In this message we shall continue to consider the meaning of the word truth in the New Testament.
We have seen that truth is God, Christ, the Spirit, the Word of God, and the contents of the faith, the reality concerning God, man, and the universe, and the genuineness, truthfulness, and sincerity of God as a divine virtue and of man as a human virtue. In addition to these seven aspects of the truth, we need to see that truth in the New Testament denotes things that are true or real, the true or real state of affairs (facts), reality, veracity, as the opposite of falsehood, deception, dissimulation, hypocrisy, and error (Mark 5:33; 12:32; Luke 4:25; John 16:7; Acts 4:27; 10:34; 26:25; Rom. 1:25; 9:1; 2 Cor. 6:7; 7:14; 12:6; Col. 1:6; 1 Tim. 2:7).
Nearly all these eight aspects of the truth refer to the Triune God. The Triune God, who is the reality of everything, is revealed in the Word and conveyed to us by the Word. What is revealed in and conveyed by the Word is the content of our Christian belief and also the content of the New Testament. This content implies the real situation concerning God, man, the universe, man’s relationship to God and to others, and our obligation to God. All these different realities are related to the unique reality, which is the Triune God Himself. Then through our experience of Christ this reality becomes our human reality, that is, it becomes our human virtue with which we worship God. Finally, truth refers to things which are true and real.
All the different realities revealed in the New Testament are related either directly or indirectly to the unique reality—the Triune God. Therefore, for us Christians the knowledge of what is true or real must come through our experience of the Triune God.
Of the eight matters we have covered concerning truth, the first five refer to the same reality in essence. God, Christ, and the Spirit—the Divine Trinity—are essentially one. Hence, these Three, being the basic elements of the substance of the divine reality, are actually one reality. This one divine reality is the substance of the Word of God as the divine revelation. Hence, it becomes the revealed divine reality in the divine Word and makes the divine Word the reality. The divine Word conveys this one divine reality as the contents of the faith, and the contents of the faith are the substance of the gospel revealed in the entire New Testament as its reality, which is just the divine reality of the Divine Trinity. When this divine reality is partaken of and enjoyed by us, it becomes our genuineness, sincerity, honesty, and trustworthiness as an excellent virtue in our behavior to express God, the God of reality, by whom we live; and we become persons living a life of truth, without any falsehood or hypocrisy, a life which corresponds to the truth revealed through creation and the Scripture.
The word aletheia is used in the New Testament more than one hundred times. Its denotation in each occurrence is determined by its context. For example, in John 3:21, according to the context, it denotes uprightness (opposite to evil—vv. 19-20), which is the reality manifested in a man who lives in God according to what He is and which corresponds to the divine light, which is God, as the source of the truth, manifested in Christ. In John 4:23-24, according to the context of this chapter and also to the divine revelation of John’s Gospel, it denotes the divine reality becoming man’s genuineness and sincerity (opposite to the hypocrisy of the immoral Samaritan worshipper—vv. 16-18) for the true worship of God. The divine reality is Christ who is the truth (John 14:6) as the reality of all the offerings of the Old Testament for God’s worship (John 1:29; 3:14) and as the fountain of living water, the life-giving Spirit (John 4:7-15), partaken of and drunk by His believers to be the reality within them, which eventually becomes their genuineness and sincerity in which they worship God with the worship He seeks. In John 5:33 and 18:37, according to the entire revelation of the Gospel of John, truth denotes the divine reality embodied, revealed, and expressed in Christ as the Son of God. In John 8:32, 40, 44-46, according to the context of the chapter, it denotes the reality of God revealed in His word (v. 47) and embodied in Christ the Son of God (v. 36), which sets us free from the bondage of sin.