Truth and Truth-Telling (2)

God-centered essence of truth

I hope some of you are now asking: How can I learn the holy art of truth and truth-telling? Where can I learn it?

My answer is simple: The cure for truth-perversion lies only in going lost at the feet of Him who said, “Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart.” Satan spells death and the lie. Christ is the Truth and the Life. Christ makes a convicted sinner true to others, himself, and his God. Above all, Christ is the essence of Truth. “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (Jn. 14:6).

Jesus Christ was begotten by the Father and anointed with the Holy Spirit without measure. Hence, God Triune in Christ is absolute, unconditional Truth. God cannot lie or be untruthful (Tit. 1:2; Heb. 6:18). ‘The works of His hands are truth and judgment; all His precepts are sure. They stand fast for ever and ever, and are done in truth and uprightness” (Ps. 111:7,8). Truth, or as our forefathers often called it, veracity, is one of God’s glorious attributes. God is and must always be truth par excellence. Hence, all temporal truth is derived from Him. And all untruth or falsehood is wrong and sinful, for it is a contradiction of God Himself as truth.

Experiential characteristics of truth

“This is certainly all true, well and good,” you may say, “but how does truth work in the heart by means of the Holy Spirit?”

The Holy Spirit uses truth as living power to convict, to liberate, and to transform. He convicts with truth to grant experiential misery. He liberates by truth to grant experiential deliverance. He transforms through truth to grant experiential gratitude.

Truth is convicting. If Spirit-applied truth enlightens our dark souls, sin becomes sin. Oh, then we see the truth of divine origin, our Paradise innocency and subsequent fall, our actual sins in thoughts, words, and deeds! Then we experience the truth of what we are before God—dead in trespasses and sins; miserable, rejectable, and condemnable; unworthy of the least token of God’s mercy or attention. Dear young people, has sin ever become sin for you?

Truth is also liberating. The hell-worthy, death-agreeing sinner shall not die or go to hell. Rather, the truth shall set him free—the truth of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. Oh, when Christ is revealed in His active, law-fulfilling obedience and His passive, sin-paying obedience as the soul’s only hope, a joy unspeakable takes hold of such a self-condemned sinner! Even the possibility of a way of escape in Jesus Christ becomes soul-liberating. How much more does the truth set a sinner free when Christ is not only revealed as a perfect and suitable Savior, but also applied as his Lord and his God (Jn. 20:28)! Oh, when the sinner may experience that Jesus Christ takes his place not only on Calvary, but also in the courts of heaven as divine Advocate, and pleads his case to a successful conclusion, so that the Father pronounces him acquitted and seals home His gracious and judicial forgiveness by the great internal Sealer, the Holy Spirit, a liberating truth and peace which passes all understanding flows into the heart! Gospel truth then becomes internalized, experiential jubilee. Grace becomes grace. Christ becomes Christ. Gospel truth becomes truth. Truth and Christ become inseparable, for both set the sinner free (Jn. 8:32, 36). The truth of Christ and the Christ of truth sets the sinner free.

Truth is transforming. Jesus said, “For this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth My voice” (Jn. 18:37). And His sheep who knows His voice, cannot but follow Him (Jn. 10:4). His heart is conquered, transformed. When Jesus healed Bartimaeus, He said, “Go thy way,” but Scripture tells us that he “followed Jesus in the way” (Mk. 10:52). That is that self-denying, cross-carrying, bur den-bearing way, that narrow path, which leads to Jerusalem, crucifixion, and ultimately to resurrection and glory. The redeemed sinner cannot but live a life of gratitude. Snatched as a brand from the brink of death and hell’s burning, he is transformed into a living follower of the only Redeemer and Intercessor who died and lives for those who are by nature enemies of truth. Thus, sanctified truth produces the fruit of godliness. “Godliness is the child of truth,” wrote William Gurnall, “and it must be nursed with no other milk than that of its own mother. ‘Desire the sincere milk of the Word, that ye may grow thereby’” (1 Pet. 2:2).

Conclusion

As an outgrowth of God’s veracity and faithfulness, it follows that a special burden rests upon God’s people to be “truth-tellers” and “truth-livers,” for they are called to reflect God’s nature in their daily lives. As they are called to be holy because God is holy, so they are called to be truthful because God is truthful. Truth and untruth are antithetical because God is truth. The glory of God is that He is the God of truth; the glory of the child of God is that he is renewed after the image of God and therefore is “of the truth” (cf. Jn. 18:37).

Nevertheless, God’s people must often bemoan how far they fall short of the Truth and of truth-telling. Oh, what a blessed miracle that Jesus Christ remains true to them in His constant love even when they are so unlovable and untrue to Him! The amazing grace of the gospel is that Christ has merited forgiveness also for truth-perverters, for He perfectly obeyed the ninth commandment for thirty-three years on earth as Substitute for His own. He was slandered, ridiculed, mocked, spat upon, scourged, slapped, challenged, and accused of being a drunkard and a devil, but He opened not His mouth. There is room in the Lamb led to the slaughter for repentant truth-perverters who must cry out, “O God, be merciful to me, the sinner,” and who can find truth and peace for their souls in none other than in Him who is altogether lovely.

Dear young people, are you presently in pursuit of truth? Or are you allowing a lifestyle or self-seeking, pride, and slothfulness in the use of means hinder such a pursuit? Do you not realize that the greatest homage you can pay to truth is to seek grace to pursue it, to buy it, to keep it, and to use it? Oh, that you would follow the words of John Hus who sealed this beautiful statement with his own blood: “Search the truth, hear truth, learn truth, love truth, speak the truth, hold the truth till death.”

You cannot overvalue sanctified truth in your youth and throughout your life. Truth will always stand you in good stead. It is strong even when it appears weak, just as falsehood is always weak even when it appears strong. Especially in your young and critical teen years, God advises you to seek grace to “buy the truth and sell it not” (Prov. 23:23).

William Bridge rightly noted, “Keep the truth and the truth will keep you.” And Thomas Brooks confessed, “Every parcel of truth is precious as the filings of gold; we must either live with it, or die for it.”

May Cod bring all of us to genuine repentance for our lack of truth-telling and truth-living! May we return by grace to Him with brokenness of heart and find forgiveness with Him who is to be feared (Ps. 130:4) and who is Truth.

Dr. J.R. Beeke is pastor of the First Netherlands Reformed Congregation of Grand Rapids, Michigan. This article is the concluding part of a Youth Conference address.

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