NOTES for Joh 8:31-42

Jesus speaks about slavery to sin and liberation from it. The phrase "...everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin" completely sweeps away arguments like the claim of a person who smokes or drinks that he can quit smoking or drinking at any moment. Yes, one can stop sinning, but after committing a sin, a person becomes its slave, and being freed is no simple matter. Only the Son can make us free and help us stop. Abiding in His word and knowing the truth, we become His disciples.

It is striking how Jesus emphasizes His role in this liberation. If a master releases a slave (and an evil master will never do this of his own will), the slave ends up on the street, perhaps without means of support or a roof over his head, and anyone can enslave him again in his weakness (see Matt 12:43-45).

In order to receive true liberation, we need the One who will redeem us from the evil master and bring us into His Father's house. Redeemed by His blood, we become sons instead of slaves, but for this our consent and our striving toward the Son are necessary. And then Jesus will share His dwellings with us (see John 14:2).

If we separate what the Lord says in today's passage from the discussion with the Jews who do not want to accept His words, we will see an astonishing revelation of what salvation is. The Lord calls us to know the truth, saying that it will make us free. Repeating the same thing in another form, He says that if the Son of God sets us free, then we will be truly free. And we need liberation, because everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.

Only a person thinks that he freely chooses to sin; in reality this is genuine slavery, from which only the Son of God can deliver us. It is absolutely necessary to acknowledge this fact, but it is very hard and unpleasant. That is why the Jews argue with Jesus.

How often unbelievers say that Christianity is nothing but problems. And sometimes we believers feel somewhat hurt: wherever we turn, everything seems forbidden... The problem is that in the supposedly convenient system of this world, one very quickly discovers that everything may appear to be permitted, yet nothing is truly within reach. Jesus says it simply: “Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.” It seems that we may allow ourselves anything, but enslaved to sin, we find within ourselves the strength for almost nothing. Our life moves by inertia... Jesus promises to free us from that inertia. What He gives is genuine freedom: the freedom to be ourselves, to make our choices not automatically but truly. He paid for this freedom of ours with His Blood. It is worth asking ourselves: do we value His sacrifice, or do we fail to notice it?

Jesus' conversation with the Pharisees listening to Him at first glance appears to be a simple misunderstanding, a dispute over words that each person understands in his own way. Meanwhile Jesus Himself does not appear especially eager to resolve this misunderstanding. On the contrary, He speaks in such a way that new questions are added to old ones, and fresh perplexities are layered onto the earlier ones. At first glance it can appear that Jesus is trying to confuse His interlocutors as much as possible, but in reality He is trying to help them see both themselves and the life they are living in a way completely different from what they are used to seeing, for they are used to seeing themselves and their life from the viewpoint of the religious tradition of which they were bearers.

For a believer, religiosity can in a certain sense be considered a natural state, and therefore it is not surprising that such a person perceives everything around him through the prism of his religion. The Pharisees were no exception; on the contrary, Pharisaism as a special movement within Judaism can in a certain sense be called the quintessence of religiosity as such. And the Pharisees' view of the world, of their life, and of their history was naturally religious. Jesus, however, is trying to lead them beyond the limits of this religiosity. He says to them, for example: you think you are free? What about sin? Or do you not count slavery to sin as slavery? Are you descendants of Abraham? But to be Abraham's descendant means to continue the work he began, not to declare loyalty to a tradition. And what are you doing? You want to kill Me because I testify to you about what has been revealed to Me by God? And you consider this a deed worthy of Abraham?

Jesus is constantly trying to lead the people listening to Him beyond the limits of their own religiosity. He wants them to understand what spiritual life is in all its purity and fullness, unrestricted by any human framework, including religious frameworks. He says to the people listening to Him: Tradition is not religion. Tradition is life with God and in God. Everyone who lives such a life continues the Tradition. Abraham is not the founder of a new religion; he began the Tradition of communion with God and life with God, and only in this way can his work be continued. True Tradition, Tradition with a capital T, is precisely the Tradition of life with God. And the fullness and completion of this Tradition is life in that very Kingdom which He, Jesus, brought into the world.

This is the life the Savior is trying to tell the Pharisees listening to Him about, plunging them into complete bewilderment that gradually grows into irritation, and then into hatred. This is what brings Christ's earthly path to the outcome that follows naturally in such a situation.

Jews have always considered themselves children, descendants, of Abraham, and this is an undoubted historical fact. This fact was enough for every Jew in every age to consider himself belonging to the people of God. But then the Messiah comes and poses the question differently.

It turns out that it is not enough to be a descendant of Abraham by blood; one must also be his successor in spirit. And that is more difficult. Indeed, what did Abraham do? He followed God, who called him. But what did this mean for him? Abraham knew nothing about the God who called him; for him the God of Israel was still an unknown God. Abraham came to know Him already on the road to Palestine and later in Palestine itself. At the beginning, he simply had to entrust himself to the One he did not know. To believe at the first encounter. Abraham, of course, heard God's voice, but in those days hearing the voice of some god or spirit was not so rare.

There were many gods and spirits, and many voices as well; whom to trust was for each person to decide. The voice that called Abraham after itself was the voice of the Unknown. This voice promised much, but could it be trusted? Abraham believed. His heart told him that the Unknown One was not deceiving him. And in this he is the complete opposite of those deeply religious but very distrustful Pharisees who constantly demanded proofs of Jesus' messiahship, and proofs that matched their own ideas about the Messiah.

If Abraham had been like that, there would have been no Jewish people, simply because such an Abraham would never have believed the unknown God. And of course, with the openness that characterized Abraham, he would never have begun to persecute, much less try to kill, a person attempting to tell him something new about his God. This is what distinguishes Abraham from those who turned out to be his descendants by blood but not by spirit. Abraham had every possibility of entering the Kingdom. His descendants, however, had serious problems with this. Not all of them, of course, but many. Especially those who considered themselves completely ready both to meet the Messiah and for the Kingdom.

The next, harshest words of Jesus are addressed to... Jews who had believed in Him. Evidently, they believed in some way other than the Lord wanted. Therefore we too need to think: do we believe rightly or not? They proudly declare that they were born free, being children of Abraham, the chosen people. Therefore they do not need freedom, for they are not slaves, and they do not need the truth, for they already know it. They call God their father, but this already follows from their belonging to the holy people; no step is required of them in order to be adopted by the Lord.

And what is most frightening is that all this is characteristic not only of the Jews. Do we not believe in the same way? Do we not consider ourselves chosen people who have freedom and truth in our pocket, and who have long since been God’s own people? If so, why do we need to believe in Jesus? Let us think about this...

Addressing the Pharisees who are listening to Him, Jesus keeps trying to bring them back to the very foundations of what is called spiritual life. He tells them: you see what I am doing, and still you dishonor Me - that means you are not from God.

At first glance, the argument may seem somewhat strange: Jesus Himself understands perfectly well that His listeners doubt Him and do not trust Him. To declare to them, when they have this attitude toward Him, that He is from God and they, if they do not accept Him, are therefore not from God, may seem somewhat naive at first glance. Making oneself the criterion when people do not believe you appears completely absurd. But Jesus is not speaking about Himself in isolation; He is speaking about His works - the very works about which even many Pharisees could say nothing except that they were from God. Simple logic should then have forced them to acknowledge that the One who performs these works is also from God. But nothing of the sort happens.

What prevents those listening to Jesus from acknowledging what is obvious? And what does He mean when He tells them that "their father is the devil"? Of course, when false witness is involved, that is, a direct violation of the ninth commandment, and a violation of which the offenders have no intention of repenting, one can already speak of direct submission to the devil as the spirit of lies.

But why does this happen? After all, these are deeply and sincerely religious people, for whom a conscious violation of the commandment means betrayal of their own religion. True; but, as can be seen, all this is valid only as long as religion itself is not at stake. If someone appears who encroaches on religion as such, that person is considered an enemy by definition, and the commandments no longer apply to Him: in their eyes He has placed Himself outside the religious law that they follow. There is nothing to discuss with such a person. "He is a Samaritan" (it would be hard to imagine a worse insult in the Pharisees' religious language), "He has a demon," and it does not matter that He works miracles: miracles are no proof if the One who performs them does not conform to religious norms.

And Jesus again and again tries to bring His listeners back to a normal, not religious but spiritual, vision of the situation: look not at your religion, He tells them, but at the One who does God's works; look without prejudice, with unblinded eyes, or else you will fall into the snares of the father of lies and lose everything, despite all your religiosity.

The conversation between Christ and the Jews that we read today in the Gospel of John takes place under enormous tension, which is very noticeable in the Gospel text. The Lord speaks a terrible truth, which the Jews find absolutely impossible to hear, and they have nothing to set against it. "Which of you convicts Me of sin?" (in the Synodal text, "of falsehood"), the Lord exclaims. The authors of the Synodal translation did not even find it possible to use such a word in relation to Christ, although in the Greek original that is exactly the word used. But if it is impossible to convict the Lord Jesus of sin, then it obviously follows that He speaks the truth, and the Jews do not want to accept it because they themselves remain in sin.

They have nothing to set against Christ's words, so the Jews "make it personal." "You are a Samaritan and have a demon," they say. In our present reality, an argument of this kind would sound like, "You are crazy, a Jew, and a Chechen," because the Jews treated Samaritans as we, to our shame, treat certain peoples. Incidentally, the Jews here are very unoriginal: we all, when argument becomes impossible, begin insulting the one with whom we are arguing.

What is striking here is how different the things said by the opposing sides are. Christ's words exist in some other dimension; He does not lower Himself to skirmishing on a human level. And therefore what matters to us is the content of what He says, regardless of the turns of the polemic. First of all, He says that He honors the Heavenly Father, and here the issue is that worship of God which all sinful humanity rejects. In these words lies the pledge of the coming creation of the Church, which will become the Body of Christ and in which, by taking part, we take part in this honoring of the Father by Christ. And, of course, the words that whoever keeps His word will never see death are of exceptional importance for us. This is our only hope of sharing with Christ His victory over death.