Limapela Education Project
Faith in Action
This project aims to provide quality education to children in Zambia's Copperbelt Province.
In today's post-modern culture, where truth is reduced to personal opinion, people tend to commit blindly to a chosen lifestyle and hope with fingers crossed that they won't be burnt and it will turn out for the best. As a result, many feel let down and disappointed by life. In contrast, Rob Yule shows in this sermon on 1 John, the Christian way of life is based on a settled conviction that truth exists, is empirically discoverable, and personally fulfilling. He preached this message at Greyfriars' Classical Service on 24 September 2006.
How do we know? How can we be sure?
The subject of knowledge and of knowing is something people rarely pause to think about. We blithely race through our busy lives without giving it a passing thought.
But what if our hard work and busy activity is misdirected? What if all our activism is in the service of a falsehood, the chasing of an illusion? Wouldn't it be wise to pause, and ask ourselves what is true and what is false, and how we know the difference?
John is concerned with assurance – that Christians can be sure of what they know, can be certain of what they believe. 'This then is how we know that we belong to the truth,' he says, 'and how we set our hearts at rest in God's presence.' (1 John 3:19).
Knowing the truth, John says, is the key to a peaceful heart. Only by knowing the truth can you, with a calm and quiet confidence, know the meaning of life. This is what Jesus meant when he said, 'You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.' (John 8:32). Personal meaning depends on knowing the truth.
John tells us a number of things about truth.
Firstly John tells us that truth is moral, not merely intellectual. 'We obey his commands and do what pleases him.' (1 John 3:22).
The Gnostic heretics whom John was writing about saw truth as something intellectual, but lived immoral lives. They had much in common with modern New Age thought, which is interested speculative ideas but scorns moral living. So often higher thought ends up validating lower behaviour. But John says truth is not merely intellectual. It is moral. It affects the way we live.
Paul Johnson's book Intellectuals shows the moral shortcomings of Western intellectuals who made it their business to lecture us on how we should live. He documents how their theories were so often contradicted by the way they lived and treated others.
Karl Marx inveighed against bourgeois people who exploited the working classes. In all his research on low-paid workers he never found a single worker who was paid no wages at all. Yet such a worker did exist, in his own household: Marx's mistress and unpaid domestic servant.
The philosopher Bertrand Russell extolled the emancipation of women and the benefits of free love – but he treated his wives and mistresses despicably. He shamelessly victimised a succession of chambermaids, governesses and any young or pretty thing in skirts around his house.
Charity begins at home. The Christian concept of truth affects the way we live. It is not something theoretical. Truth is empty if it doesn't challenge and transform our lives.
Secondly, John says that truth is not solitary, but relational. 'This is God's command,' John says: 'to believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and to love one another.' (1 John 3: 23).
The typical Western understanding of truth is that it is something discovered by the solitary intellectual – as depicted in Rodin's famous sculpture, Le Penseur, 'The Thinker', with his head in his hand.
But the Bible defines truth as relational. It isn't found by introspection, but by trust in the one who is the truth, God's Son Jesus Christ, and by love for one another. Truth is found in relationship, especially in committed relationship or faithfulness.
In a relationship, we want to do what pleases the other person. We don't want to hurt them, disappoint them, or let them down. That's how John defines obedience – doing 'what pleases God' (1 John 3:22). What pleases God is right relationships: 'believing in Jesus' (right belief), which leads to loving one another (right behaviour).
Thirdly, John says that truth is spiritual. 'Those who obey his commands live in him and he in them. . . . We know it by the Spirit he gave us.' (1 John 3:24).
The heart of Christian experience is communing with God as a living, indwelling presence in our lives. God is not a God afar off and unapproachable – as in Islam – but a God who comes to dwell in our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
The New Testament consistently points to this reality of intimate communion with God. Paul says, 'God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.' (Romans 5:6). He exhorts us, 'Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts', and 'Let the word of Christ dwell richly in your hearts.' (Colossians 3:15-16). Jesus said, 'I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.' (John 15:5).
Truth is not material or physical. It is not limited to the material or physical world, as secularism maintains. Truth is spiritual, even mystical. We can genuinely intuit reality, and know it for certain intuitively.
There is a wonderful testimony to this in Solzhenitsyn's novel, The First Circle – perhaps the best described argument in world literature. It takes place between and artist and a materialist in a sharashka, a Soviet-era scientific research prison establishment. The artist, Kondrashev-Ivanov, is debating with a Communist, Rubin. The argument takes place while they are sawing wood on a saw-horse. The argument goes back and forth like the saw.
The Communist argues that only material or physical things are real. The artist argues that we can intuit spiritual reality. He defends this non-materialist notion, by pointing to the fact that we can tell from the first page of a book whether or not we will like it. Intuitive or spiritual knowledge is real, and trustworthy.
Finally, John says that truth is empirical: it is based on something that has happened and can be investigated. 'This is how you can recognise the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.' (1 John 4:2-3).
When we say that truth is empirical, we mean that it can be discovered by scientific observation or historical investigation. Truth is empirical, not just theoretical, because God reveals himself in our space-time realm. You can investigate it, check it out for yourself. So, John says, everyone who recognises that God has revealed himself in the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth, knows the truth and is of God.
Lee Strobel was an award-winning Chicago legal journalist. He was an atheist, who thought that science and history conclusively supported his atheism. But, when his marriage was almost falling apart, his wife became a Christian. He was deeply challenged by the changes he observed in her.
So he began to investigate the historical and scientific facts for himself, and was stunned by what he discovered. Far from supporting his atheism, he found that the empirical facts supported the existence of a Creator, the truthfulness of the Bible, and the reality of Jesus Christ's claims and resurrection.
John tells us two consequences of discovering the truth as Strobel did:
1. Firstly, you have discernment. Discernment is the ability to distinguish right from wrong, truth from error, orthodoxy from heterodoxy, what is real from what is false or illusory. 'Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognise the Spirit of God.' (1 John 4:1-2)
Your life doesn't have to be lived haphazardly, crossing your fingers and blindly hoping for the best, and being let down when things don't work out. God has given you a faculty of discernment and discrimination. This is a precious and powerful capacity. The power of private judgement is the very basis of democracy and a free society!
2. Secondly, you can have assurance, the certainty that you know the truth, that you are in touch with reality, that you are forgiven and accepted by God (1 John 3:21). Christianity is a religion of intimacy with God. No other religion offers an intimate relationship with the Creator of the universe.
Assurance leads to confidence before God, including confidence that we can approach him for our needs and prayers. This leads to boldness, conviction. This isn't hype or false enthusiasm. Rather, it's a calm, quiet certainty about the outcome of our cause, the confidence to live a purposeful and meaningful life.
Rob Yule, 24 September 2006
© 2006, Greyfriars Presbyterian Church
