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Feb 11, 2023 06:00am

The Attributes of God (Part 8) – Truth

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Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. (John 17:17)

There are so many “truths” out there clamoring for our attention. There’s “my truth,” “your truth,” “his truth,” “her truth.” It can be about as dizzying as a Dr. Seuss book! There are different religions, conflicting news stories, and a daily onslaught of propaganda and product-pushing in our social media feeds. So how do we know which “truth” is reliable? There is one source who does not claim to be a truth or a way to truth, but claims to be the truth, and that person is the God of the Bible.

As we explore this claim to truth, theologian Wayne Grudem’s definition is helpful: “God’s truthfulness means He is the true God, and all His knowledge and words are both true and the final standard of truth.”

He is the one true God.
There is only one deity over all creation—the Lord; the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. All other deities are false—creations of our minds and hands, or even demons masquerading as divine beings.
God constantly reassures and reminds His people in the Old Testament, “I am the LORD, and there is no other” (Isaiah 45:18). Not only is He declaring His glory, but He also wants them to know they are on the right path, following the right person. But He doesn’t stop at the claims; God repeatedly demonstrates He is the one true God by doing things no one else could ever do. Sure, they can copycat a few “card tricks,” but God’s signs and wonders eventually perplex and even anger Pharoah and his magic men because they cannot figure out how He does them. He parts an entire sea so that His people can walk across on dry land. He creates food out of nothing for them to eat in the desert. He sends fire from heaven to consume Elijah’s sodden sacrifice while the prophets of Baal scream for hours around the altar with no fiery results from their false god. God shuts the mouths of lions from ravaging Daniel for dinner, and He rescues three men from an incinerator without even a singe on their clothes by going into the fire with them.
It is no wonder that the apostle Paul says we have “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:5–6).

All His words are true.
If God is true, then all His words are true and reliable. Moses testifies in the Old Testament of the Lord’s trustworthiness and faithfulness in upholding His promises:

“God is not man, that he should lie,
or a son of man, that he should change his mind.
Has he said, and will he not do it?
Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?” (Numbers 23:19)

Jesus declares that all His Father’s words are true when He prays for all those who would believe in Him, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17).

God even says of Himself, “I the LORD speak the truth; I declare what is right” (Isaiah 45:19). We have every reason to trust Him and all He says in His Word.

He is the final standard of truth.
Not only is God’s Word true, but He is the ultimate measuring rod of what is true. This is because He is truth itself. Jesus said of Himself, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6, emphasis added), and since Jesus and the Father are one, this is also true of God. The same is true of the Holy Spirit since He is the third person in the triune Godhead. Jesus calls Him “the Spirit of truth” who “will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13).

When we are looking for objectivity in our relative day and age, we need look no further than the pages of Scripture. In them, we will find the plumbline to build a solid foundation of truth, upon which we can safely lay all the other bricks of our beliefs.

Implications
Truth is mentioned numerous times in the Bible when describing how a Christian should live. God’s will for us is that we will know the truth (John 8:32), walk in the truth (3 John 1:4), speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), be sanctified in truth (John 17:17), rejoice with the truth (1 Corinthians 13:6), rightly handle truth (2 Timothy 2:15), and obey the truth (1 Peter 1:22).

Since God loves truth and abhors falsehood, we too should strive to speak the truth and be honest in all our dealings. We should imitate our Lord by prizing the truth and hating deceitfulness. This includes following the ninth commandment by not bearing false witness against our neighbor.

God delights in truth in our inward being (Psalm 51:6). In fact, when we lie, we are being the most unlike God and the most like the devil. Satan is described in the Bible as “a liar and the father of lies” because he introduced the first lie into the world by hissing those now infamous words into Eve’s ear, “You will not surely die” (Genesis 3:4). Lying comes from his very character and there is no truth in him (John 8:44). This is why the Greek word for devil (diabolos) is also used in the Bible to talk about slanderers (Titus 2:3; 1 Timothy 3:11; 2 Timothy 3:3) and is where we get our English phrase diabolical speech. When we tell lies or say hurtful things about other people, we are acting like Satan.

God is clear about how seriously He takes lying. Proverbs 12:22 says “lying lips are an abomination to the Lord,” and Revelation 21:8 says all liars will have their portion in the “lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” Being untruthful is a sin and deserves the punishment of God, just like any other sin.

Jesus says that anyone who practices sin is a slave to sin, but He also says that knowing the truth will set us free (John 8:31–34). We must know the truth—that Jesus Christ died to save sinners—and we must believe in Truth himself (John 14:6), trusting that Jesus is the only way to God and that anyone who turns away from their sin and believes in Him will be set free from sin and the punishment of the second death.
This is a stark and unpopular truth in our day when everyone gets to decide their own reality, but the truth remains nonetheless and requires a response.

We must not only ask the question, like Pontius Pilate, “What is truth?” (John 18:38), but we must also ask “Why is there truth?” Ultimately, the point of all truth is that we would know “the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent,” (John 17:3). It is in knowing this truth that we find eternal life.