Introduction

In John 8:31-32 Jesus makes a bold statement about how we can be free.

Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

To which the group of believers responded, ‘How sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?`. Jesus then states a central point of John 8 & 9 in verse 34.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.

The above translation is the King Jame Version (KJV) with which Latter-Day Saints are the most familiar. Throughout this post, I am going to move between two other translations of New Testament verses. The KJV is a word-for-word (formal equivalence) translation¹. At the other end of the spectrum is Adam Miller ’s Grace is Not God’s Backup Plan: An Urgent Paraphrase of Paul’s Letter to the Romans as an example of a thought-for-thought (functional equivalence) translation.¹ The English Standard Version (ESV) is close to a word-for-word translation that brings the text into the modern framing of the translated language (optimal equivalence)¹. In the ESV translation of John 8:34 we read;

Jesus answered them, Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.

I believe the ESV translation is adding an important word that helps answer the question, ‘How shall we be made free?’ when it places the word ‘practices’ in front of sin. We also see the stronger translation of the greek to the word ‘slave’ which most modern translations use instead of the word servant in this verse.

John 8 & 9 tell us stories of three types of people that sin. In these stories, we can see those who sin, practice sin, and appear to sin. These surrounding stories give us a deeper understanding of the relationship between sin and freedom. They help us understand the context sin and how it relates to grace and our relationship with God.

Questions to ponder

Here are a few questions to ponder as we move through the story of the woman in adultery, the man born blind, and the inquiring Scribes & Pharisees. By pondering these questions we can understand the relationship between sin, law, and grace.

• Can we follow the law and be a slave of sin?
• Can we break the law and be a slave of grace (free)?
• Can we break the law and be a slave of sin?
• Can we follow the law and be a slave of grace (free)?

The surrounding stories of John 8:31-32

The woman in adultery

• The woman in adultery shows us that the region between ‘freedom in truth’ and ‘slave of sin’ may be more complex than the act of sin when we see the Savior’s responses to the woman. He says, ‘Neither do I condemn thee’ and then invites, ‘Go and Sin no more’ as we can watch in the following video of this scene based on the KJV translation.

Jesus then spake unto the group that remained saying,

I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. -John 8:12-

From the comments that Jesus makes to the woman and the crowd, it seems that she had sinned but that her sins were not as a slave of sin. Could she have been blind in her sin and thus not a slave to sin? Was she walking in the darkness and unaware of the truth of Jesus Christ and His plan?

Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, “Are we also blind?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains. -John 9:39-41-

Whatever her previous state, she was now free to move towards the ’light of life.’

The man born blind

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. -John 9:1-3-

Jesus then demonstrates how he invites those that are blind to trust in him. If they believe in his truth, then they will be made free. I love how this discovery of light, or truth, is depicted in the following video.

This story of the blind man teaches us that status, health, and results don’t define us as servants of sin. Our health, both mental and physical, is not the definition of sin.² Maybe, stretched even farther, sin is not a bucket of actions or results. It is an essence. It is a master. We become a servant of sin by our choice to sit in the light of sin as our judgment. Not by the accumulation of actions that fall short of perfection.

The inquiring Scribes & Pharisees

At the beginning of John 8 and the end of John 9, we see the clear examples of those that are ‘slaves of sin’ as we watch the Savior interact with the Scribes and Pharisees that question Him. They have the law and profess to be teachers of the law, but they will not see the light that is before them. They were not blind from birth but have been blinded by the light of Christ and chose to be slaves to sin.

Can we say she is a servant of sin?

Are we also blind?

Notice how the Scribes and Pharisees in both situations march into the presence of the Savior blind to His grace and truth. They follow the ’law’ but are slaves to sin. There is a difference between imperfection, even great imperfection if our journey is towards God instead of away from God. This concept may explain why Jesus talked to the women taken in adultery so differently about sin than the practitioners of sin that brought her to Him in John 8:34.

Understanding sin in the context of God’s love

Adam Miller ’s Grace is Not God’s Backup Plan translation of Romans 7:7 and Romans 9:31-32 provides insight into the stories of John 8 & 9. They also provide context to answer the four questions posed above.

Should we say then that the law is sin? No. But the law isn’t inherently good either. The law is only good when it’s paired with grace. Severed from grace, the law is amenable to abuse. It’s easily repurposed by sin. The law is like an atom that’s short one electron. If it’s not already bound to grace, it will happily lock orbits with any questionable partner that wanders by. -Romans 7:7-

Many insiders, though, want to make everything about the law and, even with all that effort, still never manage to fulfill it. They failed to see that the law was about grace. They treated the law as a list of works rather than as an occasion of faith. What was meant to be a stepping stone became a stumbling block. And then, stumbling over the law, sin seized them. -Romans 9:31-32-

Sometimes we see the words’ grace’, ‘faith,’ and even ’love’ as another item on the checklist of things to do. Paul wants us to understand so much more about the grace of God’s love. From John 8 & 9 it looks like Jesus wants us to understand so much more about sin and grace. He is pleading with us to understand that ‘practicing sin’ in servitude to sin is different. He is ok with sin that is in slavery to grace. He wants us to experiment with life to learn how to be creators as He his. This experimentation will result in imperfect choices, but it will be in the movement towards Him.

Steven Peck and Terryl Givens discuss a quote from A.D. Lindsay about our journey in the grace of God. The quote says;

The difference between ordinary people and saints is not that saints fulfill the plain duties that ordinary men neglect. The things saints do have not usually occurred to ordinary people at all… “Gracious” conduct is like the work of an artist. It needs imagination and spontaneity. It is not the choice between presented alternatives but the creation of something new. -A.D. Lindsay: The Two Moralities-

Steven Peck then has this wonderful analogy about being immersed in choices that require us to do more than make decisions. They require us to make directional choices and then navigate through the waves of life.

I love [the above quote] because what [he] says is we often feel like there’s a right thing and a wrong thing to do—and there is, I’m not saying this like categorically either, there are wrong things to do and there are right things to do—but so much of life, in dealing with our kids, in trying to navigate the difficulties of relationships, of jobs, of everything, requires us to act immersed in an utterly unique situation and utterly in need of our best thinking, our best imagination, and our freedom.

A lot of times we try to line it up and say “ok I’ve got to choose between these two,” when in reality, as she describes, we need to navigate these waters. It’s not when we’re on a ship that, you know, these waves are evil and this wind is evil or good. There are benefits and non-benefits, but we have to steer. And there are directions, there are places we want to go to, there are places we want to get to. -Steven Peck-

We can be ‘slaves to sin’ when we give up on navigating the path under grace. The truth that is the grace of Christ makes us free to overcome our shortcomings while navigating towards God.

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