“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.”
– John 8:31–32
What a great couple of verses John 8:31–32 is. Oh, Jesus says, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciple. So what does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus? What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus? It means to abide in his word. So just think about that in your life. Are you abiding in the word of Jesus? Is that what your life is about from morning to evening? You say, “Well, that feels like big commitment.” N, this is what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. Think Joshua chapter one, “Meditate on my word day and night.” This is what it means to follow Jesus, to abide in his word.
John 8:31–32 Wants Us To Abide In God’s Word
So his word is just filling us. It’s affecting us in every way. Being a follower of Jesus means revolving your life around the word of Jesus. So if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples. And so it’s not just like, okay, abide in his word that’s what you have to do. So do it. He said, “No, you will know the truth.
As you abide in my word, as my disciples, you will know truth.” And don’t don’t you want to know truth? You don’t want to know lies. You don’t want to base your life on lies, right? We all want to base our life on truth. I don’t know anybody doesn’t want to base their life on truth. Nobody wants to build a faulty, false foundation for life. You will know the truth and the truth will set you free. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t want to live free.
And we see all throughout scripture, we think freedom means freedom to do whatever we want to do, but that’s not freedom, not according to God in his word, that’s slavery. It’s slavery to sin, slavery to ourselves and Jesus came to give us freedom from sin, freedom from self that is focused on us and misses the glorious reality that God is the one who is true and right and good and all loving and he knows what is best for our lives.
If We Abide By God’s Word, We Will Walk With Him
Now bring it all together. Why would we abide in the word of God? Because God loves you and God knows better than you do what is best for your life. So you don’t want to live in slavery to yourself and slavery to sin that which goes against God. You want to live in freedom, which is found in hearing and abiding in the word of God, living according to the word of God and experiencing then life according to God’s good design for you. How? God, help us to learn these things. Help us to see this. God, help us to see abiding in your word not merely as a discipline we must do, but as the key to experiencing freedom and knowing truth and walking in the life that you’ve called us to walk and created us to walk in.
Oh God, I pray for every single person listening right now that you would help them. Pray this in my own life, but just enter seating for them right now. I pray, oh God, that you would help them to abide in your word, to meditate on your word day and night, to memorize your word, to read your word, to walk in your word, to obey your word, to do your word, to abide in your word.
John 8:31–32 Wants Us To Trust The Of His Word
God, help us all to do that. And as we do, we trust that we will know the truth, that we will live our lives, not based on the lives of this world, but on truth from your word. And we will know the truth and the truth will set us free. That we will be free from the lies that we know what is best for our lives. God, help us to learn what we read in Genesis three. Adam and Eve did not know what it was best for their lives. They believed a lie and it sent them into slavery to sin and judgment that came from that.
God, we praise you for sending Jesus to save us from sin, to save us from ourselves, to hear your word through him, to know you through him, through faith in him and in him to experience freedom, to experience life, according to your word. So help us to live in it. God, we pray that you’d help us. John 8:31–32 to abide in your word to know the truth and to live in freedom according to your good design for our lives. We pray this, your word, in Jesus name. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
