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1. Our Lord is speaking of servant and son generically. A son is a natural inalienable part of the family; a slave is not. He may be acquired, sold, given away, set free. There was in Jewish servitude provision against the slaves continuing "in the houses forever," at the Jubilee, unless he gave himself to his master, in which case bondage was exchanged for consecration: he was free. But a son is bound to his father's household by a tie which no distance breaks, and no time wears away.

2. The application of this is not that the servants are the Jews, who were such because of their constrained obedience, and would, therefore, forfeit their national privileges, and be cast out of the house; for in ver. 34 the master of the slave is distinctly specified "Sin," and therefore cannot be "God" in this verse.

3. The force of the thought, "Slave's sin does not abide in sin's house," is that, however hard the bondage of sin, the slave is not in his true home, nor incorporated hopelessly into his taskmaster's family.

4. Into the midst of this tyrant's household there has come one who is a Son, and abides forever in the household of God, even Christ. Sin's house, in so far as that expression denotes this fair world, belongs to God, and the tyranny is usurpation. Into the midst of human society He comes who is a Son forever, and the emancipation He effects is adoption.

I. THE POSSIBLE ENDING OF THE TYRANNY OF SIN. "A slave abides not in the house forever." All the world has dimly hoped that it was so; but no man has been sure of it, apart from revelation. Christ has shown that sin is not natural to man, as God meant him to be, howsoever it may have twined around his life.

1. We see that from our own constitution. Look at these minds of ours, originating thoughts, born for immortality; these hearts with their rich treasures of transcendent affections; these wills so weak, yet so strong, craving for authority, and yet striving to be a law unto themselves; these consciences so sensitive and yet so dull, waking up only when the evil is done, voices which have no means of getting their behests obeyed, and yet are the echo of the supreme Lawgiver's voice; the manifest disproportion between what we are, and might, and ought to be; and then say whether the universal condition of sinfulness is not unnatural, a fungus, not a true growth.

2. Then there is no such relation between a sinner and his sin as that deliverance should be impossible. It must be possible to part them, and to leave the man stronger for the loss of what made him weak. We may be brought to our true home in our Father's house. Howsoever the fetters may have galled and mortified the limbs they may be struck off.

3. Men have always cherished these convictions, and in spite of history and experience. They have tried to set themselves free, and their attempts have come to nothing — and yet after all failures this hope has sprung immortal. True, we cannot effect the deliverance. It is like some cancer — a blood disease. We may pare and cut away the rotting flesh — the single manifestations of evil we can do something to reduce; but a deeper surgery is needed. Sin is not our personality, and so we may have it removed and live, but sin has become so entangled with ourselves that we cannot undo it. The demoniac, who, in his confused consciousness, did not know which was devil and which man — "my name is legion, for we are many" — could not shake off the demon. But the voice that said "Come out of him" has power still.

II. THE ACTUAL DELIVERER. "The Son abideth ever," while a general statement, has a specific reference to our Lord, and if so the two houses must be the same, or at least the Son, who is ever in His Father's house, must yet be in the midst of the bondsmen in the dark fortress of the tyrant. That is but a figurative way of putting the necessity that our freedom must come from outside humanity, and yet be diffused from a source within. Unless it come from above it will not be able to lift us, but unless it be on our level we shall not be able to grasp it. The Deliverer must Himself be free, therefore must be removed from the fatal continuity of evil; but he must be a sharer in their condition whom He would set free. These contradictory requirements meet in Him who has been anointed to proclaim liberty to the captives (John 3:13). Two things are required, that the Deliverer should be the Son of God, and that He should be the Son forever (Galatians 4:4, 5). We have to trust to a living Saviour who is as near the latest generations as to the first. "This man because he continueth ever is able to save to the uttermost."

III. THE ABIDING SONSHIP WHICH CONSTITUTES THE SLAVE'S EMANCIPATION. The process of deliverance is the transfer from the one household to the other. We are set free from our bondage when through Christ we receive the adoption, and cry, "Abba! Father!" This filial spirit, the spirit of life which was in Christ Jesus, "makes us free from the law of sin and death." Conclusion: There are but two conditions in which we can stand — slaves of sin or sons of God.

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

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KJV: Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;

WEB: Jesus therefore said to those Jews who had believed him, "If you remain in my word, then you are truly my disciples.