HOW DO YOU STAND ON THE TRUTH ISSSUE

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Much of the visible church nowadays seems to think Christians are supposed to be at play rather than at war. The idea of actually fighting for doctrinal truth is the furthest thing from most churchgoers' thoughts. Contemporary Christians are determined to get the world to like them——and of course in the process they also want to have as much fun as possible.

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They are so obsessed with making the church seem "cool" to unbelievers that they can't be bothered with questions about whether another person's doctrine is sound or not. In a climate like that, the thought of even identifying someone else's teaching as false (much less "contending earnestly" for the faith) is a distasteful and dangerously counter-cultural suggestion.

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Christians have bought into the notion that almost nothing is more "uncool" in the world's eyes than when someone shows a sincere concern about the danger of heresy. After all, the world simply doesn't take spiritual truth that seriously, so they cannot fathom why anyone would.

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But Christians of all people ought to be most willing to live and die for the truth.

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Remember, we know the truth, and the truth has set us free (John 8:32). We should not be ashamed to say so boldly (Psalm 107:2). And if called upon to sacrifice for the truth's sake, we need to be willing and prepared to give our lives. Again, that is exactly what Jesus was speaking about when he called His disciples to take up a cross (Matthew 16:24).

Cowardice and authentic faith are antithetical.

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Every attempt to define truth in non-biblical terms has ultimately failed. That's because God is the source of all that exists (Romans 11:36).

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• He alone defines and delimits what is true. He is also the ultimate revealer of all truth. Every truth revealed in nature was authored by Him (Psalm 19:1-6); and some of it is His own self-revelation (Romans 1:20).
• He gave us minds and consciences to perceive the truth and comprehend right from wrong, and He even wired us with a fundamental understanding of His law written on our hearts (Romans 2:14-15). On top of all that,
• He gave us the perfect, infallible truth of Scripture (Psalm 19:7-11), which is a sufficient revelation of everything that pertains to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3; 2 Timothy 3:15-17), in order to lead us to Him as Savior and Lord.
• Finally, He sent Christ, the very embodiment of truth itself as the culmination of divine revelation (Hebrews 1:1-3). The whole point and the ultimate reason for all of this was for God to reveal Himself to His creatures (Ezekiel 38:23).

All truth therefore starts with what is true of God:

• who He is,
• what His mind knows,
• what His holiness entails,
• what His will approves, and so on. In other words, all truth is determined and properly explained by the being of God.

Therefore every notion of His non-existence is by definition untrue. That is precisely what the Bible teaches: "The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God'" (Psalm 14:1; 53:1).

The ramifications of all truth starting with God are profound. Returning to a point we touched on earlier: Here is the reason why once someone denies God, logical consistency will ultimately force to that person to deny all truth. A denial that God exists instantly removes the whole justification for any kind of knowledge. As Scripture says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge" (Proverbs 1:7).

So the necessary starting point for gaining authentic understanding of the fundamental concept of truth itself is an acknowledgment of the one true God.

As Augustine said, we believe in order to understand, and our faith in turn is fed and strengthened as we gain better understanding. Both faith in God as He has revealed Himself and the understanding wrought by faith are therefore essential if we hope to apprehend truth in any serious and meaningful sense.

Scripture describes all authentic Christians as those who know the truth and have been liberated by it (John 8:32).

• They believe it with a whole heart (2 Thessalonians 2:13).
• They obey the truth through the Spirit of God (1 Peter 1:22).
• And they have received a fervent love for the truth through the gracious work of God in their hearts (2 Thessalonians 2:10).

According to the Bible, then, you haven't really grasped the truth at all if there's no sense in which you know it, believe it, submit to it, and love it.

Clearly, the existence of absolute truth and its inseparable relationship to the person of God is the most essential tenet of all truly biblical Christianity.

Speaking plainly: if you are one of those who questions whether truth is really important, please don't call your belief system "Christianity" because that's not what it is.

Adopted from John MacArthur's Jr. book The Truth War.

Thus we need to know just what the preacher is teaching as truth, and how he is arriving at that truth. Its our responsibility to know not just to listen and accept everything we hear as truth.