1.3 Knowing Truth
© 2015 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
Knowing Truth
What is the truth? I want to expand a bit more on how we know the truth. The diagrams following show us how the various elements of truth work always together.
Truth is Jesus as Word and Spirit coming forth from the Father to create and to sustain all things. Word and Spirit can never be separated and both together are ALWAYS personal, that is always the Lord Jesus Christ. Spirit prepares the way for Word, yet Word always leads and Spirit always follows. Truth, Spirit-Word, is always Jesus.Human Perception of Truth
Truth is always perceived by the human through faith first. The eyes see and the mind thinks only what the heart first believes. On the one hand, reason tries to figure everything out; on the other hand, our life, the story we tell ourselves about ourselves arises from spirit perception, our seeing of ourselves. When reason is subject to the Word of faith, however, it is essential to knowing truth.Truth as perceived by the human is always relative to the human person and comes out of the believing of the heart.
Truth Is Always PersonalJesus lives in our hearts through faith; that is, TRUTH enters us only through the believing of our hearts. As the Word God is always speaking enters through our faith into our minds, it becomes the reasoning of Christ. We have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16). And the Spirit coming with that Word as Jesus alive in us becomes our only Life, the only story of self that we know.
God is a Person; He always comes into us as a person, the Lord Jesus, who then becomes personal in us as our person. Truth is always Personal.
Another “Truth”
The human is capable of hearing another speaker, receiving another word, and acting in the power of another spirit. The other speaker is the accuser; the other word is the lie; the other spirit is the spirit of this world. Faith, receiving the lie from the accuser, is unbelief.
Accusation, coming into the human through unbelief, becomes the carnal mind, a mind separated from God. And the human story of life becomes the putting on of an outward appearance to impress the world.
Endless PRETENDING!
Comparison
Look at the incredible difference between these perceptions of “truth.” Yet the human remains the same, heart, mind, and face. The difference? One thing. Who lives in your heart?
Truth Is Always Jesus.
To know truth, we want the Word God actually speaks, we want Jesus personal in us, and we want the Spirit of God causing us to know God, to know our true self.
Jesus is always the Word coming forth from God, and Jesus is always the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of truth. Jesus, as Word and as Spirit, comes into you and me only through our Faith. There is no truth unless we believe that what God says is true. There is no truth unless we know that all that God speaks is Jesus alive in our hearts. All truth begins inside of us only by and through these words: Jesus lives in my heart!
Word
Word includes the text on the pages of the Bible. But rightly dividing the Word of Truth means that some things God says lead, and other things God says are meant to follow. Or we could say – In Scripture are a number of key statements that are at the core and heart of God.
When we enter into the knowledge of God through the key statements in the Word, we then perceive all other things God says in a new light with everything finding its place. Very often, a secondary word means something quite different from what we once thought. We see it now in its proper place as a support to those verses that must lead.
Word and Faith
Without the words of the Bible, then Spirit is whatever fancy anyone wishes to follow and Jesus is distant and vague. But most of all, there is no Covenant, no sure and solid Rock that binds us to God and God to us.
Yet Word can do nothing for us – Not one word from God can accomplish anything in our lives. Except it enter by faith. We must believe God is telling us the truth, a believing that comes only by a miracle of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus – Word – Spirit – coming through our Faith are never separate in our experience.
Spirit and Life
Spirit is the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. It is only by the Holy Spirit that we can know anything concerning God. One must have the Holy Spirit filling their spirit even to be aware of God. But we must be immersed into the Holy Spirit, the Spirit filling our minds, our wills, and our emotions, before we can know God inside of us. We are immersed into the Holy Spirit by faith, only as we ASK. It is the Spirit that shines upon us the face, the story, of Jesus our only Life.
The Spirit Teaches
Only the Holy Spirit teaches us of Jesus and of truth; the Holy Spirit leads us into all truth. We can believe that God is telling us the truth ONLY by the immediate and miraculous operation of the Holy Spirit flooding our soul. The Holy Spirit is the anointing that causes us to know God.
Without the Spirit, then word becomes legalism and theology, and Jesus becomes a distant Judge, even an accuser. Without the Spirit, then faith does not ask and the believer hides under accusation. Paul said that if we belong to Jesus, we are always IN the Spirit.
Jesus Lives in Us
Jesus is the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Word IS the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus IS every word proceeding from the mouth of God. Never do we think of “truth” or Word or Spirit as anything other than the Person of Jesus alive inside of us, nor do we ever consider ourselves as separate from Jesus. Jesus is Truth; He is the faith that fills our hearts, the faith of the Son of God by which we believe in Him. Jesus is the words on the pages of the Bible. Any words from the Bible, coming into us apart from Jesus, are not words from God, and the only thing they do is kill.
Christ Jesus
Jesus lives in our hearts by faith. We abide in Jesus; Jesus abides in us. We put on the Lord Jesus Christ. We fill our minds with the Word God speaks only that we might know this Jesus who lives in our hearts. The Spirit comes into us for one reason – to cause us to know this Jesus who fills us with His glory.
Any consideration of “truth” or of “Christ” that is not centered in knowing the Person of Jesus alive in our hearts is not truth at all. Any such consideration of “truth” is not found inside the courses of Christ Revealed Bible Institute. A “Christ” without Jesus is no Christ at all.
Reason
Reason is the servant of truth. Reason, logic, comes out from Word, logos, entering into us through faith, as we speak only what God speaks. By reason, we contemplate every nuance of meaning found in the key verses of Scripture, taking that meaning as far into God as we can go.
God is infinite and eternal; forever, reason will take us through Word ever further into the knowledge of God. By reason, we draw in every word God says in the Bible to enable us to know the extent, the implications, the meanings, the applications of the key words of God by which we live.
Fake Reason
The problems with reason come only from the fact that there is a false word, called accusation, that comes through a false faith, called unbelief, to become the non-reason, the insanity of humans, typically called “reason.”
Real reason operates in very similar ways to fake “reason.” The difference is entirely the source of word, the good speaking of Christ, entering through faith, versus the accusation of the accuser. Fake reason begins with “Did God really say that?” Real reason begins with the incredible assumption that God is telling us the truth.
Faith Speaks
Because faith is our active engagement with the Word God is continuously speaking, our faith is expressed first through our tongue. We believe, therefore we speak (2 Corinthians 4:13). Faith places the Word, Jesus, the Word, God Himself, into our mouths. The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart (that is, the word of faith which we preach) (Romans 10:8).
Faith makes Christ Jesus personal inside of us. Faith speaks; faith prophecies Christ, calling Him forth as our only Life.
Faith, Seeing, and Story
What we see, and thus, what we reason, comes first out of faith, out of what we believe. No one believes what they see; everyone sees only what they first believe. Believing ALWAYS comes first; seeing always comes out of believing. We see what we first believe.
Then, out of the believing of our hearts, out of the speaking of our mouths, out of the seeing of our eyes, we tell a story of ourselves, a face that we wear. Our story is Christ Jesus, our Salvation and our only Life.
Father’s Heart
As learners going through this course, and all courses in this Bible Institute, you will be engaged with all of these aspects of Truth all the time. Thus these things will become more meaningful to you over time and forever.
Truth is Jesus, and Jesus lives in you.
We have positioned the flow of Purpose as beginning with the Heart and Desire of the Father. For that reason, before we can begin with the most important verse in the Bible, we must know the place from which that verse comes, we must know Father’s Heart.