What Is The Truth?
“Sanctify them in truth; Thy word is truth.” John 17:17
Thy Word – We reach the end of this amazing verse with the capstone of the Hebrew view of reality: the Word of God. From a Hebrew perspective, the goal of life is devotion and obedience to God. How can I know what to do unless God tells me what to do? I simply cannot think my way into correct action because all of my thought is tainted by my sin. I must depend on God’s revelation of true and faithful behavior. Therefore, if I am to be set apart and consecrated to Him, I must obey all that He reveals. He is the only One Who sees that full picture. For me to rely on any other source for decisions that affect life or death is not only utter stupidity, it is outrageous arrogance.
Have we settled this? To do the truth, I must commit myself to God’s direction. Now we can ask, “What did Jesus have in mind when He said, “Thy word?” Where would Jesus look to find the directions for correct action? The answer is obvious. To Scripture – the 39 books of the Old Testament, the only Scripture that Jesus ever had.
Contemporary Christianity seems to think that the New Covenant begins in Matthew. Impossible! Jesus prays that we will be sanctified in the truth of obedience to Scripture – the Old Testament. The New Covenant really begins the moment God asks, “Who told you that you were naked?” Even before that terrible primal choice ushered in the need for crucifixion, God had prepared the New Covenant. It was not inevitable, but it was necessary.
Now, at this last moment, Jesus prays that the entire declaration of correct action revealed by God will so saturate his disciples that they will be truly separated and consecrated to God’s purposes. And all that they need to know about what to do is found in only one place – Scripture. God’s Word is ‘emet. It is totally reliable and trustworthy as the basis of my decisions. If I do what God says I should do, I can’t go wrong.
Our Greek text uses the phrase ho logos ho sos (the word of you). This is equivalent to the Hebrew devar ha emet (you can see the phrase in Psalm 119:160). Once you see that Jesus is using the Hebrew word ‘emet, all kinds of changes in our thinking must occur, because ‘emet is not about correct thinking at all. It is about correct relationship seen in right action! The best general translation for emet is not “true facts,” but rather “completely reliable.” Jesus tells us that truth is very personal, always relational and about what is so solid that I can base my living decisions on it – it is simply the faithfulness of the character of God. Entire books could be written about this shift from accurate propositions to reliable behavior. Unless we see that Jesus is thoroughly Jewish here, we will miss the point about sanctification. Sanctification is about the conduct of a person, not the facts he believes. Sanctification is about placing my entire life in the hands of the only truly reliable person – the Holy One of Israel. And that means that I accept His word as the only measure of my actions, without deviation. What is at stake when it comes to the truth is the character of God. How I show that I rely on His character is demonstrated in my actions!
Be sanctified. Live according to the Book – all of it. It is God’s character revealed.
