What Is Truth?Sample

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness 

Because truth is rooted in the person of Jesus, we can be confident that it is both relational and unchanging. It’s not some unknown and unknowable mystery of the universe. It’s our very real, personal Savior, Jesus. 

And that’s another incredible thing about Jesus: He is our source of life. In John 1, we saw Jesus as the Original—He is God and was with God at the beginning. That passage goes on to say:

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. John 1:3-4 NIV

What does this mean? Life is found in Christ. And, remember, later in John’s gospel, Jesus clearly states: “I am the way, the truth, and the life …” This means that both truth and life are found in Jesus. He is the source of both. John makes it clear in these passages that we cannot separate truth and life. So if we choose to reject Jesus as the Truth we are also rejecting Him as the Life. Because these components of His character aren’t like an outfit we can assemble as we see fit, they are eternal attributes of our unchanging God. 

And the decision to reject God as the Author of life and truth, of reality, has devastating consequences. This is exactly what happened at the very beginning of the biblical narrative. Adam and Eve were given the ability to choose to live freely under God’s prescribed reality or to redefine truth to fit their own desires. Reality, as God defined it, allowed them to live in this perfect garden where they walked intimately with God and each other. Genesis 2 tells us that Adam and Eve were naked, but knew no shame. But watch what happens as soon as they try to bend the truth to suit their own desires: 

“Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” Genesis 3:8 NIV

Shame enters the story, so they hide from the God they were created to walk so closely with. They experience the painful loss of the life God created us to have. Because when we cut ourselves off from Truth, we cut ourselves off from Life as well.

Challenge: Think about the areas in your life where you are tempted to determine truth based on your own desires. When we substitute our desires for His truth, we also trade God’s intended reality for shame and fear to reign in our lives. Truth and life are inseparably linked because they share the same source—Jesus. How can you choose to ground your understanding of truth firmly in the person of Jesus today? How might that decision affect the areas of temptation you identified above?