Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. John 8:34
This whole chapter is composed of nothing but excellent speeches and discourses of Christ to Jews in the temple on the Feast of Tabernacles, one of the great feasts wherein all the males were to appear before the Lord at Jerusalem, the city which he had chosen to put his name there. So that these discourses were delivered in the most public manner, at the most public time, and in the most public place that could be: before the whole nation of the Jews, and many of other nations, who went up to Jerusalem to worship.
In these discourses are contained many glorious and mysterious truths of the gospel, by the divine light of which many were convinced and believed on him, as in the thirtieth verse.
Which, Christ, who knew what was in man, perceiving, directs his discourse to them in particular, and tells them plainly, as he was always wont to do, that if they intended to be his disciples, they must be so rooted and established in their belief, and to persevere therein in spite of all opposition; "If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed."
And [he] tells them for their encouragement, if they were established in the truth they should be made free by it, having respect to the bondage they were in to the Romans, as much as if he had said, "Although you are under the heavy yoke of the Romans, yet if you heartily embrace my doctrine, you shall be made free, and shall enjoy a better and more glorious liberty than [if] you were perfectly delivered from their servitude and enjoyed freedom under your own kings and rulers, under your own vines and your own fig trees" (which was but a type of this gospel liberty; see Zechariah 3:10).
To which the Jews, agreeably to their pride and self-righteousness...
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