Having trouble reading this email? View it in your browser.

John 8:46-47

(46) Which of you convicts Me of sin? And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me? (47) He who is of God hears God's words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God."
New King James Version Change email Bible version

Is this not similar to what Jesus says to Pilate in John 18:37? The person who is of the truth hears His voice, which suggests a response. He who is of God—that is, a converted person—hears God's words and responds to them. What is difficult is yielding to the truth.

W.E.H. Lecky authored a book called The History of European Morals, and he discusses responding to truth:

To love truth sincerely means to pursue it with an earnest, conscientious, unflagging zeal. It means to be prepared to follow the light of evidence, even to the most unwelcome conclusions; to labor earnestly to emancipate the mind from early prejudices; to resist the current of desires and the refracting influence of the passions; to proportion on all occasions conviction to evidence; and to be ready, if need be, to exchange the calm assurance for all the suffering of a perplexed and disturbed mind. To do this is very difficult and very painful, but it is clearly involved in the notion of earnest love of truth. (p. 189)

God's people will find pursuing and responding to the truth no less difficult. Jesus said elsewhere that those who hear His words—who respond to Him—will now and again have their families broken up as a result. One sees, understands, and begins to apply the truth, but others in the family see it differently. They do not respond in the same way, and the family undergoes a crisis due to the first person's conversion.

So Jesus says, "Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword" (Matthew 10:34). In Hebrews 4:12, the sword is compared to the Spirit, the essence of His mouth, that is of His Word. What comes out of Jesus' mouth will always be true. Those who are of the truth will respond. Their response will frequently be fraught with all kinds of difficulty, and they will be pressured on every side to shrug it off and say, "Oh, it doesn't really matter." So they suppress it, deceiving themselves into thinking they will suffer no consequences for turning away from truth.

Truth is not easy to accept whenever it cuts across the grain of our beliefs, or even more seriously, what we are currently practicing, especially if that practice gives us a certain measure of pleasure or acceptance before those we admire and respect.

From time to time, truth has a price we are unwilling to pay because we run across an idea that is extremely difficult for us to accept and do. We may accept something as being true and tell others that we believe it is true, but accepting it to the point of including it as part of our daily conduct is a bridge too far.

For example, we all know people who believe the Sabbathought to be kept, but they are not keeping it. They will believe that Jesus and the apostles kept the Sabbath and holy days and that God's holy days should be kept. They also hold that Christmas and Easter are pagan. But they will not respond to these truths. Why? Because it is currently too big a price for them to pay.

This is the principle we are dealing with here. We must think of this in light of what Jesus says in John 18:37, where He implies both hearing and responding. We should then tie it together with John 8:47, where Jesus smashes the Jews' smug self-righteousness by asserting that their lack of response to His words was proof that they were actually following Satan the Devil.

That kind of accusation can be quite a difficult truth to accept! We hate to think of ourselves and our loved ones as pawns of Satan, but we should not blunt what Jesus said. We must be careful of being unwilling to face up to some portion of God's truth. But at this point, too many delude themselves into believing that, somehow or another, they will escape the penalty.

— John W. Ritenbaugh

To learn more, see:
Truth (Part 2)