And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
Read Chapter 8
Clement Of Alexandria
AD 215
And the expression, "Ye have sold yourselves to your sins "agrees with what is said above: "Every one, then, who committeth sin is a slave; and the slave abideth not in the house for ever. But if the Son shall make you free, then shall ye be free, and the truth shall make you free."
And ye shall know the truth, &c. The Greek Fathers understand by the Truth, Christ Himself; meaning ye shall know Me to be the Truth, shadowed forth by the figures of the old Law, from which I will set you free, that ye may serve God not with bodily ceremonies, but in the Spirit and truth of faith, hope, and charity ( John 4:23).
(2.) Hence, in accordance with the mind of Christ, If ye abide in My doctrine, ye shall taste by experience how sweet it Isaiah , and it will free you from the yoke of sin (see below, verse34). For faith in Me will lead you to penitence, contrition, and charity, which does away with all sin. "If the Truth pleaseth thee not, let liberty please thee." He clearly restored liberty, and took away iniquity.
Analogically: My doctrine will deliver you from the corruption of this place of mortality, change, and exile, because it will bring you to the liberty of a blessed immortality, and the glory of the children of God. Thus S. Augustine on this passage: "What doth ...
Obscure as yet and not wholly clear is the word, none the less it is replete with force akin to those before it, and though after other fashion wrought will go through the same reflections. For it too persuades those who have once believed gladly to depart and remove from the worship according to the law, instructing that the shadow is our guide to the knowledge of Him, and that leaving the types and figures, we should go resolutely forward to the Truth Itself, i. e., Christ the Giver of true freedom and the Redeemer. Ye shall know therefore (He says) the Truth, if ye abide in My Words, and from knowing the Truth ye shall find the profit that is therefrom. Take then our Lord as saying some such thing as this to the Jews (for we ought I think to enlarge our meditation on what is now before us, for the profit's sake of the readers): A bitter bondage in Egypt, (He says) ye endured, and lengthened toil consumed you who had come into bitter serfdom under Pharaoh, but ye cried then to God, a...
And the truth shall make you free. They were affronted at these words, as if he hinted they were slaves, and not a free people. They tell him, therefore, that they were never slaves to any one. They can only pretend this of themselves: for, their forefathers were slaves to the Egyptians, to the Babylonians and besides they were now the subjects, if not slaves, to the Romans. But Christ speaks of the worst of slaveries, and tells them the such as live in sin, are slaves to sin. (Witham)
