Whatever your background and heritage, everyone believes in something regarded as truth. Personally held truths in its various forms creates the framework for individuals to discriminate and judge the conditions of life. It’s the object of one’s faith that form the mental and spiritual lighthouse from which purpose and meaning are derived.
How reliable is the object of your faith?
The truth guides us as much as we may rely on a mathematical equation to obtain a solution or the certainty that course plotted through a narrow channel will not result in running aground on a jagged and merciless shoreline. Moreso, a higher level of truth forms the foundation of interpersonal trust, for examples, that which exists between soldiers fighting shoulder to shoulder against a determined enemy or the surety of fidelity between a husband and wife in marriage.
Photo by Markus Winkler on Pexels.com
Each of us can probably look back at our life and see how we’ve been driven by different motivations, whether it was to find a significant other, to be successful at their career, to be at the top of whichever game they play.. We may place our faith and our abilities or the support of those around us to achieve certain goals.
Those principles can come from a numbers of sources. The can be religious, but in this day and age there are a number of influences that bide for our allegiance.
There’s an old adage that unless you are wiling to die for something, you haven’t really lived.
This truth strikes at the souls of many, especially many who choose to serve in the military of those who become fathers or parents. Honestly, the nature of man is much more apt to give his life for the woman he loves, but both parents, when guided by a good conscience, have that innate willingness to sacrifice themselves for their children.
If people are willing to give up their life for a greater good, is there a greater truth that undergirds these virtues of self-sacrifice and is every form of self-sacrifice necessarily good? Certainly, the romanticization of sacrifice has driven personal relationships, if not countries being drawn into war, to disaster.
When we dig further, we’re really searching for what is closer and closer to the unveiled truth. What is the root of the truths that provide guiding principles? Where do truths stem from?
Consider God who is revealed through the Bible.
Jesus Christ is Trustworthy
Jesus is quoted as saying, ” “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. 2 In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. 4 And you know the way to where I am going.” 5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” – John 14:1-7
Jesus is both part of and equal to God
Jesus declares that He is much more than a wise man, a teacher or even merely a prophet of God. Worldly characterizations of Jesus Christ only highlight an incomplete picture, they fall short of the glory of who Christ proclaimed Himself to be.
If the whole truth is withheld due to conflict of interest, that is deception. Deception often occurs at the satanic level and it is a manifestation of the Fall and the curse the goes all the ways back to Genesis 3 in the form of a war has existed between satan and the humankind.
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
– Genesis 3:15
A multifaceted strategy of satan has been to cloud the truth of Jesus Christ, at times, endeavoring to stop the birth of Christ, and at other times to use the truth in ways to satisfy the human soul short of achieving salvation by God’s grace. In other words, satan always works to throw the proverbial monkey wrench into God’s salvation plan.
Outside of Biblical Christianity, all belief systems stop short of declaring the fullness of all that Jesus Christ proclaimed he was and is, and what he has achieved.
Jesus is God (the Son) and through his death on the cross offers the full and complete propitiation of our sin for salvation. He defeated death and rose bodily from the dead. Jesus taught that He was God and that He offered us to see who God (The Father) is through Him. Jesus labored to proclaimed Himself is so many exclusive terms. Repetition has its purposes. A famous one is, “I AM The WAY, THE TRUTH, and THE LIFE. NO ONE COMES TO THE FATHER EXCEPT THROUGH ME.” – John 14:16
Yes, he means he is God. He tells the truth because God is truth and cannot lie. It would be blasphemy if anyone else declared themselves God. Evidence of Jesus’ intended meaning is found in the many times the Pharisees sought to stone him to death. Ultimately, it resulted in his trial and execution, yet it was God The Father’s sovereign plan for redemption. The historical record and circumstantial evidence is very clear on what Jesus meant.
He carried our burdens and defeated death
Now, if you were not sure He meant what He said, and God can tell no lies (lying is a SIN and the 9th Commandment), all you have to do is read the eye-witness accounts from the other books and letters collected in the New Testament. They reinforce this passage, that Jesus was God incarnate, that He the Son is an integral aspect of what we describe as a TRIUNE GOD (The Father, The Son, and the Holy Spirit). We can trust the worthiness of what He taught and the mission of how he became a sinless man who gave His life for the salvation of the world. Those saved are the ones who would repent and have faith in His redeeming work of God’s grace. He defeated death as evidenced by His bodily resurrection.
The innate willingness to sacrifice oneself for a noble cause comes from the fact that we are made in the image of God. The Truine God is a God who has relationship as an innate quality and, therefore, love.
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you.” – John 15:12-14.
Many Medals of Honor have been awarded to servicemen who have sacrificed themselves to save their comrades. All those around them are drawn to such self-less valor and respect the one who gave all they had to save others.
Jesus did this for you and for me. He gave His life, to die on a cross after much humiliation, suffering and agonizing pain, to take the punishment for sin that we deserve upon Himself. Then suffering the separation from the Father. This separation was caused by God’s holy and righteous wrath unleashed upon his own son, because of our sin.
Christ was and is with God
Jesus during his ministry taught much about the ways of God’s kingdom, but Jesus was also with God from before the beginning of time:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. – John 1:1-3
If this sounds familiar, it does, because it was through the Word, the Word of God, the Spirit of God that all creation was made.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. – Genesis 1:1-2
Another way of looking at the connection or relationship of the person we know as Jesus and the One we know was the Son of God, is that he is part of what we call the Godhead. The Godhead is a revealed nature of God as described and experienced by people and expressed through God’s prophets through the ages.
This brings an immeasurable consistency through the entire Scripture and through all time. We can rely on the constant and unchanging character of God, whose character, as illustrated by 66 books of the BIble written across about 1600 years and 40 plus writers. That unchanging character is not only exhibited by the compassion, kindness, and mercy of God as lived by Jesus in his First Coming, but it will also result in the unveiling of this Holiness, Righteousness and justice in his Second Coming.
The Litmus Test for Truth
Moreover, there is no change in the moral standards God has expected from humankind since the beginning of time. The design and purpose of marriage, the roles of man and woman, have remained true despite the fog of culture. Those events that are documented in the Old Testament were done with the oneness in character of the Trinity and justice throughout history and into the future. This is why our study of Scripture will lead us closer to the truth.
I used to think in my secular philosophical manner of learning could be used to not only understand Christianity but to, in effect, be able to use the world’s wisdom to judge my understanding of the Bible. That method was certainly promoted by many churches. Now, I firmly believe, knowledge God’s through his revelations in the Bible can and should be used to judge everything I understand of the world. It leads to clarity rather than confusion.
My effort to learn what the world had to offer and finally coming to a realization how it all falls short of God’s glory and design, had helped me finally see the trustworthiness, if not actual inerrancy, found in Scripture.
God and Christ are Holy and Just
This might be startling to some people because they have grown up with a large doses of heretical teachings offered by various churches. The truth in Scripture indicates the God of the Old Testament is the same as the God of the New Testament and Jesus Christ, the Word of God, is for all practical purposes the very same. The Jesus who many proclaim as a “teacher of love and kindness” (only a narrow view of Christ) also presided over the judgment of peoples, nations, and Israel itself.
Some people will complain that they cannot agree with what God has done or allowed in the past, so they cannot abide by the Bible, and I would agree that some of the things I read in the Scripture can be hard to accept (at first) as just and right. The cultural context of the history deserves greater analysis. However, I should exhort you to consider: we are the created, by default we do not have the wherewithal to comprehend the fullness of knowledge and wisdom of a timeless creator of not only man and woman, but of the universe. Moreover, as each of us are made in the image of God, we are all prone to judge like God, but there is a giant whopping caveat: we carry the burden of sin and cannot see or resist to see, in our efforts to justify our self-righteousness, the extent that we are blinded by it.
Jesus’ work of redemption is perfect – How?
We can NEVER IN ANY WAY BE RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR OWN SALVATION. I wouldn’t expect you to trust ME or YOU to take any validating part secure our own Salvation.
We have to reply completely on the work of Jesus Christ and the grace of God for our salvation.
Only a perfectly sinless person could be made the propitiation for sin and the only sinless person is God. The Word became flesh, the Son of God became man for the purpose of redeeming the world. Past present or future, Salvation is only through Jesus Christ. Our sins on God’s ledger have been wiped clean as they were heaped on Jesus’s shoulders.
Yet that gift of Grace must be accepted. To love is by choice.
Will you accept God’s work and not your own?
Will you repent and accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior?
As renown Bible teacher, John MacArthur, of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, has said, “If we could mess up our own salvation, we would.”
Contemporary worship music is not my forte , but there is a verse that captures me that is grounded in biblical truth, “I know its not much but I’ve nothing else fit for a King, except for a heart singing Hallelujah.” This drives home the truth that we rely on the mercy, kindness and grace of a holy and sovereign God to reveal the truth to us in life and for our eternal salvation.
To be saved by God’s Grace also means to flee hypocrisy. That is to say that, being saved, we should lead lives that are ever drawing closer to the likeness of Jesus Christ, in other words, believers should be carrying on with the work of the Church. The works we do are the result of grace, are a fruit of Salvation and a result of the freedom of this saved condition.
The Bible is extraordinarily clear: we are saved by Grace alone. This doctrinal theme is repeated throughout Scripture and the Letter to the Galatians, passionately written by the Apostle Paul exhortating against false gospels, is devoted entirely to this subject. Here is an excerpt from Galatians 2 [with clarifications]:
15 [I went on to say] “We are Jews by birth and not sinners from among the Gentiles; 16 yet we know that a man is not justified [and placed in right standing with God] by works of the Law, but [only] through faith in [God’s beloved Son,] Christ Jesus. And even we [as Jews] have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the Law. By observing the Law no one will ever be justified [declared free of the guilt of sin and its penalty]. 17 But if, while we seek to be justified in Christ [by faith], we ourselves are found to be sinners, does that make Christ an advocate or promoter of our sin? Certainly not! 18 For if I [or anyone else should] rebuild [through word or by practice] what I once tore down [the belief that observing the Law is essential for salvation], I prove myself to be a transgressor. 19 For through the Law I died to the Law and its demands on me [because salvation is provided through the death and resurrection of Christ], so that I might [from now on] live to God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ [that is, in Him I have shared His crucifixion]; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith [by adhering to, relying on, and completely trusting] in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. 21 I do not ignore or nullify the [gracious gift of the] grace of God [His amazing, unmerited favor], for if righteousness comes through [observing] the Law, then Christ died needlessly. [His suffering and death would have had no purpose whatsoever.]”-Galatians 2:15-22. (Amplified Bible).
16 “For God so [greatly] loved and dearly prized the world, that He [even] gave His [One and] only begotten Son, so that whoever believes and trusts in Him [as Savior] shall not perish, but have eternal life.– John 3:16 (Amplified Bible)
Truth and Justice
God knows that in order to be allowed in His presence, we have to be as righteous as He is, that is why He accepts our faithful acceptance of His will rather than any form of works as part of the condition. As Jesus’s perfect righteousness is imputed upon believers who have faith in His redeeming work of sacrifice.
God has always accepted people by their faith in Him from the very beginning, not by their works, because their works could never erase their sin damnable by God’s righteous justice.
We could never be saved by confessing our sins, because their is no way any of use could be ever aware of all the sin we do. On our best days and best behavior we fall short of a holy God. If you think you could be capable to being responsible for your own salvation, that much self-righteousness will likely launch you into an unexpected eternity apart from God.
For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, 27 but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. 28 Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. 29 How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” 31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. – Hebrews 10:26-31
Justice demands that evil will be judged. God will not be mocked and our pride and self-righteousness will fall terribly short of the Glory of God. This brings us deep into the realm of Truth and of response.
For a detailed explanation of who Jesus Christ is from the Bible’s perspective go to the video in this website , “Who is Jesus Christ?”
For a one minute explanation of the Gospel, watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCP9UcC7BzE
For a review of the Ten Commandments: https://www.challenyee.com/the-ten-commandments/
CKY
P.S. Typos and all, I do not use AI.
Sunset photo in Hawaii (Maui) is from my personal stock.