Free Indeed

A door standing open, and a man inside the room who has not moved.

The scene this comes from is an argument, and it is going badly. Jesus tells a group who had believed on him that continuing in his word would make them free, and they take offence immediately: we be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man. That is a startling thing to say for a people whose national story is four hundred years in Egypt and a return from Babylon, standing in a country occupied by Rome at that moment. They are not lying. They have simply arranged the facts so that the word slave does not apply to them, and that is the exact posture Jesus is speaking into.

So he moves the definition. Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. Not the guilty. Not the disgraced. The one who keeps doing it, whatever his ancestry, whatever the room thinks of him. Then a legal detail that carries the weight: the servant abideth not in the house for ever, but the Son abideth ever. A slave in a household had no permanent standing; he could be sold at any time. A son could not. And the freedom on offer is not a change in behaviour first. It is a change in status, granted by the one member of the household whose place is not contingent.

Which is why the promise has an if, and why the if is a person. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

By Wednesday you are back in it, and the shame that follows is so familiar it is nearly company.

Here is the promise, as narrowly as it can be stated. Not that you will stop failing by Friday. That where the Son acts, the freedom reaches the status and not just the conduct, and a person whose standing in the house is settled has something to fight from that a slave never had.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 93 is Before All Things (Colossians 1:17).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna