical than a real possibility. Rather, we need one who is stronger than the lies to deliver us unto the truth. We need one who himself was obviously not bound by sin to bestow that same freedom as a gift upon us.
If our God, whom we serve,
can save us from the white-hot furnace
and from your hands, O king, may he save us!
But even if he will not, know, O king,
that we will not serve your god
or worship the golden statue that you set up.”
When we feel as though we are being cast into the fire, and that the force of temptation has been increased seven times more than usual, we can look to the example of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego who did not give in to the demands of King Nebuchadnezzar. They preferred spiritual freedom to anything sin could promise them.
“Did we not cast three men bound into the fire?”
“Assuredly, O king,” they answered.
“But,” he replied, “I see four men unfettered and unhurt,
walking in the fire, and the fourth looks like a son of God.”
When we desire to remain in the word of God and not give in to the demands of the world, the flesh, and the devil, we are never alone in the fight. There is always a fourth in the fire, and it is he himself who promised to set us free.
Glory and praise for ever!
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