It is cut into a stone wall in the lobby at Langley, in the King James wording, with the reference under it, John 8:32. The freedom in that sentence is not freedom from ignorance. Jesus names what it frees you from at verse thirty-four, and the word he uses is sin.
Allen Dulles wanted the carving there and quoted it at the dedication of the building.
The sentence has become a claim about information. Find out what is really going on and you will be liberated. A fine idea, and not what the verse says. The give-away is the word the carving leaves off the front.
Two conditions come first
To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
John 8:31-32 (NIV)
Hold to my teaching. Then you are really disciples. Only after those two does the famous clause arrive, and the first of them is about staying put, not about agreeing. Then you will know the truth. The freedom is fourth in a chain, and the King James makes the condition even plainer with “If ye continue in my word.”
The Greek verb under it is the one John uses all through chapter fifteen for abide in me. A person can agree with a sentence in an afternoon and abide nowhere at all.
John also tells you who the audience was. Jesus is speaking to people who had already believed him, which means the sentence was never an argument for persuading outsiders. It was said to insiders about whether they would stay, which is the same thing that happened to the knocking at the door in Revelation 3, written to a congregation and now quoted at people who have never been in one.
In this Gospel truth is a person
Later in the same Gospel the speaker says I am the way, the truth, and the life. John never uses the word for information you go and find. In this chapter it is what Jesus says, three times over; later in the Gospel it is who he is, and the title of the Spirit he sends. Knowing that is not the same activity as finding out a fact.
Which is why verse thirty-six puts the freeing in the Son’s hands and not in a discovery.
So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
John 8:36 (NIV)
Free from what
The passage answers this, and the answer narrows the promise considerably.
Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.”
John 8:34 (NIV)
Not free from ignorance. Not free from an institution, or a government, or the people keeping a file from you. Free from sin, which is the one captivity the men in front of him would not admit to.
The verse between the slavery and the freeing explains why that matters.
Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever.
John 8:35 (NIV)
The problem with being a slave in that house was never the work. You could be sold, and the arrangement ended whenever the owner decided it had. Jesus does not offer better conditions inside the household. He offers a change of standing, from a slave who can be sold to a son who cannot.
The verse gets used in counseling rooms to mean tell the truth and you will feel lighter. There is something in that, and it is not what the sentence promises. A person can tell the truth about a thing hidden for years and find that it costs a marriage and most of their friendships, and that the relief, real as it is, is much smaller than the bill. Jesus is not promising that disclosure improves your circumstances. He is promising to undo a fastening at the level of the sin itself. A different and larger thing, and a slower one.
What they said back
The reply is the part I cannot get past.
They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?”
John 8:33 (NIV)
Never been slaves of anyone. Said by people whose founding national story is four hundred years in Egypt, whose nation had been carried off to Babylon six centuries before, and who were at that moment living in a country garrisoned by Rome. The whole of their history contradicted the sentence. They kept the Passover, so they were not confused about Egypt. Whatever they did mean, their spirit perhaps rather than their descent, the offer of freedom had landed as an insult.
That is what makes the passage uncomfortable instead of inspiring. The offer needs you to name what holds you. The men who got the offer first said, immediately and sincerely, that they were not held by anything.
Earlier in the same argument he had told them they would die in their sins unless they believed him, and four verses after the exchange about Abraham he says their trouble is that his word has no place in them, which is the condition in verse thirty-one, failing.
Back to the stone wall
Nothing is wrong with wanting accurate information, and a country needs people who go and get it. The verse on that wall is simply answering a different question from the one the building is asking. Dulles insisted that it be fixed in stone, and it sits where it will be read as a sentence about files.
Facts liberate people all the time, and this verse is not about that. The offer is made to people who had believed, on condition that they stayed, and what it unfastens is the one thing they had just denied being tied to. A slave can be sold on. A son cannot. Neither difference is a matter of how much either of them knows.