"War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength." In George Orwell's novel, 1984, these slogans are used to control the thoughts of the people. While their country was at war, the people were deceived into thinking it was peace. While they were kept subservient, they thought they were free. While they remained ignorant of what was really going on in the world around them, they thought they were strong.

Does this sound odd, or perhaps oddly familiar?

Today's scripture seems to bear witness to a similar kind of double talk. As Jesus spoke with some of the Jews who had believed in him, they said with confidence, "We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves of anyone." Yet at one point in their history, their people had been slaves doing hard labor in Egypt. At another point, the people had been in exile, taken captive to Babylon. At the time of Jesus, they were living under the rule of the Romans who had taken over their land. How then could they say, "We've never been slaves"?

Today we have our own blind spots. We might think we are free, but at the same time we eat too much, we work too much, we spend too much on ourselves, and we accumulate too many things. We are tied to our consumer culture. We see war waged and rationalized in the name of peace. We see ignorance posing as knowledge.

In response to the people of his own day, and in response to us, Jesus pointed out that we are all slaves to sin. We are caught as the apostle Paul described so well in Romans 7:19: "For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do." There's a struggle where sometimes we want to do the right thing, but we just can't do it. And there's also the opposite, where sometimes we know that something is wrong, we don't want to do it, but we end up doing it anyway. Call it sin, call it failure, call it a mistake, a weakness -- whatever word we might use, we know it happens. The good that we want to do, we cannot carry out. And the bad things we don't want to do, we end up doing. How can we be free of this?

In our text, Jesus said "the truth will make you free" (v. 32), and "if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed" (v. 36). The apostle Paul echoed this as the solution to his own struggle with sin. After agonizing over his situation in Romans 7, he ended his chapter with a note of praise -- "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Romans 7:25). Then he went on to the next part of his letter with this affirmation: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1). For him, the struggle with sin gave way to a new freedom.

Scripture speaks of this transformation past, present, and future.

In our text from John's gospel, Jesus speaks of the future -- if you continue in my word, you "will be" free. But since Jesus' life, death, and resurrection are now complete, we might also speak of the past -- by the work of Christ, we "have been" set free from sin.

The good news is that God in Jesus Christ has already rescued us from the kind of inner struggle that Paul described. We are no longer wretched people. We are no longer losers, no longer failures. When we put our faith in Jesus Christ, everything is made new.

Some years ago, there was a terrible flood in a farming community. One of the farmers grew fava beans which he had harvested and stored in large metal bins on his farm.

However, the storage containers were not water tight, and when the water rose one foot, and then two feet and more, the beans absorbed the water, grew swollen, and burst open the storage bins. There was water, mud, and beans everywhere.

It was a huge mess to clean up, and a vivid example of the transformation that had happened. The beans absorbed the water and grew swollen, the pressure inside the storage bins increased, and the containers couldn't contain the beans any longer.

In a similar way -- only in a much more positive direction -- when Jesus comes into our lives, there is transformation. Instead of being filled with ourselves, we're filled with a new life and a new power. Instead of being slaves to ourselves and slaves to sin, instead of being contained by our own desires and caught between wanting to do good and being unable to do it, we can live a new life.

First Corinthians 6:9-11 puts it this way: "Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? ... And this is what some of you used to be. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God." The past was gone. They had been transformed.

Like them, we too have been justified. The work of Christ means that we have already been made right, forgiveness has already happened, freedom has already come. We are free indeed as a past accomplishment of God in Jesus Christ.

In some ways, our transformation in Christ is yet to come. For all the new life and new power available by faith in Jesus, for all our good intentions, at times we still struggle. We still don't always do the good we want, and we still don't always avoid the bad things we know we should avoid. We're still looking to the future, as Romans 8:18-19 says, "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed." In other words, our full transformation in Christ is yet to come.

In that same rural area with all the flooding, there lived an elderly couple who were well into their eighties. They had lived in the same home for years, and even though there had been heavy rains before, even though there had been flooding before, somehow their house had always been safe. When the flood warnings came again, they did nothing, no sandbagging, no moving of their belongings. Perhaps they were overly optimistic based on their history, perhaps it was their age or feeling overwhelmed, but for whatever reason, they were totally unprepared for the flood.

The water and mud pushed the foundation of their house, and the brick work on the front just slid down the face of it. Instead of their home's beautiful brick facing, there was only a pile of bricks. The back porch was now at an angle. Everything inside their home was ruined from the soggy drywall to the grandfather clock that had been in their family for years. Out of their whole household, the only things that could be salvaged were in the very top cupboards. They looked around their home in a daze not knowing where to start or how to clean up and rebuild.

Thanks to relief workers from a church organization, the work of transformation got underway. Seven truckloads of belongings had to be removed, but even when that was done, there was more cleaning and more rebuilding until the couple was finally able to move out of their motel and back into their home.

In the same way, for us, when we put our faith in Jesus Christ, the work of transformation has begun, and yet there is more to come. We are to "continue" in his word. God isn't finished with us yet. There is more to be cleaned up in our lives, there is more rebuilding to be done before our transformation is complete. We are free indeed as a past accomplishment of God, and as a future hope.

As the flood waters rose, many people were hard at work building walls of sandbags around their homes. That was their way of preparing themselves against the flood and not allowing it to overwhelm and overtake them. In a spiritual sense, if we want to prevent the world from overwhelming us and taking us over -- if we want to be free -- then we also need to act in the present. Instead of sandbagging our lives and putting up walls, our act of faith is to continue as disciples of Jesus and in his word.

What "word" does Jesus mean here?

In the context of John's gospel, Jesus speaks many words: about his own death and resurrection in chapter 2; words of life to the Samaritan woman in chapter 4; words of healing to the official whose son was ill; words of the Spirit; words of teaching. In the opening chapter of the gospel, Jesus himself, is the Word of God.

So to continue in the word means to continue in and with Jesus -- to walk with him in daily life, to look to him for healing and teaching. In keeping with our gospel text, a good first step is to acknowledge our own blind spots. As 1 John 1:8-9 remind us, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

Freedom comes by acknowledging this truth and continuing in Jesus' word. We are free not by our own efforts, but because we have been joined to Christ -- to the one who set us free in the past by his life, death, and resurrection; the one who is coming again in the future when we will finally be transformed; the one who is with us now and transforming us day by day.

I once saw a cartoon of an impatient gardener with a watering can in one hand and a pair of pruning shears in the other, glaring at a sorry looking plant and yelling, "Now grow! Grow!" But growth doesn't happen that way. Transformation doesn't happen that way. We can be as impatient as we want, we can yell at ourselves as much as we want, but we can't live a transformed life on sheer willpower or on sheer won't power. Instead, it is the Spirit of God who grows us and sets us free in Jesus Christ. We are free indeed -- as a past accomplishment, as a future hope, as a present reality as we walk with Jesus.

Lord, grant us your freedom and grace for each day. When we struggle with various decisions or feel conflicted about what to do next, guide us by your mercy. Forgive us when we stumble and fall. Lift us up to walk in your word and in your truth. Amen.