What is Truth? The Holy Spirit is Truth.
What is Truth? The Holy Spirit is Truth.
“What is truth?” (John 18:38).
TRUTH: (Hebrew, “emet;” Greek, “aletheia”) Truth is the only absolute in the world. If everything else in the world falls apart, only Truth will remain standing. The building blocks of all creation; the framework upon which we build our faith; the true Reality that has established the world’s reality; that which can never be truly altered or changed; that which is universally trustworthy as facts of life; the foundation of what is truly real in our experience; the plumblines from which to measure our lives; that which is common knowledge in God’s mind; that which lines up with God’s perspectives; established facts from God as opposed to a person’s changeable opinions or preferences; that which is solid and certain as opposed to a lie, deceit, an illusion or superstition; the tangible fundamentals issued forth from the intangible mind of God. Truth is always true even when discounted or disbelieved. Since the Almighty God is the ultimate source of all truth, then it follows that the Father God is Truth, the Lord Jesus is Truth, and the Holy Spirit is Truth.
“One word of truth outweighs the world.” (Alexandre Solzhenitsyn, Russian author, early 20th century);
THE HOLY SPIRIT: The eternal life-giving Third Person of the Holy Trinity; the intimate bond of divine love and truth shared by God the Father and God the Son; the dynamic power of God offered to every human being on earth; the supernatural Presence in the Community of God who is personal without being material; the invisible creative force with divine intelligence who truly knows the mind of God from the inside; the Spirit of God who thus has all knowledge and is present everywhere in the universe; the sacred energy streaming forth from the Father and the Son, pouring love into our hearts (Romans 5:5), producing virtuous qualities in us (Galatians 5:22-23), and gradually transforming each believer into the image of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18).
God’s eternal Spirit was present at creation, of course, “brooding like a bird over the watery abyss.” (Gen. 1:1, MSG). No surprise there. All three Persons of God existed together eternally before creation began, and they will be intimate spiritual companions forever after the world’s recreation as well. At creation, the Spirit was like a mother bird hatching an egg, bringing beauty and order out of nothingness and chaos, waiting to take us under His wing.
Because the Triune God is united and inseparable, the Father and the Son is everywhere the Spirit us. If the Spirit dwells in us and alongside us, so does the Father and the Son. If the Father and the Son have promised to make a home in us, the Spirit is right there as well, arm-in-arm in their Trinitarian Presence, establishing a dwelling place in us. Since we are welcomed inside the relationship of the Trinity, the Spirit helps make that happen. Since we are adopted into God’s family as His children, we can be sure the Spirit was a part of that process. We can be assured the Spirit will work to sustain us in the Trinitarian circle and fellowship.
“But we come from God and belong to God. Anyone who is in the process of knowing God and understanding Him listens to us. The person who has nothing to do with God will, of course, not pay attention to us. This is another way we recognize the Spirit of Truth from the spirit of deception.” (1 John 4:6).
The Spirit of Truth. The longest conversation that Jesus had with His disciples is known as His Farewell Address, found in John 13-16. There is no doubt that Jesus chose His last words carefully and underlined them with special importance. He spoke of His leaving, among other things, which saddened His disciples very much. But then Jesus sought to encourage His disciples by declaring that when He leaves, He will be giving them a unique gift, the Gift of a lifetime, His Holy Spirit. Significantly, Jesus referred to His Spirit as the “Spirit of Truth” three times in His farewell words. We learned some fascinating and profoundly helpful aspects of the Holy Spirit in these words of Jesus near the end:
(1.) The Spirit of Truth will dwell within us forever. He will be accessible and helpful at all times, and will remain as close to each of us as our next breath;
(2.) The Spirit of Truth is largely unknown in this world, which is blind to the truths of God;
(3.) The Spirit of Truth is sent to us by Jesus from the Father. In other words, in this Trinitarian mystery, the Holy Spirit was commissioned by the Son and given to us directly from the Father;
(4.) The Spirit of Truth can only be released to us if Jesus returns to the Father in heaven. When Jesus goes, the Spirit comes and stays;
(5.) By revealing the Truth of Jesus Christ, the Spirit of Truth, among other things, will convict of the truth of our sinfulness, of our need to look for Christ for our righteousness, and the truth of the eternal judgment of the evil one;
(6.) The Spirit of Truth will guide all believers into all the truth of Christ, into whatever special truths there are to know about Jesus. In this role of guide, He will teach and instruct us, will reveal and remind us of what is to be known of the Lord;
(7.) The Spirit of Truth submits to the Father and the Son and doesn’t even give Himself the authority to speak on His own. The Spirit speaks only of what He has heard from Christ. The Spirit is the ultimate listener, will hear the word of Jesus, and will declare those truths to us;
(8.) The Spirit of Truth is Good News for us! We are not abandoned or left alone to fend for ourselves. We don’t have to stumble blindly through the Christian faith trying to figure out what we are to believe, what we are to do next, how we progress spiritually, how we prepare for eternal life with God, what the Scripture has to say to us. Good News! The Spirit of Truth will live in us to do all that needs to be done, with our cooperation, as He takes us in triumph to the finish line! The fact is we can only understand spiritual truths when we are able to discern them through the Spirit of Truth.
(9.) The Spirit of Truth has already absorbed from Jesus what is in the mind of God by virtue of their intimate fellowship with each other. The Divine Three do not keep secrets from each other, and they all know what is on each other’s mind. They are so intimately in union that they are eternally indivisible, and somehow inside each other. The Spirit knows everything the Son knows, who knows everything the Father knows, who knows everything in the universe there is to know. What a wondrous mystery!
“The wisdom we speak of is the mystery of God previously hidden. It was to us God revealed these things by His Spirit. For the Holy Spirit searches out everything and shows us God’s deep secrets. No one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit. And we have received God’s Spirit so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given to us. We do not use words that came from human wisdom. Instead, we speak words given to us by the Spirit, using the Spirit’s words to explain spiritual truths.” (1 Corinthians 2:7-13).