Now a slave has no permanent place in a family, but a son belongs to it forever.
John 8:35 is surrounded by the story titled in the NIV as the ‘Dispute over whose Children Jesus’ opponents are’ where Jesus talks about freedom through truth, and the people listening latch on to the freedom part of his comment, insisting that they are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves.
This story leads to Jesus questioning their legitimacy, saying that if they are children of Abraham then they would do as Abraham did, that they would behave how Abraham behaved. Now we could also focus on what a ‘slave’ looks like.
We could focus on our sin (or lack thereof), on our legitimacy, why we won’t be the ones to age out, be thrown out, or simply leave the presence of Gods family because we are slaves not sons.
So rather than pointing out what we aren’t, I want to focus on what we are, on what the family of God are.
Verse 35 says that a son (I believe we can include daughters in this claim as well) has a permanent position in the family. Our legitimacy to sonhood is reflected in how we represent the head of our house through what we do (both internally and externally). The Jews in this story claimed Abraham as their Father, a claim few if any of us could make.
Abraham was a great man of God. But Jesus is God in flesh and through his death and resurrection he gave us (including those of us without a direct lineage to Abraham) permission to claim sonhood through him. For those of us who are adopted, our Father example is Jesus. Which means that as His children we do as he did. Let me repeat that, we are His CHILDREN, not his Adults, not His teens or tweens, his children, and like children we’re still getting to know the patriarch of our family. We’re still learning what he does and does not do. We’re still being corrected, redirected, and lifted up to try again. We aren’t mature enough to identify which of the people around us are family, nor do we need to, because like children we can trust that our father knows, and that he will ensure that the slaves move on when their time is complete and the children of the house will then receive their inheritance.
As His children we don’t need to worry about the why or the how, only on learning to do as He does and accepting the freedom He offers through truth. We can watch how He greets others, how He teaches others, how He manages conflict with others. We can look at where He goes (both physically and emotionally) in stress, joy, and anger. We may not get it right, but as His children the people around us will see the mannerisms that He displays in us as we emulate Him, as we learn to walk, talk, and interact with the world the way He does. As we learn to know Him we will come to learn the truth of what He says in John 8:35