by Sinclair B. Ferguson
Jesus taught that we are all by nature in spiritual bondage. He had to be cruel to be kind.
The Jews to whom Jesus spoke—much like us—believed that they were certainly not in bondage to anything. But their response to Jesus' words revealed the deep spiritual bondage in which they were held. His words riled and angered them.
"Who do you think you are, saying that we need to be set free? How dare you! We are Abraham's children, his freeborn descendents." They claimed spiritual freedom as their birthright, but they were in spiritual bondage.
"Most assuredly, I say to you," Jesus said, "whoever commits sins is a slave of sin" (John 8:34).
Does this really need to be underlined? Jesus thought it did, and perhaps someone reading these pages may need a little help to understand what Jesus was saying here:
• We do not become sinners by committing specific acts.
• We commit specific acts of sin because we are sinners.
In short, my problem is not the isolated actions that I see as aberrations from what I really am. I am deceiving myself if I think that way. These actions are not aberrations but revelations of what is in my heart. They show that I commit sin because I am in bondage to it.
Paul develops this theme in Ephesians 2. Both the apostle and his readers (v. 3) were by nature bound in sin: "dead in trespasses and sins" (v. 1). When they heard the name of God and of His grace in Jesus Christ, their hearts remained cold. Like dead men and women, they were always flowing with the stream, following "the course of this world" (v. 2).
By nature, we usually deny that we are in spiritual bondage. We go out of our way to show our freedom by being different. But we tend, in one way or another, to become clones. That is a manifestation of our bondage. According to Ray Davies' satirical lyrics in The Kinks' hit song,
This pleasure-seeking individual always looks his best
'Cause he's a dedicated follower of fashion.
Of course, there is a darker side to this in the sinister influence of "the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience" (v. 2). We will say much more about him later.
As Jesus hinted, this sinfulness affects every dimension of our lives:
• Our minds. We do not think clearly. We may be well educated and have high IQs. But that is no guarantee that we think clearly about spiritual things.
• Our desires. When we are on our own and at our most honest, we recognize that we are not masters of our desires. We try to master them. We have a moral consciousness that says, "You must get these things under control." But inwardly we are out of control. There is a world within us over which we have no mastery.
• Our wills. They are in bondage to sin. "Oh yes," we say, "this message about being right with God—I will come to it another day. That is my decision and I can make it whenever I want."
The truth, however, is that we cannot think clearly about or desire Christ by our own unaided decision. Why not? We cannot respond to the good news of the gospel until we want Christ, and we cannot want Christ simply by a decision we can take at any moment we choose. We cannot say to our will, "Will, will to belong to the Lord!" It is beyond our powers to do that. No one can will the will to will what it will not will! Only God's grace can set us free to come to trust in Him.
What made it happen so?
His own will, this much I know,
Set me, as now I show,
At liberty.
Here, then, is our greatest need. Lesson one: We are in bondage to sinful hearts.
David's Understanding of Sin
King David made this discovery months after his sin with Bathsheba. He had broken God's law. He had coveted, he had committed adultery, he had stolen the wife of one of the best men he knew, and he had plotted the man's death (see 2 Sam. 11–12).
When the reality of his spiritual bondage came home to David, he realized it went back to the very beginning of his life: "I was sinful … from the time my mother conceived me" (Ps. 51:5, NIV).
When we are first convicted of sin, we resolve to do better. But as soon as we have scraped away one layer of sin (thinking, "It was only a superficial failure on my part"), we discover another layer underneath. Until David traced his sin right back to the beginning of his life, he was living in a state of spiritual denial. But when he realized the truth about himself, he admitted that the rot had set in from the start, even when he was in his mother's womb. Then he cried out to God, "Cleanse me" (Ps. 51:7, NIV), or, "Scrub me clean."
There were times in my childhood when I got so dirty that my mother would scrub me clean with a loofah. How often I felt the power of her arm as she scrubbed the dirt out of my skin. While I was relatively content with a superficial wash, she was determined to get out all the dirt, even if it killed her—or me.
David's language—"cleanse me … wash me"—is an appeal for that kind of vigorous and rigorous cleansing. His sin was deep dyed. There were layers of deceptiveness, sin, and bondage in his heart. Only God could cleanse and free him.
This is what Jesus was talking about. His contemporaries knew their Bibles. They were in constant attendance at religious services. But they were still bound by sin and could not free their lives from its dominion. They were slaves to sin, not sons of God. So Jesus said to them, "Your fundamental problem is that you do not know God as your Father."
How could Jesus be so sure? "Because," He said, "if you really knew the Father, your attitude to His Son would be completely different. It would be one of love and of admiration. You would trust Me" (see John 8:42–47).
They talked about God, but their attitude to God's Son revealed that they were not members of His family. They were hostile to Him. They plotted "religiously" to get rid of Him. They had no place for Him in their lives because they had no room for His Father.
Deserving Nothing
Religious people are always profoundly disturbed when they discover that they are not, and never have been, true Christians. Does all of their religion count for nothing? Those hours in church, hours spent doing good things, hours involved in religious activity—do they not count for something in the presence of God? Do they not enable me to say: "Look at what I have done. Don't I deserve heaven?"
Sadly, thinking that I deserve heaven is a sure sign I have no understanding of the gospel.
Jesus unmasked the terrible truth about His contemporaries. They resisted His teaching and refused to receive His Word because they were sinners—and slaves to sin.
Some years ago, the British media reported that a Presbyterian denomination had pulled fifty thousand printed copies of an edition of its monthly magazine. The report indicated that the author of an article had referred to a prominent member of the British royal family as a "miserable sinner."
Intriguingly, the member of the royal family, as a member of the Church of England, must have regularly used the words of the Anglican prayer book's "Prayer of General Confession," which includes a request for the forgiveness of the sins of "miserable offenders." Why, then, were the magazines pulled? The official comment: "We don't want to give the impression that the doctrines of the Christian faith cause people emotional trauma."
But sometimes the doctrines of the Christian faith do exactly that—and necessarily so.
Or should we say instead: "How cruel Jesus was to these poor Jews! Fancy Jesus speaking to them in this way!"?
Jesus did say, "You are miserable sinners." He unmasked sinners and drove His point home: "You have no room for my word" (John 8:37, NIV). They had heard, but resisted it. Later, He described the result: "Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say" (John 8:43, NIV).
Jesus had already patiently explained this to Nicodemus: "Unless God's Spirit opens your eyes, you cannot see the kingdom of God. Unless God sets you free from the bondage of sin, you will never enter the kingdom of God" (see John 3:3, 5). "The truth is," Jesus said later, "you do not hear what I am saying because you are not really the children of God" (see John 8:41, 44). They were, to use Paul's language, spiritually "dead" (Eph. 2:1).
Some time ago, while relaxing on vacation on a wonderful summer day in the Scottish Highlands, I sat outside enjoying a morning coffee. A few feet away I saw a beautiful little red robin. I admired its feathers, its lovely red breast, its sharp and clean beak, its simple beauty. I found myself instinctively talking to it. But there was no response, no movement. Everything was intact, but little robin red-breast was dead. The most skilled veterinarian in the world could do absolutely nothing for him.
So are we, spiritually. Despite appearances, in my natural state I am dead toward God. There is no spiritual life in me.
Only when I see this will I begin to see why God's grace is surprising and amazing. For it is to spiritually dead people that the grace of God comes to give life and release.
This is the first truth I need to acknowledge. I am in spiritual bondage. That bondage may have many manifestations. They may differ from individual to individual. But the bondage itself is at root one and the same.
On that basis, and against that background, Jesus taught lesson number two.
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From: Sinclair B. Ferguson,. By Grace Alone: How the Grace of God Amazes Me (pp. 2–7).