GOD'S PROMISES #14

'If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.'

In this promise, as it was originally written in the Greek language, four things exist together:

1. remaining (that is, staying or having one's permanent residence) in the teaching of Jesus Christ,
2. being truly the disciples of Jesus Christ,
3. knowing the truth, and
4. being set free by that truth.

The first automatically produces the other three. Without it they do not exist.

There are many who listen to the teaching of Jesus Christ for a while, then either abruptly or gradually discard it: these have never truly been the disciples of Jesus Christ, they have never really known the truth, they have never actually been set free.

Those who have really received the teaching of Jesus Christ - that he is the only source of spiritual life, of knowledge of God, of reconnection with God - will remain in his teaching.

They know that they have found in Jesus Christ and his teaching the one ultimate and eternal treasure, beside which all other promises of spiritual life and knowledge are insignificant.

Those who have found God and life by finding Jesus Christ have been set free, and continue to be set free, from all the lostness and incompleteness, all the spiritual emptiness and searching, that characterizes human life.

Scriptures: John 8:31,32; 2:23-25; 6:60-69; 1 John 3:18-19; John 10:28-29; Matthew 13:44-46; Philippians 3:7-10; Colossians 2:10.