"Reality, As It Is"

"What is truth?" (John 18:38).  

    One working definition simply states that truth is "reality, as it is."  Such meaning can only begin with God, the only One (or thing) who once existed when nothing else existed -  "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and world, even from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God" (Psalm 90:2).  Moreover, God comprises the essence of truth and reality because He alone exists in and of Himself - "I Am That I Am" (Exodus 3:14).  Finally, God only has always been, uncreated because He requires no origination as the wondrous One of whom the Psalmist again declared, "From everlasting… Thou art God."  

    In this holy light of reality, the second person of the Godhead, the Son of God, stated unequivocally, "I am… the Truth" (John 14:6).  God is truth in the ultimate sense - reality, as it is.  The beings and things He made are also real, but in the derived sense that "all things were made by Him… by Him all things consist" (John 1:3; Colossians 1:17).  Thus, if we ask in any moment of  our eternal existence, "What is Truth?" or "What is reality, as it is?", the answer will always simply be "God".  He exists as the Truth of this moment in the lives of born again believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, but interestingly enough, also in the existence of those who don't believe.  To the unbelieving Athenian philosophers, the Apostle Paul declared, "In Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28 - emphasis added).  Human beings cannot escape the fact of God, or the reality by which all things exist and consist.  They may reject or ignore such reality, refusing or neglecting personal, redemptive relationship with the Truth.  Humanity nevertheless exists and consists by Divine fiat, swimming as a fish in the ocean that is God whether aware of the reality or not.  "Whither can I go to flee from Thy presence?" asked David rhetorically (Psalm 139:7).  The answer of reality simply proclaims that we cannot escape the fact of God, the truth of God, the reality of God, as it (He) is.

    Believers, of course, do not want to escape such wondrous reality.  "As the hart panteth after the waterworks, so panteth my soul after Thee, o God.  My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God" (Psalm 42:1-2).  We are nevertheless often distracted from the Truth in which we exist and consist.  Paul thus commands that we "awake to righteousness", a mandate synonymous with waking up to reality (I Corinthians 15:34).  What is truth in this moment, and in every moment?  The answer is simply God.  How He is the truth of this moment may be more challenging to our understanding and assimilation.  We will require a lifetime of reading and pondering the Scriptures in order to gain an increasingly working knowledge of Truth in its application.  However, Truth in its essence presently and forever abides in the sublime simplicity - "I AM."  Here we begin, both in principle and in practice.  Within ourselves, we affirm, "You are."  To each other, we declare, "He is."   This is Truth in its essence, reality, as it it.  The present moment offers opportunity to awake and acknowledge the great fact of all things, and of our life and existence…

"The Lord He is God, there is none else beside Him.

Deuteronomy 4:35)

Weekly Memory Verse

   Give thanks unto the Lord, call upon His name, make known His deeds among the people.'

(I Chronicles 16:8)