Everyone searches for truth sometime in their life, but how certain can we be that we can know the truth? As someone has said, “What is truth?”
Well those words, of course, came from Pontius Pilate when he was faced with the dilemma of people around him wanting to eliminate Jesus whilst he, as the main authority in Israel at that time, could find nothing with which to really charge Him, especially anything that warranted the death penalty, for which the people were crying out.
Pilate’s question was in response to something Jesus said to him, when he asked Jesus if he was a king.
Jesus answered, “You say rightly that I am a king. 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 18:37b
Jesus, sent from God, was the bearer of truth. Only those who hear His voice can really know the truth. You see, we live in more than one dimension, although most people are not aware of this. We live in the natural world, but there is also a spiritual realm that is both higher and more powerful than the material world.
Supernatural
Some people may bulk at this, but we all know that we have a body but there is something about us that is beyond the natural. We also have a soul and a spirit. This is not a new understanding of the human makeup. Many cultures understand that there is far more to us than meets the eye.
Truth is a spiritual thing before it is natural. We mainly look for natural laws, meaning the truth of our surroundings, and this is fine. Knowing how our world and nature works is crucial to our survival and to progress. This what we call scientific investigation as we seek to know the truth of the world around us, and the cosmos in which we live and breath.
However, we all know that science is continually developing. Some things are well established, but the very fact of science is the continued investigation of nature. We know some things, but not all things. We know enough to get by, but there is always more to learn.
Then there is a growing move towards social truth, which is based on how people interpret their surroundings. But this isn’t always a reliable source for truth because there are so many opinions, philosophies, fads, fashions and ideals that swarm around us when we attempt to discern what is happening on a merely psychological , earthly level. There are so many voices out there, all competing for our attention and approval.
There is a higher level of truth only obtained through contact and relationship with God. It is the truth that emanates from Him. But who can know the truth when it comes to the spiritual realm? How can we discern the invisible dimension where science cannot presently enter?
Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18
Living in the truth
There is another world around us and within us that is eternal. Once we come to terms with this understanding we can truly begin to search for the truth. So, can the truth be known?
Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
John 8:31-32
When we come to Jesus and enter into discipleship with Him, we are presented with His Word. As we look into His Word and begin to live in it, we will begin to understand and know truth.
It will not be like the natural, human level of hopeful truth, which now claims that we can have ‘my truth,’ or ‘a truth,’ which is often based on perception of natural things rather than of the reality that is in the Word of God. No, we will know the truth, meaning the actual truth that can only come fro God and from a relationship with Him through faith in Jesus.
When we believe and begin to walk in the light of the truth in the Word we will be given the very Spirit of truth.
“If you love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.
John 14:15-18
Faith for truth
The world cannot understand these things. The truth is only accessible through faith in God, and by reading and studying and living I His Word, which is the Word of Truth. We can only know the Spirit of truth through faith in Jesus, and by following Him and His ways. He is the Truth.
Jesus prayed and asked the Father to bathe us in the truth, to sanctify His disciples in the truth. This means to be saturated, or baptised into the truth.
Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.
John 17:17
God’s Word is truth. His Spirit is truth. His disciples will be sanctified in the truth, and the Body of Christ, the Church, will be cleansed by the washing of the water of the Word (Eph.5:26).
We can know the truth, but it begins with the realisation that we need to be saved from the world’s ways and enter into God’s Way. Jesus is the Way, and the Life, and the Truth (John 14:6). When we know Him, we can begin to know the truth.
