The Truth That Sets You Free

You may have heard someone say, “Follow your own truth”. It’s a popular philosophical, self-help type of advice. In this line of thinking, you need only believe what makes you feel good, what aligns with what you want to believe, and to block out any ideas or beliefs that you don’t like or that make you feel uncomfortable. That includes deciding that God isn’t real or that Hell doesn’t exist.

To say what’s true for you is true is, in essence, making yourself out to be your own god. It’s not that you don’t believe in God – you just believe you are God, that you’re the final authority for your life.

But what if truth is objective, not subjective, and stands separate from, and above, you? And what if your belief does not align with this objective truth? Then what?

What if God is real (and He isn’t you)?

Blaise Pascal, 17^th century mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and theologian, once wrote: “If I believe in God and life after death and you do not, and if there is no God, we both lose when we die. However, if there is a God, you still lose and I gain everything.”

What if God is real, and as the Bible says, you will be judged by the truth He has established?

“… it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).

There’s a reason why Jesus Christ declared this about Himself: "’I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me'" (John 14:6). He provided you with a way to have assurance about your life now and the life to come. And it’s in Him!

Jesus, the Son of God, left Heaven to be born as a human into this world. Apart from Him, humanity is lost in sin, headed for eternal separation from God in Hell (see Ephesians 2:1 and Revelation 20:15). Because Jesus was fully God, He was able to live a sinless life, take our sins upon Himself and be put to death as the punishment that we deserved, and then rise from the dead to eternally overcome sin’s power.

Only by putting your faith and trust in Him and the work that He has accomplished on your behalf, can you be made right with God. And being in right relationship with God also means that you have access to the truth, for He is the Creator of the world and everything in the world, including us. As the Creator, He has the corner on truth. The only way we can live in truth is if we follow Him and what He says, and trust in what Jesus Christ has done for us.

Such a life is full of joy and assurance that can’t be found in these finite minds or bodies that end in death. When you trust in Jesus Christ, He gives you a new birth and a new spirit – His Holy Spirit fills your life and helps you to understand the truth and to overcome the power of sin and say “no” to all that does not align with pure and holy truth that is found in Him.

The Bible says:

“Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves Him who begot also loves him who is begotten of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith. Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1 John 5:1-5)

“He who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself; he who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed the testimony that God has given of His Son. And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God” (1 John 5:10-13).

Jesus said, “If you abide in My word…you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31-32).

Do you know the truth? Do you have the assurance of eternal life?

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).