Charles Ellicott Commentary John 8:36

"If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." — John 8:36 (ASV)

If the Son therefore shall make you free.—Now the thought of John 8:31-32 is repeated with special reference to the position they had claimed for themselves. There is a need for the emancipation He has spoken of, and His mission in the world is to proclaim it.

If they will enter into spiritual union with Him, and abide in this new spiritual relation, it will make them new creatures, freed from sin by the power of truth.

In the language of St. Paul, as quoted above, Christ will be formed in them. They will become members of Christ and children of God.

The Son of the divine household will make them free, and in Him they will become members of the great family of God Himself. (Compare to the same thought of the divine household as addressed by St. Paul specially to Gentiles, in Ephesians 2:11-22. See also in this Gospel, John 14:2–3.)

Ye shall be free indeed.—Or, you will be free in reality.—The word is not the same as that rendered “indeed” in John 8:31. They claimed political freedom, but they were in reality the subjects of Rome. They claimed religious freedom, but they were in reality the slaves to the letter.

They claimed moral freedom, but they were in reality the slaves of sin. The freedom which the Son proclaimed was freedom in reality, for it was the freedom of their true life, delivered from the slavery of sin and brought into union with God.

For the human spirit that, through knowledge of the truth revealed by the Son, can contemplate the Father and the eternal home, there exists a real freedom that no power can restrain.

Throughout this context, thoughts turn irresistibly to the teaching of St. Paul, the great apostle of freedom. No fuller illustration of these words could be provided than by his life.

He, like St. Peter and St. John (for example, Romans 1:1; 2 Peter 1:1; Revelation 1:1), had learned to regard himself as a “bondservant,” but it was of Christ, “whose service is perfect freedom.”

We feel, as we think of him in chains before Agrippa, or a prisoner at Rome, that he is more truly free than the governor or Caesar before whom he stands. He was also more truly free than he himself was when he was armed with authority to bind men and women because they were Christians.

The chains that bind the body cannot bind the spirit, whose own chains have been loosed. He is free indeed, for the Son has made him free.