The sad thing is -- especially when dealing with that particular brand of sinful activity -- the very verse they're quoting as "freedom to say who they truly are" is the very verse where Jesus says "if you continue to walk in My word, THEN you are My disciple, and that truth will set you free".

It's like saying "I'm free to sin now because the Bible says I'm more than a conqueror over the things that weigh me down", when the verse talking about being "more than conquerors" was spoken specifically to encourage the Body of Christ NOT to feel as though they are still enslaved by sin but rather are conquerors over it.

I guess it's no wonder why Romans 1 points so clearly to those who "exchanged the truth of God for the lie" when so many people may quote "the book" but totally ignore the spirit of the words in exchanged for their empty and mechanical pragmatic values. 

Hey,

I see you guys are touching on the missing context, so I want to throw in my two cents.  

Seems to me the context surrounding the whole situation and the reason Jesus came was to deal with mankinds sin.

With that in mind, "If you abide in My word, the truth shall make you free."  From what?

Answer: sin.

Now since many believers run around saying they Will sin again... how many then abide in the truth?

Add a little Romans 6:11 into the conversation and then ask who believes this truth and can it set anyone free?  Principals... not verbatim words.
 

It sets you free from the condemnation of sin.  Not from sin itself.

Actually THT's post just before this one talks about that very matter.

I see your point, R, but "context" -- at least in terms of how I was using it -- is referring to what was actually being said in the section of Scripture being discussed.  Trying to talk about context while pulling from sections of Scripture not immediately related to the specific one being discussed isn't a contextual discussion -- it may be a valuable one for some application purposes, but in this case it doesn't accurately address what Jesus was saying in this one instance.

To obtain proper context, let's look at what was being discussed just prior to this statement:

Ok, so Jesus was talking about how the Jewish leadership He was addressing will "lift Him up" and "know that I Am" -- a declaration of His deity -- and as He was addressing them, verse 30 tells us many believed on them.  Knowing that many believed on Him as He was speaking, He then immediately addresses them specifically, saying:

Who was He addressing?  Believing Jews.  What did He tell them?  If they continued in HIS word, they would be His disciples.  Why is that important?  Ask yourself, whose words did the Pharisaical Jews continue in, and whose disciples were they previously?  It doesn't take long to recall -- Moses.  And Moses represents the Law.

Notice that Jesus didn't say these words to some random Gentiles, He addressed them specifically to Pharisees who were beginning to believe in Him -- people who would be very prone (almost instinctually) to return to their training in the Law and to their discipleship of Moses, which resides in a mindset very different from the mindset of the Grace He was bringing to them.

Under their interpretation of Moses, their standing before God relied solely on their effort and the more strictly they obeyed the letter of the Law, the more righteous a standing they held before God.  But with Jesus, the spirit and meaning the letter of the Law fell short explaining held much more importance, and they were realizing every time He spoke just how sinful they really were, just how far short of righteous they were.

That being said then, what was the freedom He was talking about?  It was not freedom from sin -- far from it!  It was freedom from the bondage they had been in up until that point, freedom from being enslaved to the Law that was intended to show them their need for the Savior.  Lest you think I'm off my rocker, how about we keep reading past verse 32?

First, they recognized He was referring to bondage to a man, but they lied plainly when they replied that they had never been in bondage -- Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon come quickly to mind, and at the very moment they spoke the words they were under the iron rule of Rome!

So Jesus condescends a bit to try and get them back on track, and so He starts below what He was previously talking about and talks about sin -- not because sin is the point of what He's talking about, but because He's establishing the thought that they are still in bondage to a man. 

"Whomever commits sin is a servant of sin" -- servants do whatever the master tells them to do -- "...but you seek to kill Me".  He's placing before them the reality that they, at that very moment, were showing just how enslaved they truly were by doing the bidding of their master, sin -- actively seeking to kill Him.  You can tell He's not speaking about sin in general because as He continues speaking He discusses the specific sin they were serving at that moment: "But you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you."

That sounds like familiar terminology...He was just talking about continuing in His word being the way to know the truth and be truly free.  He's leading them along a pathway, connecting them from where their mindset is to the statement He started with.  The pathway could look like this:

I can set you free from the bondage you're in --> We're not enslaved --> You're doing the works of a slave --> the Son can bring you out of slavery into the House --> Abraham is our father --> if he was, you'd do as he did, but you don't, you do what your real father does --> God is our Father --> why don't you understand me? --> you're of your father the devil, and do the works he does --> which of you convicts Me of sin? --> so if I don't lie, why don't you believe Me? --> you don't hear God's words because you're not of God ...

Of course it continues past verse 47, but we're already getting way past the original point of the original statement.  He's not speaking to Gentiles about some symbolic freedom from some vice or another, and He's not speaking about freedom from anything other than slavery, and the specific bondage He's speaking of is bondage to the Law.  Period.  They thought that by striving to keep the Law, they were making themselves righteous, when the whole point of the Law was to instill in them just how unrighteous they really were.

As my pastor has often said, "Never underestimate man's ability to find justification for his own sin", and in reality that saying is true in relation to where they were at that moment.  I'm sure the first group that received the Law, upon first reading of it, their hearts probably cried out to God saying "How am I ever going to live a life that always lives up to this?"  But some time passed, and some more time passed, and they began to find justification after justification, to where now they have not just the Tanakh (the Hebrew Scriptures, including the Law and the Prophets), but volumes explaining the Tanakh called the Mishnah, and then they have volumes upon volumes that explain the Mishnah (that explains the Tanakh) called the Gemara!

Jesus said, very plainly, "Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself, for upon these two hang all the Law and the Prophets" -- their whole Scripture explained in two easy-to-focus-on commandments! -- and told them that if they continued in His word, they would find freedom from their slavery.  The slavery was to their whole system of "I can earn it" Law.  He wanted them to realize His "no you can't" system of Grace. 

 This is a good blog. It would be a great blog to note all the scriptures that are commonly treated the same way.

eg. All things work together for good  (which is already shortened) gets shortened to All things work together

Romans 8:1 is always shortened in the modern Bible versions.

There are just a lot of examples. I think this is a great post. We need context of verses, chapters, books and then the whole Bible and whole proper approach to scripture (which I would say is not even systematic theology but covenental theology).

Sounds like it would take a series of blogs, Recon.

......

Perhaps I'll begin entry #2 when I return from dinner with my beautiful bride. :)

There is a book I read my first semester of Bible College on hermeneutics, which is basically "the study of how to study the Bible.  There are many good points to it, and after I retrieve it later I might share a few of the best from it.  Keeping within context is obviously one of them, as is "first usage/Biblical precedent".  One not in it (at least not that I remember) is the fact that in the Jewish system, pattern is just as large a part of prophecy as linear (or poorly named "direct") prophecy, which helps greatly when viewing that subject throughout Scripture.  But that's a different blog. :)