Spiritual injury
Spiritual Injury
Mental injury
Injury by slander Lev 19:16; Pr 30:10; Mt 5:11; Tit 3:2; Jas 4:11; 1Pe 2:1
Injury by injustice Ps 58:1-2; Ecc 3:16; Isa 59:4-6; Eze 34:4
Jesus Christ suffered mental injury Mt 26:59-60; 1Pe 2:20-23
God’s people may suffer mental injury for his sake Mt 5:11 See also Ps 38:20; Jer 15:15; 1Th 2:2; 1Pe 2:19
All deliberate injury ruled out by love
Ro 13:10
Spiritual injury suffered by God’s people
Isa 1:5-6; Jer 10:19; 30:12; Hos 6:1 Sometimes this is God’s judgment.
See also
5025 killing
5061 sanctity of life
5209 armour
5210 arrows
5333 healing
5348 injustice
5372 knife
5494 revenge
5560 suffering
5951 slander
5975 violence
6221 rebellion
Injustice occurs in the family life
Injustice occurs in family life
Mk 7:9-13 pp Mt 15:3-6 See also Ge 27:35; Lev 20:9-10; Mal 2:13-14; 1Co 7:4-5; Eph 6:4; Col 3:19,21
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
[The last discourse had made an impression on many, and brought them to the door of a superficial discipleship (ver. 30), while yet their heart was full of prejudice. These half converts the Lord now addresses and warns them not to be satisfied with a passing excitement of feeling, but to become true and steady disciples. Then they would know the truth, and the truth would give them true freedom from the degrading bondage of sin and error. Knowledge appears here as the fruit of faith, and freedom as the fruit of knowledge. This earnest exhortation brings out the latent hatred of the Jews, whereupon the Lord, with fearful severity, exposes the diabolical nature of their opposition to Him, while He at the same time reveals His divine nature as the destroyer of death and the One who was before Abraham was born. This address, in the lively form of dialogue, unites the character of a testimony concerning Himself and a judgment of the Jews, and rises to the summit of moral force.—P. S.]
Ver. 31. If ye continue in my word.—That is, here, not merely: continue to believe, but believe according to the spirit of the word, and in obedience to the word, which He spoke. Working towards an exposure of their misapprehension of His words—Ye are my disciples indeed.—This, therefore, must first appear. [There is a latent antithesis between πεπιστευκότας and μαθηταί. It was one thing to believe in Jesus, quite another to be disciples, learners. The one could be a momentary impulse; the other required constant study and obedience?] True discipleship is the condition and guaranty of their knowing the truth; and then this knowledge carries the blessing, that the truth should make them free. Freedom is the very thing they were bent upon all along; but a political, theocratic freedom, as pictured by a chiliastic mind. Christ opens to them the prospect of a higher freedom which, if they should be true disciples, they would owe to the liberating effect of the truth, the living knowledge of God; He opens the prospect of freedom from sin.
Ver. 32. Ye shall know the truth more and more. [Hengstenberg: “A difference of degree of knowledge is put in the form of knowledge itself as opposed to ignorance, because in comparison with future attainments of knowledge in the path of fidelity, the present knowledge would be quite insignificant. The truth is not merely something thought; it has taken flesh and blood in Christ, who says, I am the truth. By a deeper and deeper knowing of Christ they would know also the truth, after which, as after freedom, every man who is not utterly lost has a deep constitutional longing, and this living truth would make them free from the bondage of sin and error; while the truth considered merely as a thought of the mind would be utterly powerless. The same liberating effect which is here ascribed to the truth, is in ver. 36 ascribed to Christ.”—E. D. Y.]
[The truth will make you free, ἡ ἀλήθεια ἐλευθερώσει ὑμᾶς. Comp. ver. 36: “If the Son make you free, ye will be free indeed,” ὄντωςἐλεύθεροι. Christ associates liberty always with the truth, which He is Himself, and presents the truth as the cause, and liberty as the effect. So also Paul speaks of liberty always in this positive, highest and noblest sense, liberty in Christ, the glorious liberty of the children of God, liberty from the bondage of sin and error, comp. Rom. 8:21; 2 Cor. 3:17; Gal. 2:4; 5:1, 13; Jas. 1:25; 1 Pet. 2:12. Man is truly free when he is released from abnormal foreign restraints and moves in harmony with the mind and will of God as his proper element. “Deo service vera libertas est.”—P. S.]
Ver. 33. They answered him, We are Abraham’s seed (or, offspring).—Here comes the turning-point. Christ has openly told them that He would redeem them spiritually from sin by the truth, and in this sense make them free; and now they see their misapprehension of His former words. But in bitter vexation they plunge into a new mistake, supposing that Christ had their political bondage in view, and would require them to console themselves under their political oppression with the enjoyment of spiritual truth. Hence, instead of explaining: Thou shouldst free us from the domination of the Romans, they explain with insulted pride, that they are already free; they have never been any man’s slaves. This answer contains (1) an unbelieving denial of their spiritual servitude; for they studiously avoid the spiritual meaning of the words of Jesus; (2) a revolutionary, chiliastic protest against the idea that they acknowledged the dominion of the Romans, or that they could, as the words of Jesus implied, console themselves under it with spiritual elevation. This breaks again the scarcely formed union with Christ. This sharp contrast in the same Jews between a great demonstration of submission to Jesus and a hostility ready to stone Him,—this reaction of sentiment, coming the moment they were undeceived concerning their chiliastic expectations, appears repeatedly in the Gospel of John in significant gradations. It has already come distinctly to view chap. 6:30 (comp. ver. 15); and in chap. 10:31 (comp. ver. 24) it is still more glaring than here.
Jesus’ Opponents Are
31 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
33 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?”
34 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.
Jesus is the Truth - john 14
one that begins at once and continues and grows.
“The truth” is the contents of the word of Jesus, the substance of what he conveys to our minds and our hearts. “I have given them thy (the Father’s) Word,” 17:14; “Sanctify them in the truth; thy Word is truth,” 17:17 (see also 17:8). By “truth,” ἀλήθεια, “reality,” is meant, and the Greek article here indicates the specific reality and actuality that exists in God and in Jesus, and all that they give to us and do for us by divine grace. Compare the term in 1:14. It is not in any sense philosophic, so that the language of philosophy could define it. It is not an abstraction formed by operations of the intellect but divine and everlasting fact, which remains such whether men know it, acknowledge it, realize it or not. It is a unit: “the truth,” although it consists of many united and unified parts. Thus also Jesus speaks of his “Word” and of his “words.” It centers and circles about Jesus who, therefore, also calls himself “the Truth,” 14:6. In his own person and his life Jesus embodies, incorporates the saving realities of God.