The above quotation is from John 8:32 and this sentiment makes it quite clear that each one of us has an absolute obligation to find out and to search for the truth, so as to benefit ourselves by living to it. The point of life is to discover the truth, of all things, of everything that you interact with and relate to on an everyday basis. It can be said, that without truth, that without accuracy, that without a knowledge of right or wrong, your life can be nothing more than fits and starts of confusion and a mess. When you learn mathematics you learn that there is one right answer and that answer represents the truth. When you read or write, there is an underlying foundation that one must adhere to in order to properly communicate as well as to properly comprehend, and the lack of understanding of that truth, will be a marked negative in your life. In your social relations, personal or not, at work or not, in everything that we do in order to interact with others, the underpinning that allows us to effectively communicate is truth.
The fact of the matter is when you veer from the straight path of truth, onto the side streets of all sorts; you are no longer making 100% pure progress, as your efficiency has been reduced correspondingly. That is to say, when any great prophet or Messiah incarnates here on earth, such as Moses, Jesus, Elijah, Confucius, Buddha, Krishna, and so on, each one of these great prophets have as their basis one fundamental thing in common, and that is truth. Each one of these unparalleled masters had an absolute obligation to testify to truth and to see that this truth was espoused to their apostles and acolytes, because without this obligation, than their very message, their very life would be tinted with sin, with falsehood, with error, and their feet would truly then be feet of clay.
You do not, however, need to be a perfect being to understand truth, to espouse truth, to recognize truth, but you should not live a life in which one thing is said yet an entirely different thing is lived as this contradiction between words and deeds will reflect badly on yourself, your advice, and your self-respect. While there are plenty of people that believe that truth is relative or pretend that they don't understand truth, or that there is no definitive truth, these are either self-deceptions or often insincere questioning with the preeminent example being "what is truth?" by Pilate, who asked the question but didn't want to hear the answer.
The reason why truth will set you free is that every lie, every deception, and every wrong move, places us into a cage of error and tarnishes the Light that truth represents. Each day you know what you have done, you know what you have spoken, and you know or have a real good idea as to whether each of these decisions has been done truthfully and without error.
We are, foremost, responsible for ourselves, as Shakespeare said, "to thine own self be true," yet this responsibility extends further so that we have an inherent obligation to others to espouse truth, aptly demonstrated by the incomparable Wilber Wilberforce when he concluded his speech to parliament by railing against the moral injustice of slavery and proclaiming: "Having heard all of this, you may choose to look the other way, but you can never again say that you did not know."
The truth is that light that penetrates completely into every crevice and every cavity conceivable, to which no lie can stand up to that light, so knowing this, the choices that you make in life are in actuality, the true you.