What is truth?

First then, you may ask me, "What is truth?" I do not know that I can make it plain to you; but so far as I can grasp the meaning of truth, it is this: Truth is the exact, the perfect, and absolute expression and delineation of that which is. It is the identity of the statement and the fact stated. I could not say, that God was the Truth. He is true. God is true, but of the Lord Jesus Christ it is said, "That grace and truth came by him" (John 1:17). Nay, more, He Himself has said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). He was the Truth; and I hope to show you that He was the truth about everything — the truth about God; the truth about man; the truth about the heart of God, the nature of God, and the claims of God; and the truth, moreover, about man in every possible relation of his being. He was no mere man, for He was verily God; nevertheless He was a real, true, perfect man. Get hold of that, I implore you. That Jesus, whom we have read about, was a real, true, perfect man, as much a man as I am standing here before you this evening, sin alone excepted. As man He was in this scene to declare God, and to divinely meet man. "To this end," He says, "was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth." None could reveal God, none could unveil the love of God, or declare the heart of God, other than He who came from God. There was none who knew the claims of God, and could meet those claims, except the One who came from God. He must come from God, if He is to bring God to me, and He must be a man, a veritable man, to bring me to God; because I am a sinful man, a sinner. So are you. Sin carries its consequences and merits judgment, and the truth as to this alone is seen fully in Christ.

Herein lies the transcendent value of Scripture. Senses cannot avail beyond what acts on them. Reason can give no more than conclusions or probabilities. Even to ascertain facts is beyond its province; still more, truth moral or spiritual. How can reason furnish man with what most deeply concerns his being and state, present and future? How, above all, make God known and enjoyed, served and worshipped, now and evermore? Reason cannot, ought not, to be a groundwork for souls in view of eternity; and it is only perverted thus by such as will not bow to Scripture. What must be, is one thing; what is, reasoning, which deals with inference, cannot discover. Now, truth is the making known what is; and this in divine things can only be by revelation. Facts rest on sense or testimony; supernatural facts on a testimony above man, even if through him. To be made known with divine authority for man's blessing, they must be revealed by God, as they are in the Bible. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

See again volume 2, page 94, the confession "The question, what is truth, has certainly no prospect of obtaining a speedy answer." Surely it has not from reason - it never will. Reason is not conversant with Truth, but with consequences which are never facts but mere consequences. Truth has to do with facts - hence the positivist is right if there be no revelation (though the cravings of a soul and the workings of conscience are facts) - facts seen or facts revealed.

269 Truth is the statement of a thing as it is, on human testimony if the subject of it, on divine if beyond it. It cannot be denied that there may be facts beyond human knowledge; nor can it be denied that there may be a competency to make them known to us - nor that a superior power may act, or facts may act on our hearts and consciences. Conclusions from facts may be true and inoperative. Reason may set aside reasons, error, and so far be useful as to be being open to truth; but this man and his set know only setting aside all conceptions, and reducing the mind to abstract power - an absurdity on the face of it, for there must be education - "Universal scepticism" being the right state. And when he is there, what is he to do? Truth is not to be gained - Reason cannot go beyond mere humanly known facts. Leave God out - Utilitarianism, or selfish baseness is the only motive; passion and force are there, who is to control them? Craving after an unseen world irresistible - Scepticism practically in the mass, and venal degradation have always gone together.

But I do think, in spite of all that has been said, that in Christ we have a revelation of the Absolute, not in itself (for a revelation seems to me to deny this in its nature, for it is not being, but the revelation of being); but still that which is is revealed. Hence He is the truth. But He is, and so manifests Him who is; He emptied Himself to do it; Phil. 2. Now reason has nothing to do with the truth, because it has only ideas in the mind; and they must exist in the mind. It can only conclude what must be, never what is. This is in its very nature the nature and value of reasoning, such as it is. But truth is the declaration of what is; it is not what is, nor is it a conclusion of what must be, which is only a result in my mind; but it is the declaration of what is.

Reverting to Pilate's question, let us, as deeply interested in the reply, ask with him "What is Truth? Truth is the expression of what a person or thing is. Even in ordinary matters it is difficult, if not impossible, adequately to define or describe anything, and hence the subtleties and perplexities of metaphysics. If this is true when we attempt to express the relations of things to ourselves, how much more so when the relations of things to God are in question. It is evident that He only could express or manifest them. But as the Infinite and the Absolute, how could He do so suitably to the limited apprehension and capacity of the creature, the finite? To a certain extent God might he known to the creature by His attributes. That God is holy, good, wise, and mighty beyond all comparison or conception was, and is, clear to angels. That He was good, wise, and powerful beyond all conception, our first parents in a state of innocency must have perceived and experienced. That He was the Supreme Being, was perfectly seen and understood by all created intelligences; and if the pride of Satan so blinded him in this respect as to tempt him to put the matter to the test, he was quickly undeceived, and that to his everlasting ruin. Pride and ambition were vastly more the spring of action in the revolt of Satan, than they were the cause of Adam's disobedience. Moreover, Satan was the first and arch-rebel, but our first parents fell, tempted by him; or at least, such was the case with Eve. To know of God, however, by His attributes or qualities, is not to know God Himself, — God as to His very nature. Nor was it possible that God, as to His nature, could be revealed to the creature otherwise than in the person of a Mediator, — One who, "found in fashion as a man" ("made in the likeness of flesh of sin"), was yet truly, and in the most absolute sense, the eternal God. Combining in Himself Deity and manhood, and as the God-man possessing fully the holiness of God, so that it could be equally said of Him as of the Father or of the Spirit, and that whether in Incarnation or in Resurrection, "Holy! Holy! Holy Lord God Almighty;" He, this wondrous Mediator, revealed God to men, He was the truth, and the Light of the world, whether the world would receive Him or not, and He revealed God to men (to their conscious yet limited knowledge), by making those who believed in Him and received Him partakers of the Divine nature, so that there was that in them, above and beyond mere human nature, which had its fulness in Him, the community of a nature in itself altogether beyond the bounds of creature existence, though as to attribute finite in us, and always dependent on Him. Truth is thus both absolute and relative, inasmuch as the absolute implies the relative. It is God's expression of Himself, and of the relation of everything to Himself. Christ is the eternal Word: in Incarnation He became the expression to men as to angels (1 Tim. 3:16) of what God is. In what He was, in what He said, and in what He did, He was in every respect the manifestation of God; and everything has its character in relation to Him, and as He sees it to be. He is the truth, as to its totality and objective reality, and the truth as to any particular subject is what it is in relation to Him. The written word, given by Divine revelation and by means of Divine inspiration, is the recorded expression of His mind, but in a manner and form adapted to the human understanding; not, however, without the agency of the Holy Spirit to make it spiritually understood. For the attempt to deal with God's word without the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit makes a man a rationalist, whilst the pretence to be taught or led by the Spirit apart from the written word makes a man a visionary or mere enthusiast. Hence the Spirit also is called "the truth" (1 John 5:6), being the living power of the written word.

Simply defined, truth is that which enables anything to be seen in its right proportions. Falsehood, in whatever form it takes – religious, social, political, philosophical – puts things out of proportion. In particular it inflates man out of proportion and it minimises God out of proportion. The unbeliever has a false conception of God and does not know the truth. Likewise the apostate teacher.

In this tangible and concrete world we often struggle to grasp moral concepts. We find it relatively easy to define concrete nouns (e.g. desk, chair, book) – but almost impossible to define abstract nouns (e.g. love, life, light, truth). Truth is difficult to define, but think of it in this way and each one of the verses listed above is more readily grasped: truth defines relationships between things, it enables anything to be seen in its right proportions.

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.

Now why is this? For a reason of the deepest import; and, as being of a general character, we may glance at it for a moment. Jesus is THE TRUTH. The truth is to be found nowhere else. You may find other things, but the truth is in Him, and severed from Him it is nowhere else. It is remarkable that Scripture never calls the Father the truth, nor ever uses an expression of which Rationalism is exceedingly fond — that God is the truth. I grant that not a few divines say so too. They are not aware that they are rationalizing when they thus speak. No doubt they mean nothing wrong; but very surely they are wrong. Scripture is right, and nothing but Scripture is divinely authoritative. How comes it then that Scripture calls Jesus the truth? and why is it that neither God nor the Father is ever said to be the truth? The reason is this: God could not be said to be the truth because "the truth" means the expression of what a person or thing, is — the revelation of what it really is. The statement which reveals another fully and truly is the truth. Consequently God, being the self-subsisting One who alone can say I AM, has been pleased to reveal Himself, not in the written word only, but in and by One who is God and became man, and thus alone could be the expression of Himself to man. The truth means the expression of what God is, not merely the being of God. Hence the blessedness of revelation by the personal Word, the Son who when none saw God at any time declared Him the Father. Christ is called therefore in Scripture "the image of the invisible God."

It is very important to see that the Lord Jesus is the truth. He is the truth about everything. You could not rightly say, God is the truth. Christ is that; for Christ is the revelation — the absolutely perfect revelation — of all that God is. He is the truth about everything. He is the truth about God, about His love, His righteousness, His holiness, His sense of sin, His judgment of sin, and, more than that, He is the truth about man. In His life He was what a man ought to be, absolutely for God, in blessed perfection; and in His death He was the truth, as to the final consequences of our utter ruin, as sinners, under the judgment of God. He has taken our place on the cross, in grace, and, blessed be God, ended it for ever. Yes! Christ is the truth about everything, and the man that has Christ has the truth, and he that has not Christ has not the truth — no matter what he may have.

If we know anything of the world to-day with all its complexity we may well ask the same question. Men incessantly reason and argue and strive and arrive at most contradictory conclusions. What is truth in the political sphere? — or in the commercial? — or the national? — or the scientific? Of the last take one small branch only and ask, What is medical truth? We are at once plunged into the contradictory assertions of rival schools. Each can show something in their favour and each can be convicted of many a failure by those who oppose. Those who know most would most readily admit that while they gain a glimmering of light and knowledge the reality, the true character of things, evades them.

Now God has been manifested here on earth and this is specially set before us in John's writings, hence the frequent occurrence of the word "truth" there. That revelation has reached us in the Lord Jesus Christ who could say, "I am the truth" inasmuch as He could also say, "He that has seen Me has seen the Father." He it is who makes God real to us and perfectly expresses all that He is, and hence we have in the knowledge of Christ the key that unlocks all reality everywhere.

"In truth." What is truth? We may answer Pilate's famous question thus: The realities of God Himself, that which God has revealed Himself to be: this is truth. The One who stood, crowned with thorns that day, in the judgment hall was Himself the truth, though Pilate knew it not, nor cared to know. He, and He alone, could say: "I am … the Truth" (John 14:6), for He alone is the perfect revelation of God, and it is as Father that He has revealed Him. Therefore He said: "He that has seen Me has seen the Father" (John 14:9).