What is Truth? This was the question that Pontius Pilate asked Jesus in that infamous trial. He did not ask, “What is the truth,” as if he were trying to discover evidence. It was a more poignant question, striking at the heart of truth itself. Does truth really exist? It’s a question that is being asked increasingly today.
Existentialism is the name given to a human philosophy that suggests there is no absolute truth. It teaches that human beings are self-determining, including the right to create their own truth. In the 1960’s there was a common expression that embodied this philosophy: “If it feels good, do it.”
This was exactly the argument that Satan used against Eve in the garden. It is the same philosophy that argues that “the ends justify the means,” excusing the use of ‘wrong’ things to accomplish desired goals. We see it playing out everywhere in our culture today. There could not be a more destructive threat to society or to human souls.
When Pilate asked his question about truth he was reacting to Jesus’ statement:
“For this reason I was born, and for this reason I came into the world, so that I might testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” John 18:37
Truth = ‘What is true.’
It’s not what we want to be true or what we decide is true.
If I run over a nail and get a flat tire, the truth will be that my tire is flat. It doesn’t matter whether I believe that tires do not go flat. In the same way, I cannot escape being guilty after doing something wrong simply by claiming that the thing I did was not wrong. Denying truth does not change it from being true.
The apostle John had a gift for saying simple things that are remarkably profound. In his second letter to a group of believers, he wrote:
“We love you because the truth is now in our hearts, and it will be there forever.”
~ 2 John 1:2
We see here a remarkable lesson about Divine truth, it is more than rules; it is the very essence of what God imparts to us in salvation. We can love because of the truth; the truth makes us able to love in this way.
Spurgeon masterfully wrote: “Once let the truth of God obtain an entrance into the human heart and subdue the whole man unto itself, no power human or infernal can dislodge it.”
When the Holy Ghost opens, applies, and seals God's Word in our lives, we would sooner be pulled apart than be pulled away from the vital power of that gospel, which has saved us.
“What a thousand mercies are wrapped up in the assurance that the truth will be with us forever; will be our living support, our dying comfort, our rising song, our eternal glory;” - Spurgeon
Some truths can be outgrown and left behind. They are rudimentary lessons for beginners. But that is not the case with Divine truth -- it is sweet food for babes, and yet is also strong meat for men. The truth that we are sinners is painful. It humbles us and makes us watchful; but the extraordinary truth that ‘whosoever believes on the Lord Jesus shall be saved,’ gives us hope and joy.
Our human experience does not loosen our hold of the doctrines of grace, but instead knits us to them more and more firmly. Our grounds and motives for believing grow stronger as the evidence of His grace multiplies, and we have more and more reason to expect that it will continue to be true until the day we hold the Savior in our own arms.
"You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."
~ Jesus, John 8:32
What is Truth? was inspired by 'For the truth's sake,' CH Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, October 25
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