"Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin." So Jesus says in today's reading from John 8:33-47. None of us likes to think that we are slaves. We fancy ourselves to be free, to have free will and to be the products of the free choices that we make. But Jesus says we are captives and must be freed. (Paul says a lot about this in his letters as well.)
The people Jesus addresses insist that they are free, that they have never been slaves. It is hard to be freed from a slavery you don't recognize -- a bit like an alcoholic being trapped in that disease because he can't admit to it. I wonder what places Jesus might act more powerfully in my life if I better recognized the ways in which I am captive to sin.
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