Tag: Truth

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Lord's Day Liturgy

Advent Honesty

We’re back for the second exhortation of Defeated Devil December. Jesus Christ is the Seed of Eve, the fulfillment of God’s promise to bruise the head of the ancient dragon (Genesis 3:15). When Christ rose again from the grave He made a triumph over the serpent and the serpent’s offspring (Colossians 2:15). Though the devil still prowls around like a lion seeking prey to devour (1 Peter 5:8), greater is the one in us than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4).

How can we advent like death is dead, love has won, Christ has conquered the serpent? Last week we considered contentment as an arrow in our Christmas celebration quiver. Satan would rather us be annoyed at all the things, be ungrateful for what we’ve been given, and be suspicious that we’re not really getting the best we could.

A second virtue of Defeated Devil December would be honesty. The devil is the father of lies (John 8:44), a liar since the beginning. Eve listened to the devil’s crafty deceit; he sold her a falsehood.

We should tell the truth. This doesn’t mean to delight in sharing our irritated opinion; “hey, I’m just telling the truth.” It more means telling the truth, “hey, I was irritated with you, even if at first I tried to say I wasn’t. Will you please forgive me?”

Satan doesn’t want you confessing your sin, or at least not all of it. He prefers your pretense of religiousness (like the religious ones that Jesus called sons of the devil in John 8:41, 44), anything other than the genuine affections and actions of sanctification. The offspring of the serpent bear false witness, but, Christian, he is not your father. Be honest.

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A Shot of Encouragement

Light Doesn’t Need Handcuffs on Darkness

Great quote on the power of Truth in the public square from John Milton’s Areopagitica in 1644:

Who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? … [Truth] needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings to make her victorious; those are the shifts and the defenses that error uses against her power: give her but room, and do not bind her when she sleeps.

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Lord's Day Liturgy

A Cosmic Ton of Truth

Here is a reminder that there is something called truth, that there is something called reality, and that truth is that which corresponds to reality.

That doesn’t mean that we always know the truth; men lie, because they are sons of the father of lies. Lies are often tasty, like smooth wine when the light dances on the surface, whether they are cultural lies or personal lies. Even more, our brains only have so much capacity, and there is a cosmic ton of truth, and your truck only carries so much.

But whether or not anyone knows it or says it, there is true truth.

As Christians we could be classified as believing in representational truth, that is, a statement is true when it represents the state of reality accurately. But there are many who cannot make such a direct statement. They believe that truth, if it exists, is instrumental, not representative. So for them a statement is true when it works. If it’s not useful then it is “false.” It’s not just that truth is relative or subjective; there are really right and wrong, but those categories can be decided, they can be redefined, they are not received as revelation.

People are messing with words, and calling opinions “news” because news exists for something, not as something.

“The real darkening of sin is found…in our having lost the gift to comprehend the true context, the proper coherence, the systematic unity of all things.” (Abraham Kuyper, “Common Grace in Science”)

God’s Word is living and abiding, but also imperishable. It remains forever. It is true. Scoffers are like chaff that the social media feeds blow away. They need to repent in order to come to the knowledge of truth. Delight yourself with deep roots in reality. Know, and stand in the truth.

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Lord's Day Liturgy

The Taste of Truth

Eve was deceived by the deceiver of the world. Sin in the heart deceives the sinner. Riches deceive from what is truly valuable. God is never deceived; He sees straight through. And we must put deceit away if we want to receive the word of truth.

I’ve observed before that we’re never commanded to read the Scripture. We’re commanded to hear it, to meditate on it night and day, and to do it. But listening or, for those of us with our own copies, reading is only a necessary step in the process. From the inside we’re to “long for the pure spiritual milk (of the word).” Crave it like a newborn craves milk. It’s one of the few things worth getting fussy about. “I need the Word now!”

The Word is good. The Word of the Lord tastes good (1 Peter 2:3), which we know from the Word. The Word gives our spiritual lives energy and nourishes growth in salvation (1 Peter 2:2). We believe that man lives by the Word of God, and we must get rid of some things before we come to eat it.

“Put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander” (1 Peter 2:1). In English this sounds like an imperative, and it is necessary. But in Greek the verb in verse 1 is a participle that depends on the main verb, the imperative in verse 2, “desire.” “Having put away” in verse 1 is the condition.

We’re instructed to get rid of every kind of lying, and we could also see the irony. Are we coming to receive truth while full of falsehood? Do we have duplicity in our hearts and yet want something pure? Jacob wanted God’s blessing through the word of his father, but he had to deceive his father to get it? It ought not be so.

Let us not be deceived by sin, or sin by deceiving. Instead let us taste and talk about the truth.

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Lord's Day Liturgy

Stiff-arming the Truth

Though a short exhortation always precedes the act of confession in our Lord’s Day worship, why not place confession after the sermon? Imagine the large variety of sins that could be harvested by spending more time in the Bible field. More Spirit-inspired truth gives the Spirit more tools to dig for deep rooted sins.

There’s nothing wrong with liturgy in a different order. Revelation provides reasons to repent so presumably more revelation leads to more reasons leads to more repentance. But just as often God describes the reverse: repentance leads to accepting the truth.

Peter and James both assume that a Christian must deal with sin before consuming the Word. “Putting away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander” crave the spiritual milk (1 Peter 2:1-2). Likewise, “putting away all filthiness and rampant wickedness, receive the implanted word” (James 1:21). Sin spoils our appetite for Scripture. Sin stiff-arms the truth.

Paul presented the order even more plainly to Timothy as he explained the process for persuading opponents. Correct opponents with gentleness and “God may perhaps grant repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 2:25). He isn’t describing the proper order of a Sunday worship service, but the principle applies. Repentance enables knowledge.

Which comes first: the understanding of truth or repentance from sin? Sometimes we don’t need more information or another sermon before we change. Sometimes we can’t see the truth because we’re clutching sin patches over our eyes. What sights we’ll see from the place of repentance.

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Lord's Day Liturgy

Tightening the Screws

Ambrose Bierce construed the verb “acknowledge” or “confess” in The Devil’s Dictionary as follows: “acknowledgment of one another’s faults is the highest duty imposed by our love of truth.” In other words, the more we are wound by truth the tighter we put the screws on our neighbors.

We love the truth; that’s good and necessary. We are learning to confess sin, to speak the truth about sin, not only for salvation but also for worship. Appropriate confession depends on accurate truth so that we know what should be confessed, so that we don’t chase the standard around like a ball of mercury.

Loving the truth is good, confessing sin is also good. But a great temptation for truth lovers is to see it as our duty to speak about everyone else’s need for confession first. I suppose this is better than seeing no sin at all; at least we acknowledge God’s law. But if we acknowledge the truth and exalt it as the rule of life (which it is) primarily for others (which it isn’t), we double our disobedience. Denial of sin is another sin.

We also make our work double. Approaching confession in this way requires us to regard the truth in one instance and then to disregard it in another, to be smart and then dumb. Many, it seems, listened to Jesus’ words but they did not do them. They both acknowledged His word and refused to acknowledge it. James referred to the hearer-no-doer as a self-deceiver. Self-deception causes self-destructive without self-awareness. The Word is a mirror so that we can see ourselves, not a microscope so that we can scrutinize someone else.

Our highest duty as truth lovers is to love the truth accurately, as it exists on its own, and applicably, as it exposes our hearts. We have plenty to acknowledge at home before we take our show on the road.

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Preach the Word

Incarnation

I am trying to make the point that, in the revelation of the Triune God, God is sharing Himself and inviting us into joyful relationship with Himself. God, then, is the ultimate example of true authority that gives, overflows, and participates. We see this theme in His [creation][] and, apropos on this Christmas day, we also see this reality in His incarnation.

Incarnation

The Son revealed the Father as well as the divine economy. He taught His disciples: “The greatest among you will be your servant” (Matthew 23:11). Why? Because the truth is that authority gives itself. It works on the other’s behalf. It doesn’t take from them. That’s the way it really is because that’s the way God is.

Jesus not only taught it, He embodied it. “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:10-11). He didn’t come to take (as a thief), He came to give so that His sheep might have life.

Philippians 2 illustrates how glorious authority gave itself and shows that Jesus receives greater glory because of giving, humbling, and sacrificing. The Word become flesh, the revelation of truth in the God-man, exhibits the truth of authority that engages, works, meets needs, takes responsibility, serves, and draws others to life. That’s the truth.

Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:4-11)

One of the reasons we have trouble believing Jesus and really considering others as better than ourselves is that we don’t buy that authority is established by giving. We think we’ll lose influence and respect and position if we serve.

Not only that, we think in order to keep the truth safe, we’ve got to keep it at a distance from questions and doubts. If so, we are thinking about a partial truth because the true Truth jumps into the ring. God not only opens truth up for a look-see, He created a world where those who look the other way corroborate the truth in a backdoor way. Bare-fisted truth can handle itself. He created a world where He would give His only Son to be killed to save the killers. That reveals something about His character and about the real potency of truth, even when born as a helpless baby.

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Preach the Word

Revealing Revelations

Previously I asked, Why does God reveal truth? And what do we learn about authority by how God used His? The answer has far reaching implications.

God used His authority to reveal truth because the essence of authority, the way the Triune God really is, is to expose Himself, share Himself, and invite us into an intimate relationship with Him to share His joy. The truth, as revealed by God, is that true authority gives, overflows, and participates. The essence of true authority, therefore, is not distance, isolation, and demands.

Let’s see if we can blow away some of the smoke and see God’s revealed truth about revealed truth and what authority is good for. Today we’ll look at the first of four aspects of God’s revelation.

Creation

The mere fact of creation shows the reality of God’s eagerness to share Himself, and of God’s giving, overflowing use of authority. As Carl Henry wrote in his work, God, Revelation, and Authority, God gave up His privacy, and the thing He gave most was Himself. Henry’s first thesis was:

Revelation is a divinely initiated activity, God’s free communication by which he alone turns his personal privacy into a deliberate disclosure of his reality. (Vol. 2, 17)

There are things about an infinite God that are mysterious, yes.[1] There are things that are above and beyond us because God didn’t make us gods. But He did make us to know Him, learn about Him in creation, learn about Him in providence, learn about Him in His Incarnation, and learn about Him in His Word. Revelation, giving us truth, opens Himself to us.

The way God created and revealed truth also shows the giving nature of authority. His first five and a half days of work prepared a glorious place for the crown of creation. He formed and filled a pristine, lush, and repeatedly “good” home for man. God interrupted Adam, parading all the animals before him, to teach Adam that he was alone. Adam didn’t even know what he was missing because he was busy enjoying all the other good gifts.

God also gave man purpose: to be bear His image in responsibility and in relationships. His authority overflowed as He shared His image; He didn’t distance Himself from men or take things from them to prove His superior position. The way things really are, the truth, is that God shares the best things with His creation.

That includes Himself. The pre-fall relationship between God and man was about sharing fellowship, not filling Adam’s mind with footnotes for a systematic theology book. The serpent’s lie was that God was holding something back with His authority. The truth is, God was giving them life. Disobedience took fellowship and life away.

Knowledge is not enough when it comes to the truth (revelation) of creation. It is inadequate to say that God revealed truth simply so that others could know it. Adam didn’t stop knowing the truth when he disobeyed, he stopped the enjoyment of God in truth. The truth is that knowing truth is not the end. The demons know the truth, things as they really are. More than that, every man knows the truth. According to Romans 1, all men know the truth and “suppress” it (1:18).

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (1:19-20)

They know who He really is. So what is their problem? It isn’t a knowledge problem.

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. (1:21a)

How they responded to what they knew, dare we say, how they felt about the truth, was the problem. Failure to thankfully worship brought the revelation of wrath. What is implied about revelation is that the reality of things is that God is so open and giving that it is totally unacceptable to reject it.

The truth expects the right response. But the expectation is not a taking expectation, it is a giving expectation. It expects us to receive what is given, not that we have to give something. Truth invites life, and life abundant. Creation reveals the truth that God, in His supreme authority, invites us to relationship with Himself and with each other. Sin ruined the fellowship, but God gave His only Son that we might have it again.

  1. Henry’s third thesis was: “Divine revelation does not completely erase God’s transcendent mystery, inasmuch as God the Revealer transcends his own revelation.”
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Preach the Word

Revealing Definitions and Questions

In my last post about truth I stated that problems come when truth-lovers are not totally truthful about God and about His authority. What am I talking about? There are more thoughts to come but, for now, the quick answer is: God’s revelation of truth reveals the true essence of authority. Today I’ll start building toward that answer with some definitions and questions.

Revealing Definitions

The first key word is TRUTH: things as they really are; facts not fiction or, when regarding future events, how things will be really, not what we imagine we’d like the future to be.

Where did truth come from? GOD. Things are as they really are because of God. There isn’t anything that exist–no person, no principle, no nothing–without Him. “By Him all things were created–all things were created through Him and for Him…and in Him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16-18). We couldn’t know real things unless we were made real by God and made by Him to really know, including brains and senses and breath that keeps the learning process oxygenated.

We speak about can-be-known things from God as REVELATION. Revelation comes in two types, general (creation) and special (Incarnate and written Word). “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). “[I]n [Christ] the fulness of God was pleased to dwell” (Colossians 1:19) and though “no one has ever seen God,” the Word made flesh “has made Him known” (John 1:18). “All Scripture is breathed out by God” (2 Timothy 3:16).

And the reality (or truth) that revelation depends on God and is made known by God means God/truth has AUTHORITY. Truth always wins (at least in the end) because that’s what is real. Fall out of a tree and you will fall. Resisting God’s gravitational authority is futile. When the wrong person ate fruit from the wrong tree the whole human race was condemned. That’s reality. That’s revealed. That’s authority at work; it’s all true.

So if God reveals truth then God is the authority. That’s, in fact, exactly what He’s revealed as true: the truth that truth depends on Him.

It’s one of the reasons we insist on sola Scriptura, that Scripture is the ultimate authority, that the Bible tells reality with more reality than any man or group of men. It’s why we hammered our tent pegs in this truth-loving camp. Men depend on revelation; revelation doesn’t depend on men (see 2 Peter 1:19-21). I love John Piper’s explanation of the “external Word”:

[I]t is objective, fixed, outside ourselves, and therefore unchanging. It is a book….You can take it or leave it. But you can’t make it other than what it is. (The Legacy of Sovereign Joy, 78)

That’s why we have sentiments like, “We love truth no matter how you feel about it.” That’s mostly true.

Truth was true before we existed, before creation. God was. Reality doesn’t need our corroboration. Truth had authority before anyone was around to question it. It’s hard to imagine what that would be like? No doubters. No questioners. No scoffers. Truth in full glory with no dings in its authority. We may not be able to imagine it, but God was there. Truth was His alone to do with whatever He wanted. Of course He could, He was the authority.

Revealing Questions

What did He do with His truth? How did He use His authority? He created a universe of revelation to reveal the reality about Himself and His authority and how good He is.

At this point I’d bet our conservative camp is largely in agreement, but we’re not done. After all, I’ve barely given any Bible verses, and how about sola Scriptura and all? But what I mean by saying that we’re not done yet is that we haven’t said the most helpful things. Our answer isn’t wrong but neither is it complete. We haven’t seen the flower in full bloom yet. To say that God, in His authority, revealed truth is no more than what we would find on the back of an elementary school flashcard. We need a junior higher to ask, “Why?”

Why did God reveal truth? What is His reason and purpose? We can answer, “for His glory,” and we’d be correct but, again, not complete. Maybe I could ask it a different way. What do we learn about authority by how God used His authority? What do we learn about the truth and about the purpose of truth by considering God’s purpose for truth? The next step in the series is to consider the why in the what of God’s revelations.

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Preach the Word

Truth Revealed – The Essence of Authority

The last five summers I’ve taught at a Reformation Conference for a church near my hometown in Ohio. Our relationship began at a youth camp in 1998 and developed due to similar theological and ministry convictions. I’ve taught through the Solas and the Reformers as well as through Edwards and The Religious Affections. Then, upon their request, I (enthusiastically) worked through the Five Points of Calvinism and two summers ago five more messages on the implications of Calvinism.

I went to lunch with some of the church leadership after the implications conference and they invited me back again to address the issue of truth, in particular truth and how it’s connected with Calvinism.

I knew exactly what they wanted. I knew what they wanted because the challenges they’ve faced are the same problems I’ve run into, the same sort of criticisms our small piece of the Evangelical pie usually encounter. We are the truth-loving, truth-talking bunch. David Wells wrote a book a few years ago titled, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-Lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World. We’re not the seeker sensitive types and we’re also not meeting in a warehouse with black ceilings wearing designer print t-shirts (with or without skulls on them).

We luv us some truth. We’re the book-reading, long-sermon listening, personal Bible-studying people. We like our theologians dead and our exegetical coffee black. We attend the churches we do because we ourselves have been, or know others who are, driven by emotion and the changing winds of cultural digestion. We don’t want that. Give us truth or we die. Without the truth, we will.

Strangely enough, we truth-lovers are not everyone’s cup of tea. Sure, we occasionally get into public clashes because we call homosexuals sinners. We more regularly encounter hostility from neighbors and co-workers who think our truth is good as long as we don’t say that it is true truth, that is, true for them, too. But what surprises us most, what disappoints and frustrates us the most, are those within our midst who express concern about our truth and tone, some of whom leave for other churches that “feel” more open or accepting or exciting. That’s what really upsets us, and it probably should, at least when we get the feeling that their feelings trump truth.

Ours is a “We love the truth and we don’t care how you feel about it” perspective. And, that’s partially true. It’s also not entirely true. We have feelings for your feelings. The truth is, we want you to have true feelings. Your feelings aren’t the problem, your feelings being wrong are the problem. That’s where truth comes in. But the truth also is, that’s not what always comes across.

I’m almost ahead of myself here, so let me step back and knock on a different door to the same house.

I’ve always thought that a person who acknowledges God’s sovereignty in salvation is in the best position to appreciate truth and to appreciate the fact that with truth comes authority. Calvinists have a mental category for truth because we have a category for authority. God controls history. God ordains salvation. God can and does whatever He pleases. He has authority. That is true.

But I’m afraid that is only partially true, depending on what we mean. I think a break in the line often happens right here. We truth-lovers are not being totally truthful about God, about His authority and, therefore, we are not totally truthful about truth. Ironic.

Failure to worship God with a true understanding of His sovereign authority upends marriages. It exasperates kids. It needlessly offends unbelievers. And it causes sheep to consider finding another fold. In our camp, much of this usually happens with a big “truth” button pinned on our chests.

We should examine our own work first. We may have higher grades than other students, meaning that we may have more accurate exegesis and systematic theology than other denominations or groups or churches, but the truth doesn’t work on a bell curve. We, the people of the Book, should be held up to the truth of the Book, striving to avoid false feelings of esteem that come from false comparisons.