In a world where people are told to live life according to “their truth”, it’s no wonder why people struggle finding purpose, meaning, and value. By claiming that individual people can have their own version of the truth is to misrepresent and falsely communicate the very definition of truth.

Contrary to the way the rest of the world defines truth, in reality, truth is not subject to personal bias or interpretation. Its source exists outside the realm of the human condition. Truth is immutable. Truth is fixed. Truth is eternal.

Luckily for us, God set up a system whereby humans could gain insight into the eternal characteristics of truth. In fact, Paul writes in Romans that what may be known about God is actually plain to people and that the only reason people miss it is because they have a propensity to “suppress” the truth because of their wickedness (Romans 1:18-19).

So here what this means;

1. The knowledge of truth is inherent within all humans, and

2. Truth exposes wickedness.

The bottom line is we all know what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s true, what’s false, but because of the evil within us, we push out the truth so that we don’t have to be held accountable to it.

However, if you ever want to experience a freedom-giving truth, the kind that’s described by Jesus, you have to allow the truth to expose areas of wickedness in your life.

This may seem harsh, because we usually like to think of ourselves as pretty good people, and evaluate our actions as being “not that bad,” but only in seeing ourselves from God’s vantage point can we ever hope to experience the freedom we all long for.

John elaborates on this in 1 John 1. He states,

“…God is light. In him is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in darkness , we lie and do not live by the truth.” (vs. 5-6)

What John is saying is that if we expect to have true fellowship with God, then we have to see things the way he sees them, and we have to call things out the way he would. God exposes darkness. He has to. That’s what light does.

The good news is that once we realize the depravity of the darkness that resides within us, we can quickly and easily embrace God’s solution for our depravity. From there we can have fellowship with God and begin living according to God’s ways because we’ve acknowledged truth the way he defines it.

Here’s another reason truth can’t be relative to an individuals’ version of it – the core of truth is about defining who God is.

In Romans 1:20 Paul says that since the beginning of creation, who God is and what he does has been made obvious through the things which he made.

This is one reason why the theory of evolution has such wide acceptance in the world today. If Satan can confuse people about the natural order of this world, then God’s nature and characteristics can be maligned causing people confusion.

Since truth is the express image of God, I can’t have my “version” of truth. Only he can define who he is. He cannot be defined by me.

Jesus told us in John 8 that knowing truth would set people free. Knowing what truth? Knowing the truth about who God is and what he does. He added, that only when people have a true revelation of who God is and what he does, would people be set free enough to be his disciples.

A lot of false information exists about God both within in the church and in the world. That’s why knowing God for who he (how he defines himself), and what he does (his actions toward mankind), is at the core of true discipleship.

To that end one must account for the differences between God’s definition of himself as “love,” and the actions the church and the world ascribe to him, namely that he allows bad things to happen in people’s live in order to teach them.

Everyone knows that if you really loved someone you would never allow something negative to befall them if you had the capacity to help. So, is God love or not?

If you’re really looking to be set free from every negative circumstance in your life, then you must reconcile this false teaching of God “allowing” evil in your life and his definition of himself as love.

The experiencing the benefits of truth lies in understanding God’s nature of love, and the display of that love through Jesus’ work on the cross.