The Jews that Jesus was talking to couldn’t figure out who He was. This devotion looks at why Jesus was the only One who could provide freedom by accomplishing the plan of salvation.
Nuggets
- It was obvious to them that Jesus couldn’t be from God because even Abraham had died.
- The Jews couldn’t wrap their heads around Jesus saying that those obedient to Him wouldn’t know death.
- Yes, physical death entered the world when Adam sinned; but more importantly, spiritual death entered the world.
- We will be blessed when we are obedient.
- The only way we gain salvation is through obedience to the Truth.
Devotions in the What I Believe series
Devotions in the Religious Freedom category
This has seemed like the series that kept on giving. Even so, all good things must come to an end. We are going to finish this one up today!
In this series, we’ve been talking about the freedom we receive when we accept the gift of salvation. We started out by using a passage in John 8.
We are again going to pick out verses from that passage — and put them with new ones — to continue to show how Jesus is the reason we receive spiritual freedom.
For these last three devotions, we have been using Sunday School Times’ A Glorious Liberator as the foundation of the devotions.
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Let's Put It into Context
Freedom is, according to the Holman Bible Dictionary, “the ability of a person or group to be and do what they want instead of being controlled by another.” It is also referred to as liberty.
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We talked about liberty before. We said that it runs the gamut, hitting all the things the worldview stresses.
• We do what we please with no authority over us.
• We make our own choices.
• We don’t have to follow rules or limits.
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
A Dying Race
“Are you greater than our father Abraham who died? And the prophets died. Who do you claim to be?” (Jn. 8: 53 CSB) “Where are your ancestors now? They and the prophets are long dead” (Zech. 1: 5 NLT)
The Jews were wondering who Jesus was. They tried to get Him to admit that He was a Samaritan and a demon (Jn. 8: 48). They settled on demon because Jesus said, “… if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death” (Jn. 8: 51 CSB).
It was obvious to them that Jesus couldn’t be from God because even Abraham had died. And if someone wasn’t going to die, it should have been Abraham to their way of thinking.
Whitelaw called Abraham “the father of the faithful. He believed in God’s promise (Genesis 15:6; Romans 4:20), and became the head of a spiritual progeny who will far outnumber the natural.”
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But the Jews took their pride in Abraham being called by God to the extreme. They thought that made Abraham, according to Thomas, the greatest person ever to have lived.
Where things went south was when that created a whole bunch of pride in them. Abraham’s being the greatest man made them the greatest people.
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In other words, they didn’t really see anything special about Jesus.
“By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3: 19 ESV)
The Jews couldn’t wrap their heads around Jesus saying that those obedient to Him wouldn’t know death. Death is just a part of human life.
Well, at least it had been since the original sin. As punishment, mankind is to return to the dust from which he made (Gen. 2: 7).
“No one can live forever; all will die. No one can escape the power of the grave. Interlude” (Ps. 89: 48 NLT)
“And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Heb. 9: 27 ESV)
Death will visit everyone. No one is going to live forever in this body.
I hear you bringing up Enoch. “Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him” (Gen. 5: 24 ESV). The New International Version qualified Enoch’s walk by terming it faithfully performed.
We read that to mean that God took Enoch to Heaven with Him. What do we know about our heavenly bodies?
- “Listen, I am telling you a mystery: We will not all fall asleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet” (I Cor. 15: 51-52 CSB).
- “Dear friends, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when he appears, we will be like him because we will see him as he is” (I Jn. 3: 2 CSB).
Okay, so it doesn’t paint a Van Gogh, but it does tell us that there will be changes made. I could see where some would consider that change a type of death because it is considered as shedding this body.
“When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned” (Rom. 5: 12 NLT)
What the Jews were concerned with was physical death. Yes, physical death entered the world when Adam sinned.
More importantly, spiritual death entered the world. Spiritual death is the separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
Glossary
The spiritual death has more lasting consequences. We need life.
A Life-Giving Obedience
“Truly I tell you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death” (Jn. 8: 51 CSB)
The Jews just didn’t get what Jesus was getting at. Jesus was looking at addressing the death part — by focusing on the obedience part.
Obedience means to hear and carry out the instructions that God gives us. He gives those instructions in a variety of ways:
- Laws and commandments
- Individual direction on our specific purposes.
We want to be obedient. God will reward us greatly if we are.
“You will be blessed if you obey the commands of the LORD your God that I am giving you today” (Deut. 11: 27 NLT)
“This is what I told them: ‘Obey me, and I will be your God, and you will be my people. Do everything as I say, and all will be well!’” (Jer. 7: 23 NLT)
We will be blessed when we are obedient. Blessedness means we have been perfected. The perfected state indicates spiritual wholeness or completeness. It means we have become as Jesus is. It means we have become holy, sanctified, and righteous.
Let’s look at this way. How does God want us to be obedient?
God wants us to admit that we have been separated from Him. To rectify that, we need to believe in Jesus as our Savior and Redeemer. Then, we are confessing that God is Sovereign Lord and submit to Him.
Doing this gains us salvation and regeneration. Salvation is deliverance from evil and the consequences of sins to replace them with eternal life and good. Regeneration is the change in us that God brings about when we go from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive.
Salvation puts us on the sanctification road. Sanctification is the transformation of mind, body, and soul beginning with regeneration and ending with perfected state of spiritual wholeness or completeness.
Read that again. Sanctification ends in being perfected. Blessed means perfected. We are blessed when we are obedient.
Because we are obedient and ABCD, God is our God. We talked before about the promises God gives us when we become His children.
God’s Promises
Answers prayer (Ps. 37: 4; Jn. 14: 13)
Deliverance (Ps. 34: 17; Ps. 50: 15)
Eternal life (Jn. 3: 16; Rev. 3: 5)
Faithful (Jer. 29: 12; Rom. 4: 21)
Fight for us (Ex. 14: 14)
Knowledge and wisdom (Jas. 1: 5)
Love (Ps. 145: 9)
Peace (Isa. 54: 10; Phil. 4: 6-7)
Presence (Deut. 31: 8; Mt. 28: 20)
Prosperity (Mal. 3: 10; II Cor. 9: 8)
Protection (Isa. 43: 2)
Provision (Mt. 6: 31-33; Phil. 4: 19)
Salvation (Ps. 27: 1; I Jn. 1: 9)
Strength (Isa. 49: 29-31; Eph. 3: 16-19)
Transformation (1 Jn. 3: 2; II Pet. 1: 3-4)
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“But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men” (Ac. 5: 29 ESV)
We just have to make sure we are obeying God, not following the worldview. Remember, in Truth in Freedom, we said that we couldn’t serve two masters because it comes down to submission.
If we are more concerned what our fellow men (read that as worldview people) think the rules should be, we won’t be following God. They follow Satan. If we follow them, we are following Satan.
“And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him” (Heb. 5: 9 ESV)
There is only one reasoned we can be perfected. That is because Jesus was perfected first.
Look at another verse in Hebrews. “God, for whom and through whom everything was made, chose to bring many children into glory. And it was only right that he should make Jesus, through his suffering, a perfect leader, fit to bring them into their salvation” (Heb. 2: 10 NLT).
Jesus was perfected by His suffering. Cumming wrote, “He could not save but by suffering; He could not ransom us at a less price than His death; and rather than see a world perish, He would not save Himself from being perfected by suffering, that we might be saved from irretrievable perdition.”
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I have to process a second. Jesus didn’t sin. He was obedient from day one doing the do’s and don’ts. That wasn’t the issue.
The issue was the question of whether Jesus would go through with the plan of salvation or not. Well, He could have bowed out. It was His choice to make.
Ten Thousand Angels
Vocalist: Elaine Guthals
Keyboard: Chris Vieth
But Jesus knew He had to shed His blood to gain our salvation. He had to go through the suffering, pain, and humiliation of hanging on the cross.
Jesus didn’t do it for Himself. He did it for God and for us. So, He was perfected.
“You were cleansed from your sins when you obeyed the truth, so now you must show sincere love to each other as brothers and sisters. Love each other deeply with all your heart” (I Pet. 1: 22 NLT)
The only way we gain salvation is through obedience to the Truth. We know Jesus is the Truth.
An Ever-Living Savior
“Jesus said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, before Abraham was, I am’” (Jn. 8: 58 CSB)
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (Jn. 1: 1 ESV)
“And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed” (Jn. 17: 5 ESV)
“He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together” (Col. 1: 17 NLT)
“And, ‘You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands’” (Heb. 1: 10 ESV)
Before the foundation of the world, God asked Jesus to be our Savior. “For he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in love before him” (Eph. 1: 4 CSB).
Glossary
Jesus made plans to accomplish the Plan long before the plan was put into motion. He was born for that purpose.
“I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades” (Rev. 1: 18 NIV)
Jesus is the liberator because He conquered sin. His death was the sacrifice needed.
But Jesus not only died, but He rose again to show us that He conquered death. There were eye-witness accounts proving this.
Now, Jesus has returned to Heaven where He sits at the right hand of God. There He will be for eternity.
One day, it will be judgment day. Death and Hades will be defeated.
Making the Connections
So, we have to decide. Are we going to ABCD — or are we going to choose to reside in hell for eternity?
It is our choice.
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to
live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
Making the Connections to Self-Discipline
We’ve been looking at defending our beliefs when we are witnessing. That means we have to be secure enough to convince someone to accept our beliefs.
Our questions should still serve us to determine on what we need to focus.
- What does the Scriptures say?
- What do I believe?
- Why do I believe the same/differently than the Scriptures?
- What are the talking points when witnessing to a non-believer?
Related Links
I have created a worksheet of the questions above. Click on the button below to access it.
How Do We Apply This?
We have to search for God if we don’t currently know Him. We have to seek Him to strengthen our relationships with Him if we do.
Searching for and Seeking God
Hearing His Word (Rom. 10: 17).
Reading His Word (Rev. 1: 3).
Praying to Him (Heb. 4: 16).
Studying His Word (Ac. 17: 11).
Meditating on His Word (Ps. 1: 1-2).
Memorizing His Word (Ps. 119: 11).
Father. Thank you for sending Jesus to liberate us from the consequences of sin. We commit to obey You and submit to Your Will. Amen.
What do you think?
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