Jesus: The Eternal 'I Am' and True Freedom

"Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, 'If you abide in My word, you are my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.'" This is one of the most important statements that Jesus ever uttered, not that He ever uttered unimportant statements, but this one, you know, "If you continue in My word, then are you My disciples." [00:02:35]

A true disciple is not one who just simply in a casual manner, now and then, gives attention to the words of Christ. But a true disciple of Christ abides, he stays, he maintains his posture of learning at the feet of Jesus. And so Jesus says, "If" that's the important, necessary condition. "If you continue in My word, then are you My disciples, and then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." [00:03:03]

Now, again, there were many people in Jesus' day and in the Old Testament that believed that just because they were born Jews, they had it made. They were included in the kingdom of God. That's why Paul had to labor the point that he who is a Jew is a Jew who is one inwardly, who has the circumcision of the heart. [00:05:03]

Not everyone who had their biological descendancy from Abraham received the promises that God gave to Abraham, as in Isaac would his seed be called. And He has the same problem in the church today. You say, are you a Christian, and I say, of course, I'm a Christian. I was born a Christian, born in a Christian family, went to church, you know, joined … . No, nobody's born a Christian. [00:05:22]

Nobody's automatically in the kingdom of God because their parents are Christians or because they're members of churches, or anything like that. You have to be in Christ to be a Christian. And so that same error was made by the opponents of Jesus when they said they're Abraham's descendents, and how can You say you'll be made free? [00:05:48]

I think the principle problem that people have with divine sovereignty, with divine election, they say immediately they say, well we believe that man has free will. Well, I don't know any Augustinian in all of church history who didn't strongly affirm that we have free will. We are volitional creatures. God has given us minds and hearts, and He's given us wills. [00:07:03]

And we exercise that will all the time. We make choices every minute of the day. And we choose what we want. We choose freely. Nobody's coercing us, putting a gun to our head, and we're not robots. Robots don't have minds. Robots don't have wills. Robots don't have hearts. We're human beings. We make choices. That's why we're in trouble with God, because the choices that we make in our fallen condition are sinful choices. [00:07:31]

We choose according to our desires, which are only wicked continuously, the Bible tells us. And that we are, as it were, dead in sins and trespasses, even though biologically we're very much alive. And we're walking according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, fulfilling the lusts of the flesh, is what the Bible tells us. [00:08:10]

And so the Bible makes it very clear that we are actively involved in making choices for which we are responsible, and which expose us to the judgment of God. And yet, at the same time, the Bible teaches us that we're enslaved. We're free from coercion, but we don't have what Augustine called royal liberty. We are not free from ourselves. [00:08:39]

We're not free from our own sinful inclinations and our sinful appetites, and our sinful desires. We're slaves to our sinful impulses. That's what the Bible teaches us again and again and again. The humanist doctrine of free will, the pagan view of free will says that man is free not only from coercion but man is free in the sense that his will is indifferent. [00:09:01]

It has no predisposition or inclination, bias, or bent towards sin, because the pagans and the humanists deny the radical character of the fall. But the Bible teaches us that we are fallen creatures who still choose and make decisions, but we make them in the context of our prison, of sin. And the only way we can get out of that prison is if God sets us free. [00:09:28]

And this is what the Jewish leaders didn't want to hear. Don't talk to us about being slaves. We're not slaves. We're not slaves to anybody. Jesus said you sin, and everyone who sins is a slave. Not a slave necessarily to the Romans; you're not a slave necessarily to the Babylonians, but you're a slave to sin. And sin reigns in you. Sin rules in your mortal body. [00:10:07]