Today's Gospel contains one of the more frequently quoted sayings of Jesus--found often in contexts where I am sure the authors would be surprised to realize they were quoting Jesus--"the truth will set you free."
Every once in a while when I read Scripture my mind gets going on its "concordance" mode, bringing on phrase after phrase with some kind of connection to the original passage, usually based on some key word. Today was one of those days. At first, I merely noticed that "the truth will set you free" appears a few sentences before "if the Son frees you, then you will truly be free." Oh, "the Son" = "the Truth" (as in "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life"). Then that led me to Paul: "you were called to freedom" and "for freedom Christ set us free" (Gal. 5). And then Galatians led to Romans, "you are the slaves of the one you obey, whether of sin (which leads to death) or of obedience (which leads to righteousness)." For Paul, of course, "obedience" is always "obedience to the truth" and it is the opposite of slavery, so obedience (to truth)=freedom, so "the truth will set you free."
Then I really got going and pulled out a Greek New Testament. That's when it struck me that our Founder was really on to something when he connected our Pauline spirituality with passages in the Gospel of John (especially the "Way, Truth and Life" part). Today's Gospel (Jn. 8: 31-42) is one of those places where John demonstrates an essential affinity with Paul. This Gospel is, in fact, a "Way, Truth and Life" passage with strong Pauline flavor in the language. Some of Paul's favorite words and themes are here: free, sin, Abraham--even "works."
For Paul, being set free is a matter of being "co-crucified" with Christ, where John expresses it as "being freed by the Son" and so being "really" (Greek: ontos) free.
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