What is truth?

"By Him all else is measured."

MAN, ON HIS OWN, WRITES A FLEXIBLE MORAL LINE, one at the will of his emotions and mental knowledge with no truth to it. Truth is solid, unmovable, or “set in stone,” as we’d say. Men, like Pilate, ask, “What is truth?” And like Pilate, that answer stares them in the face, but they can’t see it.

That there is certain (sure) truth can only be accepted by the spirit man after being enlightened by the Holy Spirit. For we are not just physical bodies, that we can see, but have a soul (mind, will, emotions), and a spirit man. Our spirit man is that which was made in the likeness of God from the breath of God in Genesis. Until then, the body formed from the dust was just that — dust. But now, God’s life fills it and these organs and tissues, our muscular system, our heart and veins, our lungs, live and breathe and work. It is God’s life that causes cells to form and multiply to become the unborn. It is God’s life that causes the woman’s body to reform to accommodate the child and His design that pushes her through childbirth and into motherhood. There is nothing, not one area that God’s design, His plans for life on this earth has not touched. He formed it all, and it all flows according to the ways and methods He set for it.

Men without truth cannot accept this. In the unredeemed (unsaved) mind, all must make sense. But in the reborn spirit truth is accepted with faith in the God, who designed it and works it to completion. Herein was Abraham found full of faith. Though he was physically too old to have a child, though his wife was past the age of childbearing, he believed God’s promise of a child anyway. When we believe in Christ as he believed in the promise of Christ, we are the children of Abraham, because both Christ (the Messiah) and the promise given to Abraham that Christ would come, are from the Father, the God of all.

Jesus made an interesting statement in the gospels, when He lived on earth. He said the Father was greater than Him and knew the time of His return to earth (His second coming), a time that He did not know (John 14:28). He also said, while in prayer, that He was returning to the Father to be with Him as He was before time began (John 17:5). How powerful this is when we see it. But can we see it with our physical eyes? No. We cannot see heaven, nor the throne room (though it is described in Revelation), nor Jesus seated at the Father’s right hand. We can speak to Him through the Spirit. He desires us to speak to Him. He desires our worship. He desires to be seen as God and spoken to as the Savior and the Christ, but when we call out to Him in pain, He hears and will answer. When we are filled with joy and laughter, He laughs with us, and is not up there throwing God-lightening-bolts because we dared to be human. Jesus walked on earth with men. He made friends. He had family. He ate meals. He did what humans do here, only without any sin.

The Spirit is our go-between. He is the power of our communication, and He will not allow us to mess up in this. We can talk to God like ourselves. I can only be Suzanne D. Williams, daughter of Becky and Wayne Combee, who has lived through what she’s lived through. I have hang-ups in my thinking that He will mend and heal. He understands these. Best of all to me is that He knows me inside and out, and I never have to explain anything. I love that part. There’s never any misunderstanding between us. That which causes me to rely on Him is that He is truth. He speaks truth, and there’s no shades of it, nothing wavering and uncertain.

Men continually tries to justify their behavior. We never fully know if what they say is true. Our understanding of God’s truth comes only as we grow in spiritual maturity and learn to lean on the Holy Spirit. He knows men’s hearts. Only as we gain His perspective and see as He does, does He take firm root within us.

Men want to know everything first and then make the decision. God asks us to make the decision and to trust Him to fulfill everything He’s said. Here is faith. Faith is in He is truth, He who is faithful. People continually seek to present themselves in the best light, but God is light, and Jesus is the light of the world. He is the only light of wisdom and knowledge and revelation that we need. By Him, all else is measured.

Give a dictionary to a dog, and the dog cannot read it. Give a car to a toddler, and the toddler’s mind cannot make sense of how to operate the car properly. Though all of the gospel, all of truth is for any who seek it, it cannot be seen fully and understood without God living inside our spirit man. Though men without Jesus, without the Holy Spirit stare at it, like those who stared at Jesus and heard Him speak and saw Him heal bodies and minds, they are as blind afterward as ever. Children shouted Hosanna to Jesus in the temple, and all the Pharisees could think was He needed to die. The blind leading the blind right into a ditch.

God knew it would be this way. He knew men would stare right at the truth and deny it anyway. Jesus died for all men, those who loved Him and those who didn’t. But the Father knew it would be those who hated Jesus who would put Him to death. Forgiveness was extended to them just the same after He rose from the dead. Some saw who He was and were saved. Some denied Him. The council forbid the disciples to preach in the name of Jesus. Don’t speak of Him like He’s alive, they said. Then there’s Paul, who hated Christians, who killed Christians. Truth came when he stopped being Saul the Pharisee and became just Paul, in need of the Savior.

Here is where men stumble in their pride. Money and education and social status will not save you, just as doing the Law could not save you. It was written to point men toward faith in Christ, who would fulfill it. The truth, found in Christ, is our only way of salvation. What God can use of us, our talents and interests and those things listed above, comes only after we lay them at His feet, accepting who we are outside of truth and that truth alone is seen in Him. Having not seen Him, we now believe.

“Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (John 14:6)

“Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.” (1 Peter 1:8-9)

Image by Chil Vera from Pixabay


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com