THE COMMAND OF TRUTH

1 JOHN 2:24–29

If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him

(1 John 2:29).

All we know about the truth concerning God and man leads us to the inescapable conclusion that correct knowledge of God and ourselves reveals the divine design for the eternal kingdom of Christ. That design is nothing less than ethical goodness, or to put it more bluntly, right knowledge leads to right living. What we know about God and about ourselves never leaves us in speculative limbo, but commands us in the ethics of our lives. Truth, therefore, is commanding and impacts us at every level.

C.S. Lewis wrote that right and wrong are clues to the meaning of the universe. Dostoevsky said, “If there is no God, all things are permissible.” John Murray wrote, “The ethic of the Bible reflects the character of the God of the Bible. Remove from Scripture the transcendent holiness, righteousness, and truth of God and its ethic disappears.” Even Immanuel Kant could not escape this inevitable conclusion when he declared that we must live “as if” there is a God.

Jesus taught that if you love Him, you must obey His commandments, and that if you are part of the kingdom, you must be subject to the laws of the kingdom. If you want to live as an autonomous being, then moral anarchy and moral relativism will reign. Ultimately, the fate of a society that embraces moral relativism is dissolution and chaos. When man does “whatever is right in his own eyes,” he will find only death. This is why our culture can be labeled a culture of death. It has rejected the truth, therefore it will not be commanded by the truth. The tragic result is that it is ruled by lies, by deceptions, and by men who live according to their own wicked desires.

The only way a society can be resurrected from such moral decay is by the grace of God, causing men and women to turn from their sin and embrace the righteousness of Christ. Once people see the truth of Christ and put their faith in Him for redemption, they understand that His truth rules over every sphere of their lives, and that His law alone is the ethic by which we govern ourselves, our church, and our society. Christians need to be constantly reminded of this. Our lives are not our own; we have been bought with a price to live according to the righteousness of Christ.

CORAM DEO

Jeremiah 5–6

1 Timothy 1

By what law do you live? When you do what you want, do you think about what the law of God says? If you are to be affected by God’s law, you must know it as He has revealed it. Study the Scriptures, not only to know God but to know how best to live before Him.

For further study: Dan. 4:27 • Hos. 10:12 • Matt. 5:17–20 • 1 Cor. 15:33–34

wednesday

october