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Chapter Five
"I AM THE TRUTH''
We hear men say, "I believe the truth!" "I love the truth"; "I support the truth"; "I tell the truth"; "I preach the truth"; "I try to live the truth". Jesus says something very different from this. He says something infinitely greater than all this. "I am the truth!" This, like all that is said of Him in both Old and New Testaments, like that He taught, wrought, and suffered, puts Him in a class by himself. He is like us, yet infinitely greater and different from us. No one can say, "I am the truth", but Jesus.
If another says this, he makes himself a laughing stock; he is ridiculous. When we hear Jesus say, "I am the truth'', we are not surprised; we are not shocked. We expect Him to say it, and how we rejoice in it; We are not prepared to hear Him say, "I am the truth"; unless we have seen Him at the wedding feast (John 2), feeding the five thousand (John 6), giving sight to the blind (John 9), raising Lazarus from the dead (John 11), unless we have heard Him talk to Nicodemus (John 3), to the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well (John 4), to the Jews (John 7, 8, 5 and 12), and to His disciples (John 13). Every one, who has followed John's simple and wonderful record of Jesus up to this statement, "I am the truth," in John 14:6, is not only prepared to hear Jesus say, "I am the truth'', but is expecting Him to say it.
"Truth" is conformity to fact or reality. Truth is correct representation of the facts. Jesus said, "I am the correct representation of God." He said in other words, (John
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MEDITATIONS ON THE WORD
14:7-11) "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. (John 17:22) To the Father He said, "The glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one." In John 1:1 Jesus is called the Word of God and the Word was God, "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us'' (v. 14). Then in John 1:18, "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." We have a revealing word that Jesus is the truth, that Jesus is the correct representation of God in Hebrews 1:1-3 "God . . . hath in these last day spoken unto us by His Son . . . Who being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person." We have another in II Corinthians 4:4, "In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus sake. For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."
Jesus is the truth, the correct representation of God, conformity to the reality of God, actively and passively. In His living, loving, working, teaching, and responding in His human contacts, He was correctly representing God. He was God acting through human nature. In His experiences of being acted upon by man, by the devil, and by God His Father He correctly represented God. In His activities here in the flesh, Jesus shows us God acting. He was God in the likeness of man as man, before man, and for man, responding in grace to human stimuli of sin, suffering, and ignorance. In all of Jesus' contact with man He manifests the wisdom of God. He is God acting in wisdom. He condones no evil, He condemns no good. He sees through all shams and denounces the hypocrisies. He sees the hearts of the sincere and receives their worship. He never apologized; He never asked for forgiveness; He never made a retraction; He never sought counsel from man. He never was at a loss as to what to do
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"I AM THE TRUTH''
or what to say. He was always master of every situation. In Him was and is all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. He is the wisdom of God and the power of God. When He faced men's needs, whether it be the blind, the lame, the sick, the leper, the dead, His power was sufficient and His grace made it available, even to forgiving of sins, saying, "that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sin."
When we hear Jesus say, "I am the truth," we see Him not only acting in divine grace and power and wisdom, but we see Him suffering as He is acted upon by the devil, by man, and by God His Father. In all this the truth of God is revealed in Him passively. In His sufferings He correctly reveals God.
In all Jesus' sufferings from the cradle to the cross He could say, "I am the truth." His sufferings correctly represented God's thoughts toward man. In His sufferings on the cross He was manifesting the reality, the fact of God's love, of God's wisdom, of God's holiness and justice. In the suffering of the cross Satan was bruising the heel of the seed of the woman, man was inflicting upon Him the most shameful and painful death that human ingenuity could devise, but it was the suffering from the hands of God, who must judge and punish sin in man, in the God man if man is to have forgiveness of sins. Yet "It pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief: when thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hands" (Isaiah 53:10). What love! That God the Father would be pleased to bruise His only begotten Son to save the hell-deserving sinner. "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16).
(I John 4:10) "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." This is the truth about God's love for man. Jesus is this truth. He is here the effulgence of God's love.
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MEDITATIONS ON THE WORD
Not only is Jesus the truth of God's love but of His power and wisdom. There is the manifestation of God's power and wisdom in nature. (Psalms 19:1). "The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork." But nowhere are His wisdom and power manifested as it is in Christ Jesus' sufferings under the hands of God for man's sins.
In the sufferings of the cross Jesus is the truth of the justice and holiness of God. Angels may be permitted now to behold the lost suffering in hell in the disembodied state, and may behold the sufferings of the lost out yonder in the future when they shall be raised up, judged and consigned to the lake of fire. But all that taken together could not show the truth of the justice and holiness of God like the sufferings of Jesus on the cross. He in His own body bare our sins on the tree. Jesus, in those few hours, suffered the full wrath of God due upon us. He met full force the justice of God against our sins. (Romans 3:25, 26) "Christ Jesus Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood . . . To declare, I say at this time His righteousness: that He might be just and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus."
What is the response of your heart to Jesus when He says, "I am the truth?" Ponder that.
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