Day 59 – Truth

Read:  John 8:31-38

It has been said that a lie believed as truth will affect you as if it were true. In seventh grade I was bussed across the city to a notoriously rough seventh-grade center. The rumor in sixth grade was that anyone who went into the boy's bathroom at this school would get beat up. Believing this rumor, I proceeded through my entire seventh-grade year without ever going into a restroom. Looking back, I do not recall a single person getting beat up in any of that school's bathrooms. I had believed a lie, and because I believed that lie, it affected me (and my bladder) as if it were true! Believing a lie is a form of bondage.

The truth is the only key that can set a person free from the bondage of a lie. The prophet Isaiah said that the Messiah would come to set captives free (Isaiah 61:1). When Pontius Pilate interrogated Jesus before the crucifixion, he famously asked, “What is truth?” (John 18:38). Pilate’s question came just hours after Jesus told the disciples that He was “the way, the truth and the life" (John 14:6). The truth is not a concept; it is a person, and His name is Jesus. Therefore, any rejection of truth is a rejection of God, and every rejection of God is not only a denial of truth, but of freedom. When Jesus said, "If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:31-32), He was inviting His audience to believe in Him and by so doing, to find ultimate freedom. 

The audience's response to Jesus' invitation not only revealed a lack of faith, but the level of their own self-deception. "We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free'?" (John 8:33). The claim that they "had never been slaves to anyone," was untrue on two levels. First, it was historically inaccurate. The Jews had been slaves in Egypt, had later been carried off into captivity by the Babylonians, and were, even as they made their claim of freedom, being occupied by the Roman Empire. Second, their claim was also spiritually untrue. "Everyone who practices sin," Jesus said, "is a slave to sin" (John 8:24). Because the Pharisees believed the lie that they "had never been slaves," they couldn't see that they were, in fact, living in bondage. A lie believed as truth will affect you as if it were true.

Jesus then calls Satan the "father of lies" (John 8:44). This infamous title is a reference to the very first lie ever told. In Genesis 3, Satan deceived Adam and Eve by convincing them to reject God's command by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  As a result of this deception, Adam and Eve not only rejected God's authority but truth and freedom as well.  Believing Satan's lie, they hid from the truth and entered into a state of denial.  Jesus explains that this is the reason His audience will not accept Him and His claims.  They, like many of us, live in a state of denial, blinded to the truth.

Like the religious leaders of Jesus' day, our self-deception often begins in areas of our perceived strength. The "experts in the law" were deceived into thinking that they knew God's plan and therefore missed God standing in their midst. Because they lived in denial of their need for a savior, they could not see the Savior standing at their prison doors with the keys of truth in His hands. What lies do you believe that are affecting you as truth? What have you come to accept as true, that God may be inviting you to see as a lie? "Remain in my Word," Jesus beckons, "and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free."

Truth of God,

Apart from You, I cannot know what is true. I am easily deceived and am unaware of my own self-deception. Be the lamp for my feet and the light on my path. Illuminate the Truth; Your Word is truth. Jesus, set me free and I will be free indeed.

Amen