Additional Note B: TRUTH
Additional Note B: TRUTH
Paul has three great thoughts about truth, one of which connects it with God, a second with the gospel, and a third with the Christian way of life.
1. Truth and God. Paul has the notable expression “the truth of God” (confined to Romans, 1:25; 3:7; 15:8). With this we should perhaps take his reference to the judgment of God as being “based on truth” (2:2). All these passages associate truth closely with God. It is not to be understood in purely human terms but only in connection with God. Sometimes it is linked with Christ, as when Paul says that he speaks the truth in Christ (9:1) or when he protests his reliability “as truth is in Jesus” (Eph. 4:21; NIV has “the truth that is in Jesus”). This is often misquoted in the form “the truth as it is in Jesus”. But this distorts the sense. Paul is not saying that the truth is manifold and that we see part of it in Jesus. He is saying that we see truth, real truth, in Jesus (or in God), and that we see it nowhere else. Truth is inseparably connected with God.
2. Truth and the Gospel. When Paul speaks of “the truth of the gospel” (Gal. 2:5, 14), he probably means much the same as when he refers to “the word of truth” (Eph. 1:13; cf. “truthful speech”, 2 Cor. 6:7, NIV). The same meaning is probably intended when we read of rightly dividing “the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15).331 There can be no doubt when we read of “the word of truth, the gospel” (Col. 1:5; better, “the word of the truth of the gospel”). Clearly Paul sees a close connection between the gospel, God’s way of saving people, and the truth, which, as we have just seen, must be understood in relation to God. The truth is seen in a special way in the gospel. This appears to be in mind also when Paul speaks of coming to the knowledge of truth (1 Tim. 2:4; 4:3; 2 Tim. 2:25; 3:7; Tit. 1:1), or of believing the truth (2 Thess. 2:12, 13). It is probably not out of sight also when he speaks of recognizing the grace of God in truth (Col. 1:6). He can set side by side “the word of God” and “setting forth the truth” (2 Cor. 4:2), apparently as equivalent statements.
Unfortunately, however, people do not always obey the gospel. This appears to be the case in some of Paul’s references to truth. Thus he can ask, “Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth?” (Gal. 5:7). Those who reject the gospel “refused to love the truth” (2 Thess. 2:10); they “reject the truth” (Rom. 2:8). As we might have expected, false teachers have lost their hold on truth (“have been robbed of the truth”, 1 Tim. 6:5, NIV). They have turned away from the truth (2 Tim. 2:18; 4:4; Tit. 1:14). Paul declares that he is “for the truth” (2 Cor. 13:8). By contrast evil people “oppose the truth” (2 Tim. 3:8); it is difficult to imagine that the gospel is not primarily in mind in this passage, though the thought may include more. This is also the case with those wicked people who hinder the truth (Rom. 1:18).
3. Truth and the Christian Life. The third large group of passages connect truth with the way Christians live or should live. Paul speaks of the new man as “created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (or better, “in righteousness and holiness of the truth”, Eph. 4:24); again he says that “the fruit of the light consists in all … truth” (Eph. 5:9). Paul is a teacher of the Gentiles “in faith and truth” (1 Tim. 2:7; NIV has “a teacher of the true faith”). Christians are to “keep the Festival” (a striking way of bringing out the joyful character of the Christian life) “with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Cor. 5:8). So central to the Christian way is truth that the church may be characterized as “the pillar and foundation of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). And Paul can speak of the Old Testament law as “the embodiment of knowledge and truth” (Rom. 2:20). Christians should understand that the law gives guidance as they seek to live in the service of God.
There are, of course, passages in which Paul uses truth in much our sense, such as when he refers to telling the truth (2 Cor. 7:14; 12:6; Phil. 1:18). But it is clear that often he gave the term a richer and fuller meaning than we normally do. And it is equally clear that for Paul truth is given its definitive shape by what God has done in Christ.