Where to Find Truth

He was the lamp that was burning and was shining and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. (John 5:35)

You do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent. You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life. (John 5:38-40)

I see something about God's passion to save in these verses that is not often talked about. We often tend to think of Jesus' relationship to the Pharisees and religious leaders is confrontational, fault-finding, abrasive. I believe that is largely because we want to justify our own attitudes when it comes to how we relate to those who disagree with us and so we assume our God as looking and acting like ourselves.

But the real truth is that God is not in the business of condemnation but is in the saving business. (3:17) It is not the pointing out of people's sins that draws them to repentance but it is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance. (Rom. 2:4) The primary purpose of Jesus coming to this earth was to reveal the truth about how God feels about us, to show us His preexistent forgiveness, compassion and love and to shine the light of the real truth about God into our darkened hearts by His revelation of the Father.

Jesus is here appealing to the hearts of these religious people who were resisting His love for them, trying to affirm their positive moves that potentially could align them with the truth about God while at the same time warning them of the choices that were causing them confusion about reality. All of this was designed not to condemn them or to censure them but to clarify the beauty of truth and gently invite them into alignment with the heart of the Father. Any other interpretation of this passage is potentially a distortion of the ministry of Jesus coming to this earth and dying for our sins.

Jesus points out to these men that it was a good thing that they had responded positively to the initial light of truth about God that they had first seen in the ministry of John the Baptist. He says to them that they had been willing to rejoice in that light at least for awhile and He wanted them to know that this was a positive choice. Like any good teacher, Jesus was seeking to establish a connection with these men, seeking an emotional link or handle to their hearts by which He could then begin to draw them toward a greater more perfect revelation of the truth about God.

Likewise, Jesus complimented them in a way, for their studious and diligent searching of the Word of God which was their specialty. These men were very proud of their broad knowledge of the Scriptures and Jesus tried to use that also as another means of attempting to draw them out to believe in greater truth and to embrace the clearer revelations of God that were now available to them.

It is essential that all of us realize that it is not good enough simply to have responded once or twice to the drawing power of God in our experience. As important as it is to initially respond to whatever it was that drew our attention to God in the past, we cannot fall into the deceptive trap that some previous encounter with God is sufficient to keep us in right relationship to God or save us in His kingdom. Just because we may have had some dramatic conversion experience in the past, no matter how authentic that conversion may have been for us at the time, it is not enough to rest on that past response to the power and truth about God as an assurance that we have no need of further conversion.

When someone like John the Baptist comes into our lives and grabs our attention with dramatic and compelling messages of truth, it is right for us to respond with riveted attention, to participate in acts of repentance and turning away from sin toward a closer relationship with God and to obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit in our souls. But it can be a fatal mistake if we try to build our subsequent experience primarily on our past introductions to light instead of being willing to grow with the increasing light that heaven seeks to shine into our lives.

Too often we mistakenly think that further revelations of light might threaten to discredit our previous encounters with the light because some of the facts involved may be seen to be out of harmony with what we were taught as truth previously. Instead of humbly going to the Word of God and seeking God directly for insight and guidance to test what we first learned objectively from the Bible ourselves, we find it much easier to depend on other people's opinions and expositions of the Word and believe that they are more capable of knowing God's will for us and His truth than we can be.

But while God certainly uses people to help instruct and enlighten others, it is a serious mistake to not allow the Spirit of God to instruct us on a personal basis, to tutor us directly in the Word of God and to convict us of things that may seem to conflict with either what we have learned in the past or what others insist is truth in the present. I am not suggesting in the least that we should always be seeking to be different or unique in our views of the Bible, but there is far too much laziness when it comes to knowing what is truth and far too much reliance on 'religious experts' to do our thinking for us instead of entering into a vital, growing, dynamic relationship with God ourselves.

Jesus additionally told these men that it was also a positive thing that they were diligent students of the Word. He did not in the least criticize them for exerting much effort trying to understand the writings that had been passed down to them from their strong religious heritage. But He sought to warn them that their preconceived ideas and their prejudices were blinding them to the very purpose of all of those writings. God had given the Scriptures in the first place to reveal the truth about Himself to mankind, but that truth was a progressive truth, not a static truth that can be analyzed and formulized and standardized through human logic and wisdom.

Like many of us today, these men had assumed that truth is something that can be figured out with enough self-effort and education and knowledge. They believed that to be right with God, all that was needed was to get the right information stored into their brains and to figure out all the right formulas and to eliminate all the wrong interpretations. If they could just figure out the 'secret code' that God had hidden in the Word that would give them the keys to heaven, then they could use that information to live a life of perfect obedience to those instructions and could achieve eternal life.

Many of us are caught in this trap of thinking to some extent. It is embedded in our very nature to look more to the externals and to wisdom and knowledge that we can accumulate to save us from sin rather than to come into a right relationship with our Creator and believe in His mercy and kindness and forgiveness and justice. It is far easier to look to religion and human systems of theology to lead us into salvation rather than to personally admit our inabilities to figure out reality for ourselves and accept the truth about God as revealed in the demonstration of Jesus and His life as lived out on earth.

Jesus complimented these men for rejoicing in the temporary light of the truth as presented by John the Baptist. He also affirmed that it was a good thing that additionally they were diligent students of the Scriptures. But all of that was not enough to bring them into right alignment with what God was seeking in their lives. What God wants for us and what is vital for us to respond to is that we must have a dependent, humble, joyful relationship on an individual basis as well as collectively, with the heart of the Father who created us to live in intimate fellowship with Him for eternity.

The light of truth is always progressive. If I am not willing to have my previous revelations and assumptions about truth repeatedly challenged by the Spirit of God and the Word of God, then I am starting to get stuck in the dangerous rut of tradition and prejudice instead of following on to know the heart of God for myself. Salvation is not a collection of truthful facts about God that I must know in order to pass some cosmic test so I can be allowed into heaven. Salvation is the incredibly good news about how God feels about me that will cause me to progressively release the lies about Him that have poisoned my heart for so long and allow Him to transform me by the presence of His Spirit in my heart that will always draw me into closer alignment with His character at every step of my experience.

According to these passages I am considering here, Jesus is making it clear that to be truly saved I must come to Him to be saved. And what does it mean to come to Him? I have been asking that very question nearly all of my life and God has been slowly revealing the truth about the answer progressively over time. What I am seeing more clearly is that it has more to do with the condition and the openness of my heart toward God than it has to do with my knowledge of religion or my ability to perform a life of good deeds.

God has given Jesus as the ultimate gift of truth by which I can be reconciled from hostility toward God back into an intimate relationship of close fellowship with Him. Jesus is the human face that I can relate to in order to be drawn into a right relationship with God. The response that I choose whenever the Spirit of God reveals a new aspect of Jesus to me determines whether I will deepen my bonds with Him or whether I will move into greater dependence on religion and self-righteousness as my basis for expecting God to save me in His kingdom.

Sadly, religion itself is often the greatest distraction that keeps us from entering into the saving relationship that is so vital for experiencing real salvation. What we think of as truth determines how we are going to view God in our hearts. Our opinions about what God is like is the core problem that sin has caused in our lives and is the real issue that Jesus came to address. Many of these Jews ended up rejecting and finally killing Jesus while continuing to cling to their beliefs that they were going to be saved by keeping God's rules and having a broad and comprehensive knowledge of the Scriptures. But all that that knowledge accomplished for them was to fortify the hardness of their hearts by causing them to believe that their actions and beliefs were justified through their superior knowledge of 'truth'.

Does my study of the Word draw me closer or farther away from the heart of Father?

Does my fascination with some exciting, dramatic speaker that I admire compel me to spend more time getting to know God personally or does it cause me to want to live on predigested feedings of knowledge and dependence on someone else's research and explanations?

Father, thank-you for sending preachers and teachers to bring more light into my life. Thank-you for empowering me to see greater insights and clearer views of truth in Your Word. But keep reminding me that the vital connection I must have has to be much deeper than that, more vulnerable than that, more heart-based than any of those things in my life. Draw me to Your heart with Your cords of loving-kindness and keep me in close dependence on You as You continue to personally draw me with Your Spirit. Let me not become distracted by sensational teachers or be confused by even my own previous views of You and of truth. Mentor me, draw me, train me, discipline me, save me by the power of Your love.