Pentecost 25 When Truth Is What Matters

[HKHaugan]

Pentecost 25 When Truth Is What Matters

Before we get into that brief saying of Jesus in Matt.8 more needs to be said about Him. When Jesus proclaimed He was the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6) He was saying He has everything to satisfy the deepest longings of the mind and heart. When Scripture notes that He grew in wisdom and stature with God and man it meant what He already was in perfection enabled Him to develop His humanity perfectly from infancy to manhood. That was the point of the story describing His visit to the Temple when He was twelve years old impressing the scholars with His wisdom (Luke 2:41 on). When His parents left and didn’t realize He was not with them, they anxiously returned to Jerusalem looking for Him. Finding Him in the Temple and expressing their anxiety, He questions their searching and asks simply, “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”

That event is the probable reason no more is recorded about Jesus’ early life. It sums up everything that had to be said about Him prior to His baptism. We can speculate all we want about His early life. John keeps us focused on the purpose of the Scriptures: “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name (Jn.20:31).”

Jesus was the only person who from birth never had to search for and find the truth. He was conceived and born by the Spirit of Truth. We have already stated He is the only One who never had to be enlightened saying, “Oh, now I see.” Or “It took awhile but I finally got it.” He was and is the light. Jesus never had to work at being a person. He was already that perfect person. He never had to work at being peaceful, at being calm, at controlling His emotions or at concentrating. When you are a complete person you don’t have to. You just are. The fact that we have to work at all those things shows the difference between Jesus and all humanity since Adam, between His perfection and our sin.

If Jesus is the truth then He offers four insights that can help shift our focus from a lonely confusing search to a stable and firm footing in Him.

First, truth is the extension of the mind of God, His intellect, reason and order. Jesus said that everything He thought and did was based on His Father’s will. And we, being created in His image, only function correctly when we reason and order our lives based on how He thinks. (John 7:16-17)

Second, truth is personal because God is personal. What is subjective for God is objective for us. Simply put, truth is not relative but absolute because God is absolute. He is the absolute person in whose image we were created. What is personally true for God is personally true for us. Who and what we are, how we are defined as persons, as conscious ‘I am’s’, reflects our being images of God. (Genesis 1:26)

Third, truth is spiritual because God is spiritual. It connects us with the very nature of God and allows us to relate to others as spiritual beings. Just as the Holy Spirit led Jesus so we can only function spiritually when the Spirit of Truth leads us. (John 4:24)

Fourth, truth is relational because God is relational. He showed in Jesus that His deepest desire for us is to have a relationship with Him. Jesus is the perfect picture of what a relationship with God looks like. Jesus’ relationships with others show how we are called to be relational. That is what He wants for us. He died and rose again to prove it. (John 3:16)

Stay tuned…….