Let's start with a word we've wrung dry: free.

One time, I signed up for a "free" trial—sleek fonts, a minimalist aesthetic, soothing copy that promised to "elevate my workflow." Two clicks later, I'd accidentally adopted six mailing lists, two "exclusive communities," and a countdown timer pulsing like the Doomsday Clock.

So, of course, on day eight, right on cue, the invoice arrived as if freedom needed a collection agency to make sure that that "free" subscription got paid for.

But, I mean, come on, that wasn't freedom; that was a leash braided from compliments and auto-renewals.

Hold onto that while you listen to Jesus say: "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free … So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed" (John 8:31-32, 36).

In the grammar of our moment, free means, "Nobody tells me what to do." But Jesus is speaking a different dialect entirely. He doesn't try to sell us autonomy. He offers something else: abiding.

Not escape but residence. Not upgrading to a more generous patron, but moving into a household where belonging isn't a coupon code that expires.

You can see the crowd's hackles rise: “We're descendants of Abraham and we’ve never been enslaved to anybody."

Which is a bold claim to make with Rome's insignias on the gates, Caesar's face on the coins jingling in your pocket, and legionaries within earshot. But that denial about being in bondage to anyone isn't just bad history; it's good self-protection.

Most people would rather reframe enslavement as a political headache than face the captivity Jesus names: the captivity that seeps down into the marrow when a life is arranged by transaction and fear.

"Very truly, I tell you," Jesus says, "everyone who commits sin is enslaved to sin." And don't shrink that down to “naughty behavior”—like sin is forgetting to put the recycling out. Sin’s the anxious choreography we learn when survival seems to hinge on currying somebody’s favor.

Sin's the economy of leverage. It’s bowing to whomever can promote or punish you—imperial, religious, corporate, or domestic—because you can't imagine any other way to eat.

Sin's most diabolical trick is impersonating freedom: "Work the room." "Manage up." "Play the game." I mean, it’s no wonder we come home soul-tired, like we've been smiling with Vaseline on our teeth all day.

But Jesus starts moving the furniture around. He doesn't say, "Take your power back." He says, "Come home."

"The enslaved doesn’t have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever" (8:35).

Do you see?

Jesus’ antidote to bondage isn't retaliation but adoption. Liberation isn't severing ties; it's receiving a different set of ties—stitched from covenant, not contract; from steadfast love, not performance metrics. True freedom is secure belonging.

That little word abide (μένω in Greek) quietly does a lot of heavy lifting in John. It's not a scented-candle kind of verb. It's a residency verb. Apprenticeship. A long soak in a way of life until the water remakes us.

"If you continue in my word," if you stick around and learn the household rhythms, if you practice the table manners of grace. Not, if you "audit my ideas” or you say an occasional prayer.

No. Abide. Move in. Let the tempo of Jesus' life set the metronome on ours.