Embracing the Truth

Before we can embrace the truth, we must know what truth is.Truth is defined as “being in agreement with a standard, or conformity with fact or reality.” Reality is the actual state of everything that exists.  God, who transcends all, has established laws and principles to govern His creation. These laws are absolute standards set by God and God alone. Accordingly, whatever we believe to be true, whether physical or spiritual, can only be true if it’s in accordance with the established standards set by our Creator God, the supreme authority over all that exists. God has graciously given us His written Word, the Bible. The Bible is divinely inspired and contains the mind and will of God. It is inerrant, infallible, and authoritative. The Bible is called the “Word of Truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). The psalmist declares, “The entirety of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous judgments endures forever” (Psalm 119:160). God the Father is called the “God of truth” (Psalm 31:5). God the Son is “Full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Jesus said, “For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice” (John 18:37). Jesus said, “I am the way, THE TRUTH, and the life” (John 14:6). And then, God the Holy Spirit is called “The Spirit of Truth” (John 15:26). God is the source and author of all truth; His Word is absolute truth and is immutable—it never changes. The Psalmist tells us, “Forever, O Lord, Your word is settled in heaven” (Psalms 119:89) and anything that contradicts the Word of Truth is a lie. Romans 3:4 tells us, “Let God be true but every man a liar.” How we respond to the truth will have an eternal consequence. To deny, reject, or rebel against the truth will result in eternal wrath and separation from God. Our gracious Lord gave us the Holy Scriptures so that we may know the truth. He “desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). Let’s look at four essential truths from the Word of God.First, God created us with a will of our own. In Genesis 1:26 it tells us that God created us in His own image, after His own likeness. We have intellect, emotions, and a will, just like our Creator God. Because we have a will of our own, we have the awesome privilege and responsibility to make the right choices in life. As free moral agents, we have the freedom to choose what direction our lives will go, and ultimately where we will spend eternity. Every decision we make, whether it’s good or bad, will have consequences. God may allow hardships and difficulties in our lives to prod us to turn to Him, but ultimately, God will not force us to do anything against our will. It’s up to us to make wise decisions—decisions that are based on the truth. And so, He gave us the Holy Scriptures for our admonition, to guide and direct us. Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.” Secondly, man willfully sinned against God. In the second chapter of Genesis, we read how God created Adam as an innocent being, having no knowledge of good or evil. However, God forewarned Adam about the penalty of sin; the day he sinned against God, he would surely die (Genesis 2:17). Yet even after he was warned, Adam willfully chose to sin against God anyway. After his fall, he immediately died spiritually, which is marked by separation from God. Eventually he would also die physically, when the soul leaves the body. Through his fall, Adam became an entirely different being, depraved and degenerate, and he was only capable of producing children like himself with the same fallen nature. As his descendants, we are born into this world spiritually stillborn: dead in our sin, separated from God, and under the condemnation of God. Romans 5:12 tells us “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.” Because of sin, condemnation came upon all of humanity. And thirdly, God demonstrated His great love for sinful rebellious man. There is only one true God. For all eternity, there never was nor ever will be another God. This one true God exists in three Divine persons of the Godhead: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. They are coequal in their deity and their eternality. It was God the Son, the second person of the trinity, who left His glory in heaven to become one of us. He was born into this world not by the seed of man, but through a virgin conception, conceived by the Holy Spirit. Through the virgin birth, God circumvented the sin nature. God allowed Himself to come into this world as the sinless God-Man; Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man. Jesus Christ came not “to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:17). He came to provide a perfect and acceptable sacrifice for the sins of the whole world by laying down His life and enduring the Father’s wrath on Calvary’s cross. Through His sacrificial death, Jesus Christ satisfied all the righteous requirements of the Law for the penalty of our sins. After three days He was resurrected from the dead, providing proof that God had accepted the substitutionary death of His Son for our sins. Because our debt has been paid, God remains just when He forgives our sin and justifies the ungodly. Finally, it’s up to us as free moral agents to choose to believe the Bible and repent. Repentance is a change of mind that leads to a change in direction. We change our mind by accepting what the Bible says as absolute truth. We change our direction when we acknowledge our sinful and rebellious nature, and how God the Father, not sparing His own Son, delivered Him up for us to suffer an agonizing and humiliating death on the cross to save us from eternal loss. Now that we know the truth, we can’t ignore it.We must, by a deliberate act of our will, turn away from sin and our former way of life and surrender our life to the Lord. If we refuse to decide or if we ignore His gracious offer, well then—that’s our decision. We choose of our own volition to ignore or reject what the Lord is offering us: forgiveness of sin and eternal life through Jesus Christ. Believe the good news, embrace the truth, and repent.