Week 38—Tuesday Romans 8:37-39
Romans 8:37-39
TRUTHS NOT ANCHORED TO THE TRUTH
ARE NOT REDEMPTIVE
We must spend one more day on: “If you dwell within the revelation I have brought, you are indeed my disciples; you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32, NEB). We must add a verse which really belongs to this. “If then the Son sets you free, you will indeed be free” (vs. 36, NEB). Here the truth which sets us free is synonymous with the Son who sets us free. The abstract truth does not necessarily set us free—it’s the incarnate Truth that sets us free. This is important.
Education, psychiatry, religious education, and nondirective counseling have for the most part gone on the assumption that it is the truth, the insight, that sets people free. That assumption is now proving sterile. For truth that is not anchored to the Truth, the Incarnate Truth, is truth that is non-redemptive, for it has no ultimate meaning or purpose, no goal, no cohesion running through it. Unless that truth leads to the Truth, the Son who makes you free, it is not transforming. It is informing, but not transforming. For to be introduced to the Son, the Truth, means surrender, allegiance, obedience, life-committal—that is transforming, it sets us free. It issues in conversion—Christian conversion, regeneration. Those other procedures—education, psychiatry, religious education, nondirective counseling—may produce marginal change, reformation, but not regeneration. Regeneration takes place when the self surrenders itself as the center to Christ, the Truth, the Son, as the center. Then the Son makes you free. Neither abstract truth, nor concrete truth about yourself, sets you free. You are free when the self surrenders itself to the Son—then he makes you free.
The four procedures mentioned above are the Word become word and produce in their own image—the Word become word. But the Son, who is the Word become flesh, produces in his image—those who surrender to him do become the Word become flesh. They find and are free.
O Jesus, you Son of the Living God, when we come to you we are set free. We are set free from the past, the present, and the future—we are set free. We walk the earth free—free because bound to you. And this is “indeed” freedom. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: In you I am free to be the best that I can be.