Jesus therefore said to the Jews who believed him, If ye abide in my word, ye are truly my disciples;
Many who heard the Lord speak said they believed in Him. To these new believers He gives no congratulation but a test: everything hangs on whether they stay in His word.
Unbelievers were running Him down, yet God still worked in some. His appeal is urgent because professed faith can be of two very different kinds.
It is an encouraging fact that God may use a time of unbelieving slander to work widely in souls. "As He was saying these things, many believed in Him" (verse 30). But faith that God gives cannot be separated from life. It acts in liberty and is subject to the Son of God. Faith that is only human soon tires of His presence. It abandons Him whom it never truly valued and turns to loose thinking or loose living in rebellion against Him. This is why the Lord's solemn appeal is so urgent. Continuance in and with Him is of God.
There is no warmth in His reply. He did not at once own these believers as His disciples.
His words had such truth and power that we are told, "many believed in Him." Yet with these people He shows nothing of the deep joy that filled His heart when the woman at the well was converted (John 4:32). Repentance is clearly lacking here, for He does not own them as His disciples. The proof of their discipleship would be continuing in His word.
Some are interested for a while and then lose interest. A disciple holds on.
To abide in His word, then, is the condition of being truly Christ's disciple. Others may take great interest, but they soon grow weary, or turn before long to other things. Christ's disciple holds fast to His word and keeps finding fresh springs in what first drew him. His word proves itself divine in this way, for it is faith that abides in it, and the truth is then not only learned but known. Vagueness and uncertainty disappear. The truth does not produce bondage as the law does; it makes the soul free, whatever its earlier slavery.
The test reaches both what a person believes and how he lives.
Abiding in the word is more than knowing the truth in the mind. The main point is obedience to the truth: a life shaped by the truth and marked by the holiness which grace demands. Knowledge of the truth can be separated from obeying it. A man may hold sound doctrine and live loosely. Another may live a life no one can fault, yet be unsound in basic truth. In neither case is there a true disciple.
The Pharisees had their own followers. The word itself is simple.
This word means "a learner" or "pupil." The Pharisees had such followers, and they taught them to fast… The Lord Jesus had His disciples. The apostles He chose are called His "twelve disciples," but elsewhere the word covers all who followed the Lord, many of whom "turned back and no longer walked with Him"… To the Jews who believed in Him He said, "If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples" (John 8:31). It was true association in heart with a rejected Christ.
God had already given commands to keep. The Lord now points to something else.
So His word, not the law, is the only means of knowing the truth and its liberty. This was not simply a matter of commands, or of something God wanted from man. God had given that already, and tried it. Far more was now at stake: God shown in Christ to the world, and this too in His word, in the truth. So it became a test of the truth.
Commentators agree that staying is the proof of reality. They differ over these hearers: some see a faith not yet real, others an encouragement to people already spoken to as followers.
Many felt the power of His words and took the place of believing in Him. The Lord tested them. He said that a real disciple, and not a follower in name only, is marked by continuing in His word — that is, in the whole truth He brought. Continuance is always the test of reality, and where it exists the truth is known in its liberating power.
The Lord's words are used only to show that continuance marked off true disciples from the unreal, like the wheat which had no proper root and did not continue. His words are encouragement and warning at once, and what these people might turn out to be is of no account at all. By professing belief in Him they were taking the place of disciples, and He spoke to them in that character.
- Believed — many believed as He spoke, but human faith soon tires of His presence and turns away.
- Abide — the disciple holds fast to His word and keeps finding fresh springs in what first drew him. That is the condition of being truly His.
- Obey — abiding is more than holding truth in the mind. Right doctrine with loose living fails the test, and so does a blameless life built on unsound belief.
- Know — His word, not the law, is the one means of knowing the truth. The law produces bondage; the truth sets the soul free.
- Continue — continuance is the test of reality, and it means real association in heart with a rejected Christ.
and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.
Jesus says this to people who had just believed on Him. He at once attaches a condition: they will know the truth if they stay in His word. Their reply was that they had never been anyone's slaves. It shows they did not yet see what He was offering to free them from.
Freedom does not come with the first stir of belief. One writer points to what marks a real disciple, and to the two powers at work:
Continuance is always the test of what is real. Those who continue come to know the truth and its freeing power. The devil enslaves by the power of his lie; Christ sets free by the power of God's truth. He did not flatter them by telling them that as God's nation they were free. He set before them the true spiritual freedom that comes from knowing the truth. They needed it, and so do we!
The promise points forward, and that shows where they stood at the time:
The proof of their discipleship would be continuing in His word. In that word they would find the knowledge of the truth, and by the truth they would be made free (vv. 31-32). So it is clear that these people were not yet free.
The Jews already had God's commands in the law. Christ points them somewhere else:
So His word (not the law) is the sole means of knowing the truth and its liberty. It was not just a question of commands, or of something God wanted from man. God had already given that, and it had been tested; and what did it come to for them and for Him? Now much more was at stake, God showing Himself in Christ to the world, and doing this in His word, in the truth.
The offer of freedom offended them. Their protest fails in two ways:
It offended the proud Jews of our Lord's day when He said, "The truth will set you free." They answered Him, "We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, 'You will become free'?" Their boast of freedom was false in two ways. As a nation, they had served at least a dozen different powers in their history. In spirit they were where everyone is by nature: in bondage to sin.
"The truth" here is not a vague ideal. One writer sets the promise against people who look open-minded because they hold nothing as true:
They have no truth at all, so they do not care about it, and they like to be free. Since they hold nothing as truth, they are happy to leave others free too. It looks broad-minded, but it means they treat nothing as truth. You may have seen this in their interpretation of the Lord's remarkable words, "If you abide in my word... you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." It is a huge announcement of the love of God. It promises freedom by truth that is certain and known — and, He adds, by the Son — from every immoral influence, from everything that was not the truth.
Because the truth stands on its own, our sense of it is not the measure of it:
The truth is what it is — the truth; it is unchangeable, and our experiences or our enjoyment in no way affect it. Let us ask for grace to measure our freedom in Christ by this standard. Until we know the truth, we are not aware of being free in spirit before God.
Freedom here is not permission to please oneself. One writer defines it by what it removes:
First, each person who receives the truth revealed in Christ comes into perfect freedom before God. Freedom from what? Everything that would keep your heart and soul from enjoying God to the full.
It also changes the person who receives it:
God has made us know His truth as what delivers us. This freedom is not freedom for our sinful nature. It cuts right through our hearts and makes a real separation, one that God, who is holy, knows fully. So a person comes into his place before God with a broken and humbled heart.
One writer links this promise with the Lord's later words about the Son, and reads them as two stages of one blessing:
after
To know "the truth" frees us from the things that hold the soul in bondage. That is a great thing. But it is the Son Himself who brings the soul into real freedom in the presence of the Father. That is why it says, "So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed."
- Continue — Christ promises freedom to those who stay in His word, not to those who only start well. Staying is the test of real belief.
- Know — what sets free is real truth we can know. Our feelings do not change it. A faith that holds nothing as true has nothing to free anyone with.
- Free from — their boast of never being slaves was false twice over. The nation had served many masters, and every person by nature serves sin.
- Free for — this freedom removes whatever blocks our enjoyment of God. It humbles the heart instead of feeding it. It is never a licence to sin.
- Free indeed — truth frees us from what enslaves. The Son Himself brings the freed soul into the Father's presence.