Free to Choose?

“ . . . and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”  John 8:32  NASB

Set you free – What does it mean “to be set free”?  The Greek verb, eleutheróō, finds its roots in the idea of slavery.  In the Greek world, freedom was both a physical and a political ideal.  It was the contrast to being owned by another.  It was not the contemporary idea of absolute independence.  In Greek thought, freedom was inside the law and its exercise guaranteed the social constructs of legality.  I was never free to do whatever I wished.  That would be anarchy.  The tension between individual autonomy and social responsibility is inherent in the Greek idea of freedom because, ultimately, freedom is a political construct.

Yet the concept of freedom in Attic democracy contains the seeds of its own decay, for by promoting individual development it undermines the law on which it rests. Freedom becomes the freedom to do as one likes. The law of the self replaces the law of the politeía. Plato perceives this clearly (Laws 3.701b/c). It leads to the rise of demagogues and opens the door to tyranny.^[1]

Greek thought evolved in its efforts to resolve this tension by focusing on dispassionate development of an internal freedom.

Freedom, however, is now much more than political freedom. It is that of the individual under the law of nature. This is regarded as a reversion to the original meaning. The formal sense is the same, but freedom now takes the form of independent self-determination. To find freedom we must explore our nature. We cannot control body, family, property, etc., but we do control the soul. External things seek to impose a false reality on us. Hence we have to withdraw from them in a restriction of desires and an abandonment to pressures. This might seem to bring bondage but in fact results in liberation. For true liberation of this kind, there has to be liberation from the passions that represent the world in us.  In particular, we must be rid of the dominant fear of death. We find freedom as we neutralize passions and surrender to the ineluctable power of circumstances. ^[2]

This Greek development is still with us today.  Our modern ideas of personal and political freedom follow the same stress contours as the Greeks.  Every day we see the strain between humanity’s desire for uninhibited liberty and the need for social compassion.  Perhaps you’ve felt this yourself.

Surprisingly, this is not something that ancient Hebrews struggled to resolve.  Why?  Why was the Hebraic culture not fixated on personal liberty?  And, perhaps most importantly, what changes in our understanding of Yeshua’s words if we read them through a Hebrew lens rather than through a Greek one?

Schlier’s comment in TDNT sets the stage for a better understanding.

The NT sees that the retreat into inwardness does not in fact bring freedom. Existence is inwardly defective, so that to take oneself in hand is simply to grasp a defective existence. Faced with a lost existence, we can come to ourselves only by subjecting our own will to the will of another. We achieve self-control by letting ourselves be controlled.^[3]

Freedom here is freedom from attempted autonomy, not by breaking the law, but by fulfilling our own interpretation of it in following our own needs, and doing our own will, by what seems to be an honest effort to do God’s will. . . It thus has the further implication of being freedom from the self-deception in which we see ourselves as God and are thus blind to our true reality (cf. Jn. 8:32; Rom. 2:18ff.). Finally, the freedom that the NT proclaims in Christ is freedom from the death which is the end of human self-seeking in sin. In sin we surrender to an existence that refers to itself and not to God and that is thus severed from life. Sin carries death within it. Death is its power.^[4]

Why doesn’t a Hebrew cower before the demand for personal autonomy?  Because the Hebrew is directly under the will of God through God’s instructions in the Torah.  His sense of liberty is the liberty to obey and the consequent release from anxiety about righteous living.  He is free because he is a servant of the One True God.  He knows what is right.  His only requirement is to do it, and should he fail, a remedy is offered.  The anxiety of infinite choice is not embedded in his existence.  The Law provides a solution to Man’s eternal foreboding.

What, then, does Yeshua mean when he says that the truth will set you free?  Perhaps we can provide context with the following:

The great teachers know.  The truly great ones don’t care whether you believe in their teaching or not.  They present the truth, then leave you with yourself to discover your own truth. . . “A guru gives us himself and then his system; a teacher gives us his subject and then ourselves.”[5]

The great teachers understand that where we come from affects where we go, and that what sits unresolved in our past influences our present.[6]

To be free is to be released from the specter of the past and given the tools needed for today and tomorrow.  It is not be to cast into the world of unlimited choice.  That is as much a hell as any other form of slavery.  Rather, it is to discover for yourself what God’s call means to you—and to fulfill it.

Topical Index: set free, eleutheróō, choice, autonomy, slavery, John 8:32

^[1] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). In Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (p. 224). W.B. Eerdmans.

^[2] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). In Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (p. 225). W.B. Eerdmans.

^[3] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). In Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (p. 225). W.B. Eerdmans.

^[4] Ibid.

[5] Mark Wolynn, It Didn’t Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle (Penguin Books, 2017), p. 6, citing Adam Gopnik, Through the Children’s Gate

[6] Mark Wolynn, p. 6.