I told you last time about our team’s ZOOM conversations.
Dick Foth said he wanted to discuss freedom. He began with Jesus’ words:
“If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
So there’s a chain: obedience –> truth –> freedom.
It’s an interesting notion. Jesus says we don’t discover truth simply by reading and studying. It’s almost like you have to hang out with truth, live and experience it, to really know it. And knowing truth, according to Jesus, is the path to freedom.
To reinforce the link between truth and freedom, Dick jumped to the Bible’s first untruth:
The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
See it? They were never told they couldn’t touch the fruit, only that they couldn’t eat it. But Eve embellished God’s simple instruction, shaded it ever so slightly.
How often do you and I do something similar? How often do we add (or subtract) to transform His truth into ours?
What might happen if we simply tried to know Jesus and follow His teaching?
Maybe we’d be disciples. Maybe we’d know the truth.
Maybe we’d be free.