Truth is a small word with a large meaning. In the Living Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary we find these definitions: “Conformity to fact or reality; veracity, a true statement, fidelity.” Unfortunately, truth is a word whose concept is horribly abused. People from children to adults to unscrupulous politicians to people of every walk of life, sadly even clergy, have played loose with the truth. This is a reality of life ever since Satan (Genesis 3:4) told the first lie in Eden.
Church life, personal relationships, commerce, civic welfare, politics, and relations between nations and between races – all depend on truth as a staple of their existence and to the accomplishment of their ends. Lies, the absence of truth, and liars, the purveyors of untruths, have wreaked havoc in all of the above. We see something about the depths of human self-deception and deceit in the comment of a presidential candidate who recently said that he does not believe that he has ever told an untruth. Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” is not so far fetched in the context of human behavior today!
Now concerning Scripture we have this definition of truth. Jesus addressed the Heavenly Father in John 17 and said, “Thy word is truth.” Moses and Isaiah speak of “the God of truth.” The Psalmist says, “Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of Truth” (31:5). Paul writes the inspired Word. He says in the letter to Titus, “God, that cannot lie promised…”(Titus 1:2).
Our Heavenly Father inspired the Holy Scriptures. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God” (2 Timothy 3:16). God’s Word and truth is one and the same thing. Of the Word of truth we read, “Scripture cannot be bren” (John 10:35). “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My Word shall not pass away,” (Matthew 10:35). The truth shall endure in spite of Satan and man’s most intense efforts to destroy it. However, God’s Word (Truth) cannot be destroyed anymore than the eternal God can be destroyed. When people attack the truth of God’s Word, God does not lose. The attacker loses. But again we are faced with the unhappy reality (truth) that denial and rejection of God’s truth by theologians or anyone else that attacks it leads to the destruction of others. If the liar succeeds in confusing his neighbor or convincing others to buy his lie he has a destroyed a soul. “Who is a liar but he that denies that Jesus is the Christ?” (1 John 2:22).
“If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him (God) a liar, and His Word is not in us” (1 John 1:10). What a horrible indictment to be charged with making God a liar! On the other hand, “And if anyone sins we have an advocate with the Father Jesus Christ the righteous, And He Himself is the propitiation (Blood-covering) for our sin, and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:1,2).
God’s Word from creation, to the fall into sin, to the description of the human condition, to the identification of that which God calls sin, to the promise and sending of the Savior, to the suffering and death and resurrection of Christ, to salvation by grace alone through faith in Christ, to judgment either to heaven or hell is truth – absolutely. The downhill spiral of society since the fall is a result of the rejection of God’s Truth. The moral and theological relativity of our age is reaping its own reward.
The truth is that God’s Word is truth – absolutely. With God there is no such thing as “relative truth.” The sinner will either be saved from eternal death through the Truth – “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth” (3 John 4), or be judged to eternal death by the Truth.