Tonight’s alphabet series on essential ingredients in a life of faith looked at T is for Truth. Absolute truth is not something many people believe in nowadays, the preference being to say things like ‘If that’s true for you, that’s fine, but this is what I believe so this is true for me.’ Truth is, however, ‘that which is in accordance with fact or reality’ and God defines truth by His own character. Jesus said, ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life’ (Jn 14:6) and whilst spiritual truth may not be visible to natural eyesight, God clearly says that there is such a thing as absolute truth and that truth is bound up in Jesus (see also Is 45:19, Jn 1:14, Jn 1:17).
The idea of absolute truth is necessarily intolerant and exclusive and will arouse the opposition of many. Jesus is ‘a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.’ (1 Pet 2:8, quoting Is 8:14) We do not go out of our way to be contentious, but the recent political furores over politicians who have held to Biblical truth (e.g. Tim Farron and Jacob Rees-Mogg) remind us that there is a cost to holding to truth (see 2 Tim 3:12).
Truth is, however, liberating (see Jn 8:31-36) and brings many benefits. Truth leads us away from the slavery of sin and into the freedom of being called God’s children (see Rom 8:14-16). As we embrace the truth Jesus brings into our lives, we are set free from the kingdom of darkness (whose king, the devil, is the father of lies (Jn 8:44)) and become heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ (Rom 8:17, Gal 4:6-7).
This new life, though, isn’t automatic. We have the choice to offer ourselves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness. God wants us to learn to obey from our hearts the pattern of teaching which He offers us so that we realise we have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. (Rom 6:16-18) Truth is powerful because it can have an impact on how we live, but we need to allow truth to work in us and through us for it to have this effect.