Is there such a thing as absolute truth? (John 8:31-41)
Ron White - January 20, 2008
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1. Introduction
1.1 Did you catch those words at the beginning of our reading in John 8:31-32? What did you make of them? How did you react emotionally, what did you feel? “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
1.2 When Jesus stood on trial for his life he said to Pontius Pilate (John 16:37-38) “I came into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me. `What is truth? ` Pilate asked” and promptly went out, not waiting for an answer. Jesus clearly was not interested in a mere academic discussion. It was a question that went to the heart of whom he was and why he had come.
1.3 You quite often hear people say something like “Well that is truth for him, but for me I need something different” Almost as if there were a designer truth, or a pick and mix selection. What do we have in mind when we say “absolute truth”? If you put into Google the words “absolute truth” you get in 1/4 of a second 1.6m entries. You will be relieved to hear that I am not now going to take you through them all.
1.4 What do we mean when we speak of absolute truth? Truth about what? About God-does he exist and if so what is he like? About the universe, has it always existed, was it created or did it just happen? The truth about our place in all this. By absolute we mean truth that stands outside the physical order and has not developed from within nature; truth that is objective and not subjective; truth that is a revelation and not a construction; that is discovered and not merely the opinion of the majority. Truth that does not, indeed cannot, change. Truth beyond which there is no other. I might just say at this point that I will be using the terms “truth” and “authority” almost interchangeably. Truth without authority is meaningless: authority.
1.5 When I was a teenager at work I was discussing matters of faith with my then boss. He was a highly intelligent man and went on to a senior position in the Treasury. Our discussion ended with him saying emphatically that he would not believe in God without proof positive that he existed. I was flummoxed. Firstly, it was the first time I had heard the words “proof positive” and secondly, I had no idea how to answer his challenge. Indeed, at the time I was a little disappointed in the Bible itself. Could it not be more helpful? Why did it not do more to prove the existence of God? It starts off with the bald assertion “In the beginning God…” For a lot of people in 21st Century Britain it is a long journey to get to the point where those stark words “In the beginning God…” can become in anyway meaningful. What would you have said to my boss if you had been in my position? Perhaps you are here this morning because your sympathies are with my boss. You would like to know the answer.
1.6 If I had known them at the time I could have recited the 6 classical proofs so-called for the existence of God. However, I doubt that they would have helped him. And while they clearly point to God so that it is more reasonable to believe than not to believe in a god of some sort, they give very little idea of what God might be like. I will not therefore weary you with them this morning. Anyway there is far better, more meaningful evidence than the “six proofs”.
1.7 What I might have pointed out to my boss was that his question was illogical. Why, you might ask is such a seemingly important question illogical?
1.8 Can there be “proof positive” for absolute truth or ultimate authority? In one sense the answer is simply “No”. “Why is that?” I hear you ask. In simple terms an authority can only be validated by a higher authority or truth. A simple illustration, which has its limitations but, I hope, illustrates the point I am trying to make, might be that when I was a civil servant I could approve expenditure up to £1.25m. Who said I could? The Secretary of State said I could. But what right did the Secretary of State have to say that? Parliament in an Act gave the S of S the requisite powers. But who said Parliament could? The Queen because she signed the Bill that Parliament passed and made it an Act. This could go on for a bit longer but to shorten it and keep it simple, the Queen just did and that was that. Whenever you follow the chain of authority or truth sooner or later you come to the point “Because I say so” (parents will be very familiar with that one) or “Because that is just the way that it is.” But that leaves us feeling very uncomfortable. Are we not simply saying if there is an ultimate authority we just cannot know for sure? This is very crudely what many people would assert today. On such a basis then my old boss would never come to faith in God because his condition could not be fulfilled.
2. Revelation
2.1 If absolute truth, by its very nature cannot be “proved” how can it be known as absolute truth? It can because it can be revealed. The question now becomes has absolute truth been revealed?
2.2 Let us look at how the Bible deals with the question. The Bible says that there is a God who is the Supreme Being who is righteous and good and that this God has revealed himself in various ways. But how can we know that he is absolute and that there is not another higher authority behind him; or even an equal and opposite one beside him? Because the Bible reveals that God is a God of integrity and if there were someone or something behind him that caused him, or was alongside him he would have said so and not pointed to himself but to another as absolute truth.
2.3 Am I simply saying that there is absolute truth because the Bible says so? In one sense the answer is “yes” and unashamedly “yes”. But the Bible does not adopt a take it or leave it attitude. So while philosophy can neither prove nor disprove God the important point is that God, as absolute truth, can be known because he has freely chosen to reveal himself to us. He does so in a number of ways. One is through nature: “God’s picture book” as Bunyan called it. Another is through conscience. Another is through the Bible. Sometimes he does so directly, but he has supremely done so through his Son, Jesus Christ. Time constrains us as ever, so let us rather than devote time to the other areas, focus on. what the Bible has to say about Jesus Christ and whether there is anything to back up its claims?
3. Jesus Christ
3.1 In the Bible the writer of “Hebrews” in the New Testament makes a very important statement right at the beginning of his book when he says “God…in these last days… has spoken to us by his Son….[who is] the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Heb 1:1-3). This tells us that Jesus Christ is the ultimate and revealed authority. An exact representation cannot be improved upon. There will be no further new revelations of God, because there is nothing to add in a form that we can understand. (This in one sentence dismisses Islam.) There is one further great revelation to come and that is the great and final one at the end of the age when Jesus Christ bodily returns. But it will not be new or additional, still less a replacement revelation because it will be “this same Jesus” (Acts 1:11). Paul in Colossians 1:15-16 is no less emphatic than those opening words of Hebrews, he says. Christ “is the image of the invisible God…by him all things were created.” John in the opening of his gospel declares that “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God …the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1 verses 1 and 14).
3.2 Now let us look carefully at what Jesus said in John 8:40. He is describing himself as “a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God.” In verse 38 he has just said something similar “I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence.” Here Jesus is saying a lot more than, for example the Bible says of Moses when it says that God spoke to him “face to face” ( Num 12:8, Dt 34:10). John is harking back to the opening declaration of his gospel that Jesus existed prior to his birth and that he was co-equal with the Father and that his birth was not his origin but a change when God became man.
3.3 These words “a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God” do not just appear: they have a context. In this section of John’s gospel the subject under discussion is Jesus’ authority. Who does he claim to be? What are his credentials? What is there to substantiate his claims? Already he has told them at the beginning of this new section in 8:12 “I am the light of the world”. Immediately his claim is challenged by the Pharisees, as indeed it should have been. They must have thought that he was a colossal megalomaniac or terribly deranged or unimaginably evil. In his reply Jesus asserts “I am not alone (ie I am not the only witness to my claim) I stand with the Father who sent me.” He goes on to say in verse 18 that his claims are corroborated by the Father. The Jews come back at him repeatedly and in verse 24 he makes another startling claim “If you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins.” Possibly outraged and certainly astonished in verse 25 they ask again “Who are you?” He repeats in verse 28 that he is who he says he is and that he is fully backed up by God. He is challenged again in verse 53 “Who do you think you are?” He responds again with the words in verse 58 “Before Abraham was born I am”. Now Abraham was born some 2,000 years before Jesus. The Jews rightly understood this to be a claim to divinity and “they picked up stones to stone him.”
3.4 These were not the only times that Jesus claimed to be absolute truth. In John 14:6 he said “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” A more massive claim it is hard to imagine. He claims to be ultimate authority and exclusively so. He could not have been clearer or more emphatic.
3.5 Absolute truth Jesus says is not a philosophy or a concept or a theorem it is a person and that person is me. You can know the truth not by giving mental assent to a dogma but by entering into a personal relationship with me. Knowing the truth therefore is just as much a possibility for someone who is mentally handicapped as it is for a brilliant intellectual.
4. Is Jesus` claim valid?
4.1 In the chapter we have been looking at, John 8, Jesus gives a pointer to the way in which his claims are going to be validated. In verse 28 Jesus says words which must have puzzled his hearers at the time; he says “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am the one I claim to be.” Jesus is talking about his crucifixion. It is clear from the gospels that Jesus had for sometime been telling his disciples that he was going to be crucified and that was indeed at the heart of his purpose in coming to the world. Right from the beginning he came to lay down his life, to give himself as a ransom for many.
4.2 Dying on the cross would not in itself validate his claims, but what followed would, because of a piece with his death was his bodily resurrection on the third day. Why did Jesus mention the cross? Why did he see that as important almost as part of his credentials?
4.3 The Son of God did not come to this world merely to leave us better informed about truth and to give answers to profound and puzzling questions. Jesus said in John 8 verse 34 “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave of sin.” Who sins? We all do! Jesus came to deal with the really big problem in humanity and that is the terrible reality of the power of evil in humanity ie sin. Many people ask questions about why does God allow evil. But the real problem is that we allow evil because we are enslaved to it. Sin, that is wrong doing, selfish behaviour is embedded in human nature; it affects our behaviour, our thoughts and our motivation. And I do not mean other people out there, I mean you sitting there listening to me and, especially myself. Every human being has a natural propensity to sin. No one needs to teach a child to do wrong, but it needs to be trained to do right. One thing humanists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslims and Richard Dawkins have in common, is that they all hugely underestimate the evil that is within us all.
4.4 The Bible alone gives an accurate assessment of the evil that is in me and in each one of us. It paints a bleak picture. It does so not to make us feel bad, but to prepare us for the only viable solution. What would you think of the doctor who said about a disturbing growth in you body, “O don’t worry about it, it will go away”, when he knew that it was a cancer and a cancer that could be successfully treated and, when the truth came out and it was too late said he “did not want you to feel bad?” I think you would want him to be struck off.
4.5 In the Bible God says that we all have a spiritual cancer and that is sin. The Bible says “We all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure “(Jer 17:9). Jesus said that we are unclean before God because of what is within us “evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly” (Mk 7:21-22).
4.6 Because God is holy and utterly righteous the things that we do wrong cut us off from God. Because we are cut off we are spiritually dead. But, when Christ died on the cross he took the just punishment for all our sin. He died for you and for me. So that when we repent that is turn away from our sin and confess it to God for what it is and ask him for forgiveness, then he transfers our guilt from us to his Son, the Lord Jesus, and transfers from his Son his righteousness to us. We can then be justly, fully and freely forgiven.
4.7 How can we know that Jesus death on the cross is sufficient for our forgiveness? Because God on the third day following the death of his Son on the cross raised him bodily from the dead. The Father took the corpse of his Son and gloriously transformed it into a new body bringing him back to life.
4.8 When God raised Jesus from the dead he did at least two wonderful things. Firstly he was confirming that his Son’s sacrifice for sin had been accepted. Secondly he was validating Jesus’ claims. When Jesus said in John 8 that the Father was a witness to confirm that what he was claiming was true, the words were not a vain boast. The Father emphatically endorsed them by raising Jesus from the dead. There could not have been a fuller, more comprehensive or unambiguous endorsement of all that Jesus said and did.
4.9 How do we know that the resurrection happened? The evidence is conclusive. We have detailed it before. For the moment I will remind you only of Paul’s summary record in 1Corinthians 15 verses 1-6 written some 25, perhaps 20, years after the event when he says that over 500 people met Jesus at different times over several weeks and that many of them were still alive and could be consulted. He then reminds his readers that the risen Jesus had also appeared to him even while he was on his way to arrest as many Christians as he could.
4.10 The claims of Jesus were not only vindicated by the resurrection but so were the things he taught and they included that the Old Testament is fully the word of God and that the Holy Spirit would enable his disciples to recall and to set out infallibly his teachings. Paul summed up this by saying in 2Tim 3:16 “That all Scripture is God breathed.”
4.11 Do you want to know absolute truth? You will find it not as the conclusion of an intellectual exercise but through a revelation given by the Spirit when you ask God to forgive you and you put your trust in Jesus as God’s Son and your personal Saviour. Have you taken that step? If not why not now? Let us pray.