What is subjective truth?

In our chapter, the Lord Jesus is set before us, objectively. Everything is summed up in Him. He is the Truth. In his second Epistle, the writer says, "For the truth's sake, which dwells in us, and shall be with us for ever" (verse 2). If we know the Lord, we know, not only the Way to the Father, but we know the Truth, and the Truth is reality. We live in a world of illusions, but, having the Truth, we are fitted to meet all that is unreal. Then, we do well to remember that it is only as we grasp the objective side of the truth that we can, by the power of the Spirit, seek to answer intelligently to it. In Holy Scripture, the subjective and the objective are inextricably woven together. The Lord Jesus Christ on high is the Truth objectively; the Spirit is the Truth within us subjectively; and then, speaking to the Father, the Lord says, "Thy Word is Truth" (John 17:17).

Thus too “the Spirit is truth” inwardly just as Christ is the truth externally, and both are correlative. The subjective is the result of the objective.

The name of Jesus is the expression of all that He is as revealed of God; and as we need, so we have it all to our everlasting joy. Nor does it avail only for the supreme excellency of all that is in Him and through Him: He and He only gives us the truth of every one and thing as it really is; and thus He proves Himself to be the truth objectively, as the Spirit is the truth in the inward power of giving us to realise and enjoy what is in and by Christ (1 John 5:6). He alone leads into any adequate knowledge of God. He shows us the Father. He makes known to us, as not to the world, the Holy Spirit. He reveals the Trinity. In Christ we know light and life and love, as of God, and nowhere else. In Him we know obedience, righteousness, holiness, reverence, dependence, faithfulness, humility, meekness, absolutely and in all perfection. In Him is displayed man the worthy object of God's delight; and man under Satan's power in his enmity to God, the truth of man naturally as he is. So through Him we know what Satan is in hatred as well as deceit. Without Christ we have only the shadow of redemption and propitiation, of sacrifice and offering, of priest and sanctuary. He only is the substance and fulness, setting everything in its true character and true relation to God, Himself the centre of all. Do you doubt as to the truth of anything? Bring Christ into the difficulty, apply Him to the question; and you will find the truth in each and every case. Is not He manifestly and justly the criterion of the truth?

Thus it is that, while the reasoning soul loses itself in the labyrinth of speculation in quest of the truth which eludes the strongest natural mind, grace provides the truth in Christ to the simplest believer who looks to Him as his all. For there is the solution; Christ is the truth objectively, as the Spirit is in power to his spirit. Those self-seeking and self-vaunting "false prophets" may tell "the little child" that he cannot do without them, and that they alone have "the spirit," he no more than "the letter." The believer knows that he has Christ, the Son manifested in flesh, and refuses to let go what was "heard from the beginning" and is now in the written word of God. He does not pretend to have all realised; but he knows that having Christ the truth, he has it all perfectly in Him, and counts on the unction of the Spirit for application as the need arises. He therefore feels the all-importance that what was heard from the beginning should abide in him, that he too should abide in the Son and in the Father. If Christ thus revealed is given up, Christianity is gone. And when the enemy was undermining Christ under pretence of higher truth, the Spirit of God recalls to Him Who was and is the truth. He therefore admits of no development, which is no more than the lie of Satan, and has no truth, but betrays itself by denying known life eternal as His present gift. The lie offers only "ideas."

The Spirit is the truth – in the believer. Christ is the truth – as an object outside us to be engaged and occupied with. God is not said to be the truth. He is the Absolute. Christ and the Spirit enable us to see and comprehend everything in its right place relative to Him.

Thus the Holy Spirit takes part in all. Does He content Himself only with imparting a new and divine nature? By no means. He has His appropriate internal witness; He Himself bears it with our spirit that we are of the very family of God, as indeed we are born of God. But now it is not alone the fact but the conscious joy of it. Christianity is not objective only, but just as remarkable for the gift by grace of inner power and comfort; the Son reveals the Father, and gives the Spirit. It is not merely the gospel believed, but a real inward witnessing of the Spirit with ours that we are God's children. There is far more no doubt; but this there is, and it is of consequence to recognize it. Some may have substituted it for the testimony to Christ and redemption; but we must avoid the error of denying it. He would not be absent from the joy of the saint. Have we not this consciousness of being God's children? Whence have we it? Is it a process of reasoning from the gospel? God forbid. Let us call realities by their right names. It is the Spirit itself witnessing with our spirit that we are children of God. How Calvinists or Arminians misuse it may be of importance in each case; but this is the truth of God, realized in every simple-minded Christian, whether opposing parties hear or forbear.

Now, this is all confusion. The truth to be believed, mark, is outside of self — the enjoyment of it is within. "The Lord direct your hearts," says the apostle, "into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ." (2 Thess. 3:5.) These blessed central truths are ever the same — unchangeable, outside, and independent of the believer; nevertheless, they are to be enjoyed in the heart. But if we at times fail to realise their power, and to enjoy them in our hearts, they remain unchangeably the same. The object of faith is ever outside of self — the enjoyment of it within. Our failing to enjoy the object, can never lessen its value, or change its character.

The truth, which makes known things as they truly are, is revealed by God for the direction and blessing of His creatures, and where the truth is received by faith into the heart it forms truth in the inward parts. If there is truth in the inward parts the whole life will be affected by it, giving character to the thoughts, feelings, desires, motives and exercises, so as to direct the steps in the ways of God for His pleasure. Alas! it is possible to be mentally acquainted with the truth, the heart and conscience being unaffected with what the mind knows, and such can “hold the truth in unrighteousness” (Rom. 1:18), with grave consequences for themselves, for with the privilege of acquaintance with the truth there is a commensurate responsibility for which all will have to give account at the judgment seat of God.

285 N*. Well, James, as we are on this subject, and a blessed one it is, before our going on with the question of the true church, or Romish doctrines, I will refer to some of the passages you inquire about. You will remark in the one I quoted to you that it says, "Of him are ye"; that is, that these blessings belong to one who is a Christian at heart, one who in his soul (as a sinner who has need of Christ) believes in Him, a man whose conscience has been before God, in whom (as scripture speaks) there is truth in the inward parts, who does not believe merely because he has been brought up in it, however sincerely, as far as that goes, he may have done so; but who has believed for himself, has come to Christ in his heart, because he wants Him. God will have realities, not notions, be they false or true. When the truth is really received, it is received in the heart and conscience. It convicts of sin, shews the heart to itself, and makes it know the need of the truths which, perhaps, it had learned before, perhaps had never heard of.

61 But one may tell me that the man who possesses the truth, who loves it, who tastes it, has confidence in it, as well as in Christ. Is it a living being, and outside of Christ? Where does it exist? In the mind of him who has confidence in it.

It is also a fact, thank God, that the truth "shall be with us for ever," inasmuch as Christ is the truth objectively, and we are never to be separated from Him. Truth as well as grace fully arrived on the scene when the Lord Jesus came. In Him all that God is stands fully disclosed. In Him light and truth shine about everything, and the darkness, the error, the unrealities disappear. As we turn our eyes upon Jesus we contemplate the One in whom truth is personified. The truth is "with us," to be considered and adoringly admired, and by which, as a standard, everything may be tested.