How Essential Is Knowledge of The TRUTH?

In this column I cannot begin to proclaim all that Jesus teaches about TRUTH in the New Testament, but I pray that these introductory thoughts will create a desire for you to do your own search. It’s fascinating!

Jesus claims, “I am the way, the truth, the life…”. I consider these three in one. In knowing the truth (JESUS), we also know the way and we have the life; because He IS our life—the TRUTH! In other words, apart from Him we cannot know the truth!

John 8:31 and 32, Jesus said: “You are truly my disciples (followers) if you keep obeying my teachings. And you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” When I first read this verse I wondered, how does the truth set me free?


Here are a few things I am discovering:


Notice first he said, ‘if you obey My teachings (TRUTHS)’…how can we obey His teaching (truths) if we do knot know them? How do we get to know them? We cannot know them apart from the Holy Spirit’s revelation of them to us. In John 14:17 Jesus says that He gave the Holy Spirit to ‘lead us into all truth’. So we cannot obey the truth that God has given to us for successful and victorious living if we do not invite the Holy Spirit to reveal it to us. Once we have asked the Holy Spirit to reveal His truth I believe we also need to ask that we will be ready to RECOGNIZE it so we can obey it or respond to it as we should.

Second, what is the value of knowing the TRUTH? I always look for the practical—and one practical benefit of knowing Who He is through the revelation of His Word is being assured that He is loving in all He does, He is faithful even when we are not, He guards and protects us, He knows the plans He has for us…and so much more! So when circumstances come into our lives that are difficult to handle or hard to understand, we can trust Him (the Truth) to be all He promises to be through His Word! Truth sets us free when don’t know the ‘why’, but we do know the ‘Who’ that is behind the circumstances we face. We can trust the TRUTH—Jesus!

Third, it is necessary that we know the truth, because it prepares us for life’s joys and challenges. We are less likely to be distracted to look elsewhere and we will go immediately to the TRUTH of what we know about Jesus. We find freedom in that truth.