Truth: Absolute
What is truth? (cont.)
- Chesed brings
together a number of ideas. It emphasises grace, undeserved merit,
unmerited loyalty or faithfulness of God, undeserved love. It focuses on
the fact that it is grounded on God’s character. So chesed, while it emphasises
God’s loyalty, it is a loyalty that is based on His righteousness. A love
that is not based on righteousness is a love that is going to lose its
foundation. Remember that foundation and stability is part of that key
word emet
which relates to truth. So this shows the intricate interconnection of
these attributes. God’s love is unmerited, it is based on who He is, on
His own righteousness and His own character, and the fact that it is based
on truth gives that stability. It never shifts, it never changes.
- Chesed itself is
a personal attribute. Only a person can love.
- Truth is then related to the love of God for His
creatures.
- As such, truth is related to the revelation of
the person to His creatures. Truth is revelation; truth has to do with the
revelation of God and His thinking to His creatures. 2 Samuel 7:28 NASB “Now, O Lord GOD, You
are God, and Your words are truth, and You have
promised this good thing to Your servant.” What God speaks is truth
because it comes from His character. When God speaks he cannot speak
anything that is less than truth. What God says is the truth by which we
evaluate and interpret all other data in creation because God’s words bear
this divine authority in and of themselves, they are absolute truth. Psalm
25:5 NASB “Lead me in Your truth …”
That is a verbal leading, not just some kind of “I feel like God wants, I
feel like God wants, God is leading this to me today.” So then God is
leading by some non-verbal impression, a sort of intuitive flash. That is
not what this is talking about. “Leading me in Your
truth” is talking about the fact that there is specific, objective
revelation including prohibitions and mandates that lead us, that direct our
lives and our thinking. “… and teach me, For You
are the God of my salvation; For You I wait all the day.” Psalm 43:3 NASB
“O send out Your light and Your truth, let them
lead me; Let them bring me to Your holy hill And to Your dwelling places.”
There is a connection here between light and truth. Light illuminates our
thinking. Truth is power because it is truth; truth with a capital T has
an inherent authority and witness to it, and it therefore enlightens man’s
mind to how things actually are. Psalm 119:43 NASB “And do not
take the word of truth utterly out of my mouth, For
I wait for Your ordinances…. [142] Your
righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, And Your law is truth….
[151 You are near, O LORD, And all Your
commandments are truth… [160] The sum of Your
word is truth, And every one of Your righteous ordinances is everlasting.”
So God’s revelation is absolute truth, it becomes the standard by which we
evaluate and judge all other things.
- That then becomes the foundation and motivation
for obedience to God. When we understand that His revelation is absolute
truth that then motivates us to obey God because we have truth. 1 Samuel 12:24 NASB “Only fear the LORD and
serve Him in [by means of: application] truth with all your heart
[thinking]; for consider what great things He has done for you.”
- We see from this that the Old testament concept
of truth is grounded in the person of God and related to His righteousness,
justice and love, i.e. His integrity, which is all revealed to us by
grace. In contrast to this, in Islam truth isn’t what Allah is but what
Allah says.
Truth in the New Testament
- In the New Testament the Greek word is aletheia [a)lhqeia]
and this is the word that is primarily used to translated the Hebrew emet. In
order to understand aletheia
we have to see what the Old Testament says about truth. So the foundation
for the Greek aletheia in the
New Testament is Old Testament truth. Truth is used primarily by Paul and
John in the New Testament. It is only used seven times in the other Gospels
but in actuality we have to take two of those out because they are repetitions,
so really it is only five times. Yet Paul uses the word forty-four times
in his seventy-seven chapters of the Pauline epistles, and John uses it
thirty-seven times in his twenty-seven chapters. So obviously in terms of
emphasis John is the one who is talking about truth. John says that the
incarnation reveals truth: The law was given through Moses but grace and
truth were realised through Jesus Christ. So it is in the person of Jesus
Christ that we know truth. Once again we see the incarnation of truth. Truth
is not just abstract, now it is substantiated and incarnated in a person.
So Jesus is truth incarnate. John 3:21 NASB “But he who practices the truth comes to the
Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”
That is, if you come to the truth and you apply the truth that you know,
then light increases; your understanding increases and that continues to
produce growth. We are to worship God, John 4:23 NASB “But an
hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the
Father in [by means of] spirit and [by means of] truth; for such people
the Father seeks to be His worshipers.” So it is by absolutes that are
revealed in God’s Word. The truth there is that which is revealed in His Word.
John 8:32 NASB “and you will know the truth,
and the truth will make you free.” The truth here is the Word of God and
the principle is that real freedom only begins with the Word of God in the
soul. True freedom is not possible until one is first freed in a spiritual
sense by faith alone in Christ alone. John 14:6 NASB “Jesus
said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to
the Father but through Me’.” He says three things
about Himself: He is the way, meaning He is the only way to God, secondly He
is the truth, He identifies Himself with truth and once again we see that
truth is something that is personal. Who is Jesus? John 1:1 NASB
“In the beginning was the Word [logos/logoj], and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God… [14] And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His
glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and
truth.” So the logos is then
incarnate and He is full of grace and truth, and then Jesus who is the Logos says, “I am truth.” So logos equals the truth and the logos is the Word or communication.
So when Jesus says, You shall know the truth and
the truth will set you free, once again we have one of those interesting
little double entendres that John loves. It is not only knowing the Word
in terms of knowing what is revealed in the Scripture but knowing Jesus
Christ, having that personal relationship with Him, that is what sets us
free. And He says that He is the truth. So then we connect Word, communication,
revelation of God with truth and with the person of Jesus Christ. Then we
look at the third person of the Trinity is John 14:17. He is the Spirit of truth, and this describes
the function of the Spirit in revelation. He is the one who reveals truth
through inspiration, through the human authors. “{that is} the Spirit of
truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does
not see Him or know Him…” John 15:26 NASB “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you
from the Father, {that is} the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father,
He will testify about Me.” So the third person of the Trinity is related
to absolute truth. Then in John 17:17 Jesus prayed NASB “Sanctify
them in [by means of] the truth; Your word is
truth.” We can’t understand and implement the Word of God without a
relationship with the Spirit of God. That is why it is important to be in
fellowship, to confess our sins before we learn the Word of God, to keep
daily or regular accounts of our sin, using 1 John 1:9 every time we are
aware of sin.
- Truth
outside of John. Paul connects exchanging truth for a lie with idolatry.
In Romans chapter one the unbeliever suppresses the truth, vv.18-20. Men
reject God, reject His existence, and those who are negative at
God-consciousness suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Then they
exchange the truth for a lie. Then the next thing developed in that
section is that they begin to worship the creature, anything in the
created realm whether it is a concrete bird or animal or whether it is more
or less an abstract concept—money, happiness, personal pleasure; all kinds
of things. Idolatry is set against the truth revealed in the Scriptures. The
point that John makes in 1 John where he warns in the very last verse of
the epistle not to practice idolatry. In the context the idolatry he is
talking about is misrepresenting the person of Jesus Christ.
- Truth in 1
John. John had a lot to say about truth in the first epistle. The first
thing he said was, 1:6 NASB “If we say that we have fellowship
with Him and {yet} walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice [do] the
truth.” If we don’t apply the truth, live consistent with God’s
revelation, then we are not in fellowship. [8] “If
we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is
not in us.” We can be out of fellowship, in which case we don’t have any
relationship with the truth. [2:4] “The one who says, ‘I have come to know
Him,’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not
in him.” He doesn’t have a relationship with doctrine in his soul; he is
not applying it. [2:5] “but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of [for]
God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him.” Being “in
Him” is being in fellowship with Him because we keep His Word. By keeping
His Word we demonstrate that we have a relationship with truth.
- Summary:
Truth in the New Testament, therefore, is personal, the revelation of God,
and it is related to divine integrity. This is the same thing we see in
the Old Testament.
- Truth,
then, is an absolute. The Bible grounds truth in God Himself, it never
changes. What was true a thousand years ago is just as true today and will
be just as true a thousand years from now.
2 John 1:1 NASB
“The elder to the chosen lady and her children, whom I love in [by means of] truth;
and not only I, but also all who know the truth.” So truth is related to the character of God. Truth
was incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ. Truth is related to the revelation
of God. So in order to truly love we have to love by means of doctrine. That
means we have to know the Word, we have to understand doctrine, and our
thinking has to be shaped by what is revealed in God’s Word. So we love by
means of truth. He adds, “All those who have known the truth love.” In other
words, if there are two believers and they both have a love for the Word of God
and they both have reached maturity, then they can exercise genuine love for
one another. There is no such thing and there is no room in the spiritual life
for personality conflicts.
2 John 1:2 NASB
“for the sake of the truth which abides in us and will be with us forever.” This is dia
[dia] plus the accusative, “because of,” or on account of “the
truth which abides in us. So not only do we love by means of truth but we love
because of the truth that is in us. This is the motivation, the doctrinal
orientation that we have, the doctrine that is in our soul. The doctrine that
we learn motivates us. It motivates us to love God. When we love God because we
understand impersonal love for God and understand that His love is a perfect
love, a love that has perfect integrity, that conforms
perfectly to His righteousness and His just5ice, then that in turn becomes the
foundation in us for loving one another.
Then John gives his
salutation. 1:3 NASB “Grace, mercy {and} peace will be with us, from
God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love.”
He comes right back and ties these things together. So in these three verses
truth is mentioned four times and love is mentioned two times. The major emphasis
here is love by means of truth. Grace is undeserved merit, it is God’s love
towards the creature which is not deserved, not merited, is not earned; it is
unearned favour. Mercy is the application of grace, the Greek word eleos [e)leoj]. It is treating people not as they deserve but as
they should be treated as objects of God’s love and creatures for whom Christ died. Peace is the result of having received
grace and mercy. In the Greek it is the word irene
[i)rhnh], but
remember the New Testament must be understood in light of its Jewish
background. It is shalom in the
Hebrew and ultimately it relates to that peace with God. This is not peace in
the sense of an absence of armed conflict. Jesus also said He came with a sword
to divide families. We need to reconcile those things. In the Bible peace is
never used in the sense of an absence of armed conflict. It is primarily used
to refer to the absence of enmity between God and man. Second, it is used in
contrast to fear and worry and anxiety. So there are two emphases. One is the
absence of conflict with God and the other is a stability,
contentment related to joy and happiness that comes because we know that God is
in charge of the details of our life, and therefore we are not going to worry
about it or be anxious about it, or be motivated by fear. So grace an mercy emphasise God’s initiative; peace emphasises the
result of God’s initiative. Peace will be with us, it comes from God the Father
and from Jesus Christ, indicating that Jesus Christ and God the Father is the
source of all grace and peace. Jesus Christ is identified as the Son of the
Father. John is precise in emphasising who Jesus Christ is.