Truth part 3
The truth is the truth whether you know it or not. But if you don't know it... it doesn't really do much for you. So when we see Jesus' words in John 8:32, "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free," the first part is every bit as important as the second part. Ye shall KNOW the truth. Now let me link that up with one of my favorite verses (and, yes, I do realize that they are ALL my favorite verses), "And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him" (1 John 4:16). I love this verse because it is past tense. John wasn't saying we NEED TO know and believe the love of God. He was reminding us that we HAVE known it and believed it. You can't believe something you don't know. Faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the Word (Jesus, love) of God. So first God--the truth about love--had to tell us, or show us, that truth. He did this on the cross. "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). When we didn't know who we were or who God was... when we were dead in our trespasses and sins, looking for love in all the wrong places... Jesus shined the light of the world. So we could see clearly. So we could KNOW the truth, and in knowing... be made free. On the cross God conformed us to the image of His Son. Jesus. God in the flesh. Love in a body. We always had God's love. The ultimate truth of the universe that God is love and He loves you has always and will always be true. Nothing can change that. Nothing you do, or don't do. Because its not about what you do. Its about who you are. And who God is. God IS love. There is nothing else He COULD do, even if He wanted to. Which He doesn't. He wanted to love you so bad that He created you. He loved you so much that He would literally rather die than be without you. He wanted you to know the truth. So He said it--Jesus said there is no greater love that a man can have than to lay his life down for his friends--and then He went to the cross and did it. He put His money where His mouth was, so to speak. He made absolute sure we understood what love was--again, laying your life down... giving everything you have and everything you are--by loving us. By shining that light of love so that we could see clearly. See HIM clearly. See LOVE clearly. We love because He first loved us. We love Him by loving each other. We dwell in love by dwelling in Him, because He dwells in us. We CAN fill ourselves to overflowing with His love because He first filled us with it. With Himself. See, Jesus didn't just give His life FOR us, He gave His life TO us. So that we could have it. So that we could experience it by letting Him live it in us, and through us, and as us. That's how the truth that we know makes us free. We've already been freed. Jesus unlocked the door to the prison, if I can say it that way. But as long as you think the door is still locked, you'll either keep trying to devise ways to escape, or you'll just give up and stay in bodage. But if you know the door is unlocked, that's when you can walk through the door. A free man with a clean conscious. Free to live. Free to love. To let God love you, and to love others with that same love. That's what life is. That's what the truth is!