John 8:34

‘Jesus answered them, “I tell you emphatically that every one who goes on sinning is a slave of sin”.'

Jesus denies that they are free. ‘So they think they are free,' He asks. ‘Well, let them consider this. To sin is to be a slave. It is to be sin's slave.' As with drugs, men may think they have sin under control, but once they try to escape they soon discover that they are helplessly enslaved. As Paul puts it, ‘the good I want to do, I do not do. The evil that I do not want to do, I do' (Romans 7:19). For the fact is that it is only when we are happy to continue in sin that we think we have control over it. But once we seek to escape from it, it is then that we discover its bondage. We should note here that slaves, while not over common in Judea, were looked on religiously as equivalent to bastards. To be compared with a slave was thus an insult.

The problem for the Pharisees, as for many, was that they did not recognise that their very regulations brought them into slavery, and that they of all men were not free. Instead of making them sin less their regulations actually made them sin more, bringing them into deeper bondage. For the more they strove, the more they were conscious of sin.

‘I tell you emphatically.' Literally ‘truly, truly'. This was a distinguishing mark of Jesus' speech, which He used constantly.