*

John Piper on John 8 (“You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”). If it comes with a yoke, if it ties you down, if you know it cannot last, and then when it ends, it fills you with regret— then it’s not real pleasure.

I take it for a certainty that everyone in this room wants to be free in the deepest, fullest sense. If the opposite is bondage and slavery, no one here wants that. You may be enslaved to some habits that are very pleasurable, and in that sense love your slavery. But when you step back from the pleasures and consider happiness without that slavery, you would like to be done with bondage. You would like to be happy in freedom, not a slave to pleasant addictions. We all want to be free.

True pleasure, true freedom is when the Son sets you free.

You are fully free when you have the desire, the ability, and the opportunity to do what will make you happy in a thousand years. Or we could say, You are fully free when you have the desire, the ability, and the opportunity to do what will leave you no regrets forever.