Truth, Lies, & Twitter - Part III

6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. 7 “If you know Me, you will also know My Father. From now on you do know Him and have seen Him.” 8 “Lord,” said Philip, “show us the Father, and that’s enough for us.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been among you all this time without your knowing Me, Philip? The one who has seen Me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? The words I speak to you I do not speak on My own. The Father who lives in Me does His works. 11 Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me. Otherwise, believe because of the works themselves. 12 “I assure you: The one who believes in Me will also do the works that I do. And he will do even greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 Whatever you ask in My name, I will do it so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it. 15 “If you love Me, you will keep My commands. 16 And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever. 17 He is the Spirit of truth. The world is unable to receive Him because it doesn’t see Him or know Him. But you do know Him, because He remains with you and will be in you. 18 I will not leave you as orphans; I am coming to you. (John 14:6-17)

Last time, we looked at Truth and Lies' linguistic, philosophical, and historical distinctions. Today we are going to look at the Theological reasoning for what Truth and Lies are, and hopefully, begin to clarify that fine line between lying and being misled we made towards the end of yesterday's entry. To start with, we have Three Theological concepts, that we need to establish. 1. Truth comes from God 2. God cannot lie 3. Lies come apart from God.

1. Truth comes from God (John 14:6, John 16:13, John 17)

When we defined Truth yesterday, we talked about how Truth comes from Divine Revelation, but that is just scratching the surface of what we know Truth to be Biblical. Jesus, Himself helps us understand what this truly means in the book of John. In John 14, Jesus tells us that HE is the Truth. In John 16, Jesus tells us that the Spirit of God is the Spirit of Truth, and in John 17, Jesus tells us that the Father’s Word is Truth. Truth is impossible apart from God because God Himself is Truth.

2. God cannot lie (Numbers 23:19, Titus 1:2, Hebrews 6:18)

Because Truth comes from God, we know that God cannot lie. This is supported throughout both the Old and New Testaments, but explicitly in Numbers 23, Titus 1, and Hebrews 6. This is important, because if God is the Ultimate Source of Truth and incapable of lying, then we can have full confidence that He is trustworthy and will keep all His promises.

3. Lies come apart from God (John 8:44, 2 John 1:7, Revelation 12)

The flip side to this is that if God is Truth and that He cannot lie, then lies must have another source apart from God. In John 8, Jesus identifies Satan as the father of lies in John 8. John tells us in Revelation 12 and 2 John 1, that Satan’s only purpose is to deceive the World and pull people away from the Truth. This is an important Theological piece to understanding Lies. Much like how darkness is the absence of light, lies are the absence of Truth, or a better way of saying it would be that lies are absent of Christ.

This is all super important in understanding the distinction we made at the end of yesterday’s piece. If Truth comes from God, and lying is a lack of the Truth, then all lies are sin. I’m sure most of you are now saying, “We know this, this is nothing new.” But this distinction needs to be made, because if we are saying that lies are sinful then that makes everyone that lies guilty of sinning against both the person they lied to and to God Himself. This is why it is important to distinguish what is an actual lie, rather than just something that is false. There are serious consequences for something as serious as lying, and so we do not want to accuse someone of this unless we are confident that that is what has happened. But this isn’t the end of the discussion, because the awesome Truth of the matter is that there is Hope for those guilty of lying, and that is what we will talk about tomorrow!