The Truth Will Set You Free

We are in series on discipleship and the second of a two part message from this verse – last week we looked at what it means to abide in Christ’s word, and how one of the marks of a genuine disciple is that they find a home in God’s word and God’s word finds a home in them. Jesus goes on to say that the result of abiding (or remaining) in his word will be that we will know the truth and the truth will set us free.

This is a bold claim because it is an absolute claim, you will know the truth. Not just, you will learn about truth, or you will know some things that are true, but you will know the truth. We live in a culture that is very suspicious of anyone claiming that there are truths that are absolute: always true, always true for everyone. It has become popular to believe in relativism – the philosophical position that all points of view are equally valid and that all truth is relative to the individual. And so people will say things like, there are no such thing as absolute truths. All truth is relative. Truth cannot be known.

These statements at first might sound reasonable and wise, but they have a very serious problem: they are statements that contradict themselves. if they are true, then they are false. If there are no such things as absolute truths than that is in itself an absolute truth. The statement all truth is relative is an absolute truth statement, meaning, again, if it is true, than it is false. If truth cannot be known, then you can’t actually know that truth cannot be known because that in itself is a truth statement.

Even when we’re trying to swerve around the existence of absolute truths, the only detours we can find are roads that are paved with absolute truths. No way of getting around them. So the question is “what is true truth?” Truth about God? About man? About our existence? About eternity (if there is one)?

I. The truth is Christ

When Jesus says, you will know the truth, that’s what he’s talking about: the truth that is central to all things, the pivotal truth upon which all things hinge, the foundational truth upon which all things are built. And he is making the extraordinary claim that all that resides in his Person. The truth is Christ. John 14 Jesus says, I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Jesus claims to be the truth – the only truth - that leads to God. Jesus told Pilate that the reason he came into the world was to bear witness to the truth that he is the king of another kingdom, and he said that “everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”

The Bible claims to be the true revelation of God and His redemptive plan for lost sinners unfolding in human history. And Jesus put himself at the center of the scriptures when he said that all the scriptures speak of him – from Genesis chapter 1, In the beginning God created, John opens his gospel with in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. In Gen 3 when God promised that the seed of woman would crush the serpent’s head and the serpent would bruise the promised One’s heel every line, every word, every promise, all speak of Christ.

All the promises of the Bible are true – a promise is only as good as it is true – and they all speak of Christ. All the warnings in the Bible are true – a warning is only as valuable as it is true – and they all drive us to Christ. All the principles of wisdom – which is more than intelligence, it is how to live right – culminate in Christ so that Christ is our wisdom. So all reality can only be properly known as we know Christ. Miss Christ and we get all the big stuff of life wrong. As CS Lewis wrote:

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. ~ CS Lewis

Christ is the truth by which we see everything else.

II. The offensive truth about truth

Now Christ’s claim to be the truth and the only way to God and the only way to God can sound arrogant and offensive to someone who’s not a Christian. If you aren’t a Christian, you might be squirming inside (or smirking): you mean that I need to believe in Jesus to know God? You mean that all other religions are false and only Christianity is true? That is offensive! Jesus offended a lot of people and still does. The image of Jesus as this flower child hippy freak who walked around in sandals preaching love to everyone is not the Jesus of the Bible. Jesus is the scandalon – the rock of offense. The Jews Jesus was talking to were deeply offended at Jesus (and they had just believed in Jesus) because he implied they were slaves, and then because of what he went on to say about them and about himself. Look with me at verse 44-47 and consider how offensive these words would be to a crowd of deeply religious Jews:

You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him, When he lies, he speaks out of his own character for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth (not even though I tell the truth, but because) you do not believe me. Which of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God. (44-47)

By the end of their discussion they were so offended they were looking for stones to kill Jesus. Jesus is offensive. Here’s the question we need to ask if we really want to pursue truth honestly: do I find Jesus’ words offensive because I absolutely know they aren’t true, or do I know Jesus’ words aren’t true because I find them offensive? To the Jews everything Jesus said was disqualified because it offended them. Jesus brought hard words about their real spiritual state and rather than seek him for the cure, they determined it couldn’t be true because it offended them. Let me share two reasons why we should expect the truth to contradict us, run against our grain, even offend us at times:

1. The truth about God

In the movie The Stepford Wives, the husbands of Stepford, Connecticut have seemingly perfect wives: beautiful, compliant, never crossing the wills of their husbands. How’d they do it? They turned their wives into robots who were incapable of disobeying or flaws – but also incapable of intimacy or love. Tim Keller made this connection:

Now, what happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will? If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you? You won't! You'll have a Stepford God! A God, essentially, of your own making, and not a God with whom you can have a relationship and genuine interaction. Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle (as in a real friendship or marriage!) will you know that you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination. So an authoritative Bible is not the enemy of a personal relationship with God. It is the precondition for it.~ Tim Keller

Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle…will you know you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination. Jesus isn’t being mean – he is inviting them to be his disciples and to experience truth and freedom. But to enter a personal relationship with him we must be willing to face the hard truth of our spiritual condition and come to him for the cure.

2. The truth about us

And here’s a really offensive truth about truth: we are born blind, pitiful creatures who desperately need the truth but who fiercely hate the truth. It’s not just that we don’t know the truth, it’s that we are born with a fallen nature that loves the lie and hates the truth. Jesus says “because I tell the truth you do not believe me” – in other words it is the truth I speak that convinces you not to believe in me. If I custom fitted the truth to what you wanted to hear, you would believe. Because I won’t, you don’t.

This is offensive. This is outrageous. But it’s also the truth about fallen man. I guess you could say it’s the original inconvenient truth.

ILL: We are just a week away from the elections. Recently I read an article that made the point that the goal of most political communication today isn’t to clarify, but to obscure. A good politician always says things ambiguously enough to reverse their position down the road if they need to. And if they do say something that gets them in trouble, there’s a new word to explain it away: I misspoke.

To misspeak rarely means to mispronounce a word – we all do that sometimes. The other day I was picking up pizzas at Pizza Hut and the cashier thanked me and wished me a good night, and I had three different ways to respond collide in my brain and I said something that was completely unintelligible – like a combination between ancient Greek and goo goo gaa gaa. As I walked out I hoped he thought he just didn’t hear correctly what I said.

But that’s not what is meant by I misspoke. Sometimes it means they got the facts a little wrong, like “I misspoke when I said I served in Vietnam.” It’s not that they lied or exaggerated – no, they simply misspoke. Sometimes “I misspoke” translated means “In a moment of carelessness what I really think about something popped out of my mouth, but I’m back on script now and it will never happen again. I misspoke.” I misspoke is a convenient way to swerve around the truth. Way to cover-up. Obscure.

But it’s not just politicians –all of us know what it is to try and swerve around an inconvenient truth. To cover up. To obscure rather than clarify. To not want to face the truth because of what it reveals about us. Especially when we are guilty of something we are ashamed of. Even the philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche wrote in Beyond Good and Evil: “‘I have done that,’ says my memory. ‘I cannot have done that,’ says my pride, and remains adamant. At last — memory yields.” Dominic Lawson of the NY Times

More times than we like to admit it, truth yields to our own desires and agendas. We love the dark, not because we believe it, but because our deeds are evil and the dark makes us look better. We hate the light of truth because it reveals our sinfulness and shame and wretchedness for what it is. So the offensive truth about unregenerate, unsaved man is our natures love the darkness of lies and hate the light of truth.

And it’s exactly that light-hating, darkness-loving, truth-hating, lie-loving, God-hating, devil-loving nature that we need to be saved from. Before we can come to know the truth we need to come to know Jesus. We need to be saved from ourselves and only Jesus can do that.

III. The truth will set you free

That brings us to the good news this morning. If we abide in Christ we will be his disciples, and we will know the truth and the truth will set us free. I said earlier that the truth we come to know is Christ. As his disciples we come to know Christ himself, we come to know his word and abide in it, we come to know his work, and trust in it.

And knowing the Person, word, and work of Christ sets us free. In verses 34-36 we see that the bondage we are set free from is the bondage of sin. Sin is our greatest slavery, our greatest bondage. Christ sets us free from our bondage to sin. And he set us free by the brutal truth of the cross.

The cross is no cover-up. At the cross the light of truth shines on our sin and it is revealed for how shamefully horrible it is. The cross condemns our sin far more than anything else ever could. When we look to Christ on the cross, we see how much God hates sin.

But we also see how much God loves us even with all our sin. He gave His Son to die for us. The cross doesn’t hide our sin, doesn’t cover up our sin, it confesses it, publicizes it, and condemns it. But because Christ hung there in shame and died for our sin, the cross covers our sin with His precious blood. Not a cover up – a covering. A covering of mercy. Of forgiveness. We are free from our sin because God saw it all and covered it with His Son’s blood and then covered us with His righteousness.

And we are free to serve God and honor Him with our lives. Freedom from the bondage to sin and freedom to serve God! We trade slavery to sin which is bondage for slavery to God which is freedom. Freedom to live for God. Freedom to become like our Father. Freedom to love truth and not hate truth or suppress truth. And the more we embrace His will and abide in His word, the more freedom for serving God we will enjoy. That is what we were created for: to be image bearers of the living God. The freedom to be what God created us to be.

And this work is of God. Jesus said, whoever is of God hears the words of God. We need God to open our ears to hear the truth, our eyes to see the truth, our hearts to receive the truth. We must be born again – with spiritual ears to hear the words of God. When we are born again, God’s word finds a home in us, and we find a home in God’s word. Christ finds a home in us, we find a home in Christ.

If you are not a Christian, ask God to save you based on the finished work of Jesus Christ and give you ears to hear His truth – even when it hurts, even when it’s hard, even when it contradicts what you want to believe. I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Word to disciples: love the truth! Even when it offends you. Don’t be one who believes in Christ unless he says something that steps on your toes, cause he will. That’s when we have a choice: do I abide in his word, or walk away offended. This is a series on discipleship and disciples abide in his word. His word finds a home in us – even when his words offend. If you abide in my word you are truly my disciples. Let’s pray.