Freedom and The Truth / John 8:31–36 / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday October 26th 2025/ Reformation Day (Observed) / Mount Olive Lutheran Church

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday October 26th 2025: Reformation Day Observed / John 8:31–36 “Freedom and The Truth”

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth, and 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’?”

Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in Your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Good Christian Friends when Jesus stands before the Roman Governor of the Judea, with His life in the balance, Pontius Pilot asks Him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about Me?” Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered You over to me. What have You done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But My kingdom is not from the world.” Then Pilate said to Him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to My voice.” Pilate [then] said to Him, “What is truth?”[1]

Our Gospel Reading comes from a point earlier in this same Gospel of Saint John and it deals with this same topic: Truth. In our appointed reading for Reformation Day (observed) we hear Jesus say to His fellow Jewish folks “If you abide in My word, you are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”[2] Now mind you He says this to the Jewish folks who are already said to believe in Him, these are people who have heard Him teach and preach and maybe even witnessed and experienced miracles by His hand and yet among them there are those who when the topic of truth comes up push back against Jesus. They are particularly upset at the notion that they are in slavery to anything and that Jesus would say that they are not, in fact, free. They are certain that they have all the freedom in the world as Children of Abraham[3] and yet Jesus stands there and teaches them that freedom is found in the Truth and on the night before His conversation with Pontius Pilot concerning the question of truth, on the night before the day we celebrate as Good Friday, Jesus says of Himself to His disciples, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”[4]

Jesus responds to their complaint, in the today’s Gospel Reading, about His teaching by saying, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Here Jesus is making it all very clear; both what the problem is and also what the solution to the problem is and that’s where our Gospel reading leaves off ... but if you keep reading through to the next verse Jesus continues to say to them, “I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill Me because My word finds no place in you.”[5] Hang on to that thought: Now later when Jesus stands before Pontius Pilate, with His life in the balance, Saint John explains how after [Jesus] had said [“Everyone who is of the truth listens to My voice,” And Pilate had responded with the question, “What is truth?” the very next verse continues with Pilate going back outside to the Jews to tell them, “I find no guilt in Him.”[6] The truth is that Pilate found no guilt in Jesus, he was desperately trying to wash his hands of the whole matter and it seems he didn’t particularly want to have Jesus dead, almost like he heard what Jesus said and he believed what Jesus said, or at the least believed Jesus not to be guilty of what they accused Him of. So while Pilate didn’t want Jesus dead it appears he also didn’t want the trouble Jesus’ enemies were bringing to him. He was trying to thread the needle to avoid civil unrest which could lead to his failure as a Governor.

“If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”

With these words from our Gospel Reading Jesus was implying very strongly to those who had ear to hear, for those who had eyes to read between the lines that He was more than just a prophet or a teach or preacher, more than a healer and miracle worker because none of these sorts would say, “If you abide in My word, you are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” And none of them would say, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” The original hearers of Jesus from our Gospel reading sought to kill Him because Jesus’ words found no place in them and they troubled them. Confronted with the prospect of the embodiment of Truth, Truth incarnate, Truth with flesh and bones they would rather see that Truth dead than embraced Him as the Truth that He is.  

Dear ones, this is very applicable for today and the days we are living in. And this leads to the question ‘do Jesus’ words find a place in you: A place in your heart, a place in your mind, a place in your life?’ It sure seems like there are a lot of people who may at one point or another have believed in Jesus, just as these Jewish folks had, or at least believed in a Jesus that they imagined was true, a sort of Jesus that did and said what they wanted Him to do and say. But what about when Jesus does or says things you don’t want Him to do and say? What then? Is He the Truth even when you find what He says and does hard to accept? Who needs to change in such a circumstance, you or Jesus? If Jesus says things the World, or maybe even you yourself, do not like about marriage and sexual relationships or about anger or money or suffering or discipleship or Hell, or anything else for that matter, what is to be done? Is Jesus to be ignored, explained away; is He to be made dead in the eyes of everyone just so you, or the World, can keep your pet opinions and beliefs alive in your life? Who is the Truth: you or Jesus? Whose word are you to abide in: His word or your own word? Do you set yourself free or does the Son of God set you free?

Wise king Solomon, King David’s Son teaches:     

        What has been is what will be,

               and what has been done is what will be done,

               and there is nothing new under the sun.

        Is there a thing of which it is said,

               “See, this is new”?

        It has been already

               in the ages before us.

        There is no remembrance of former things,

               nor will there be any remembrance

        of later things yet to be

               among those who come after.”[7]

From the moment Eve plucked the fruit from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil until the sounding of the final trumpet and ushering in the Last Day and final judgment there have always been and will always be people who fail to believe the Truth, who trust in their own assessment of what is true and what is false. Thinking and believing themselves ‘free’ they have proven to be slaves to error, and to false beliefs, and ultimately to be slaves to sin. Yesterday, today, tomorrow point out an obvious sin that contradicts God’s design for our life from the plain words of Scripture and see how quickly those words are rejected. In the last couple hundred years such words from the Bible are said to be no longer authoritative, words of man not of God, yes the brazenness of such claims in these days continues to grow becoming more obstinate.

Yet there is always hope in the shadow of this denial of Truth. The seeds of the Reformation were rooted in the abiding faith that God’s Word is in fact the rule and norm for the Christian life, that all things are actually intended to be judged on account of God’s Word and that nothing supersedes it. The Scriptures are the very Word of God provided as a gift for us to abide in and reformers like Martin Luther were blessed to have this realisation dawn upon them.

What can we know about the truth of the Word of God as found in Scripture? They are Jesus’ word because, as Saint John in His Gospel teaches, Jesus Himself is the very Word of God: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.”[8] Saint John who knows the end of what would happen before he sat down to make his accounting of the events of Jesus’ life explains what was happening with Jesus and how He was (or wasn’t) received in this way: [Jesus, the Son of God] came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him. But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become Children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we [that is Saint John and the faithful believers who abided in Jesus’ word] have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”[9] There’s that truth again. As Christian we are no longer the Children of Abraham, the Truth is for them but not limited to them, Jesus the Truth has one plan, one way of salvation, one life for us and that is to become Children of God through Him. There is no other Way to the Father, no other Truth, and no other Life to be had as Children of God. That is the truth.

People who treat Scripture as a wax nose, twisting and shaping truth to their post-modern whims and desires would be well warned by Saint Paul’s words to Saint Timothy: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”[10] And because we “daily sin much and surely deserve nothing but punishment,”[11] we all need to hear, mark and inwardly digest God’s True and holy Word for the purposes of: being rebuked by it and then living lives of repentance in forgiveness (a continual turning from self to God and a resistant fight against sin); for the purposes of being corrected by it and then living lives open to sanctification (open to the way that the Holy Spirit makes us holy); and finally for the purposes of being equipped by it and then living a life of service to the glory of God and the good of our neighbour (a rejection of what is selfish within us).[12]    

And so we are called by Jesus to live not by lies, to live not by the untruths of the World, the lies we tell ourselves, the lies others tell us. Seek the truth in all things: starting with Jesus who is the Truth. Lawlessness, antinomianism, hedonism, the ‘freedom’ to do whatever you want to do with no restraints is not freedom. It leads to enslavement to sin. Pick any Commandment from the Ten Commandments, falsely remove it’s authority in your life, erroneously listen to the bad advice of others on that Commandment and see how quickly you become enslaved to the sin that Commandment is condemning. Shackled to that sin, see how easy it is to free yourself once you’re enslaved by it. The good news is that God doesn’t expect you to pick the lock on those shackles, He doesn’t expect you to break those iron chains by your own strength of will or thought or physical might. If He expected this of you or me we would all be doomed. Sin, Death, the Devil, the World (even sometimes your own thoughts) may lie that that the shackles are a good thing, that they represent freedom, but this is not true. Getting free of the shackles of sin cannot be accomplished with penance, or self-punishment, it cannot be purchased with money or hard work. The only true way to be free of Sin is found in Jesus’ sacrificial life, atoning death, and in the all encompassing power and authority of this same risen Christ Jesus now ascended and enthroned at the right hand of His heavenly Father. Yes, “if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” In a World littered with fake and artificial everything, where click bait, filters and screens mediate practically every waking moment, where everything seems to be sand under our feet and sand slipping between our fingers, where it’s hard to know what to trust and what not to trust, in such a World — be it ever so hard to do — trust in Jesus and trust in His Word, hold fast to what the Bible teaches and stand upon Him, upon Jesus who is the Truth. His word must find a place in you. Abide in His Word.   

What does Psalm 40 say?

        “He drew me up from the pit of destruction,

               out of the miry bog,

        and set my feet upon a rock,

               making my steps secure.”[13]

Jesus is that Rock, He is the valiant One, whom God Himself elected, who fights for us, who holds the field forever, and He is the one who sets us free. The Reformation is not over: it was, is and continues to be a call to return to and to trust the Truth, Jesus, to have your hope and trust and faith in Him and in no other. Amen.     

Let us pray: Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen.

[1] John 18:33–38
[2] John 8:31-32
[3] John 8:33
[4] John 14:6
[5] John 8:37
[6] John 18:38
[7] Ecclesiastes 1:9–11
[8] John 1:1–4
[9] John 1:11–14
[10] 2 Timothy 3:16–17
[11] 5th Petition “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” Lord’s Prayer, Luther Small Catechism, Concordia Publishing House 2017, Page 21.
[12] Romans 3:23–26
[13] Psalm 40:2

Photo Credit: Main Photo mix of Luther's Rose from bawue.museum-digital.de with close up of open Bible on White surface from pexels.com with added text "Truth."