“Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in Him: ‘If you abide in My word, you are truly My disciples. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ They answered Him, ‘We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. How can You say, “You will become free”?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the Son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.’”
John 8:31–36
In the modern era, beginning with the Enlightenment, humanistic man began to take the words of our text—verse thirty-two, “and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”—and divorce them from the rest of the passage. They declared that truth was man’s salvation, that everything a man needed to know was simply what the truth about things was, and that this knowledge itself would be the salvation of mankind.
The modern university was built on this premise. Behind the messianic character of modern education in every field lies the belief that truth, knowledge, information, and data will save humanity.
Now, in a certain sense, there is a germ of truth in this belief—but not the truth these men have in mind. Truth is indeed related to salvation. As Christians, we believe that there is an inherent and essential coherence to all reality. All things in God’s universe are connected. It is one seamless fabric.
When you speak of truth, you speak of God. When you speak of salvation, you speak of sanctification. All these concepts are intertwined and interdependent realities.
However, the moment you deny that God is God, you also deny the coherence of reality. Then things no longer fit together, and you no longer have any certainty—as modern man does not even have certainty that he truly has a universe. As many scholars of our time have said, it may instead be a “multiverse”: many truths, many realities, many origins. If chance is ultimate, then there is no correlation or coherence between truth and salvation.
I noted earlier that the modern university is built upon this premise. It is interesting to observe how many colleges and universities around the world have taken the Latin word veritas, meaning truth, and placed it on their seal or emblem. Harvard, for example, has veritas on its seal.
Originally, when it became Harvard’s emblem, it had a Christian meaning. By veritas they meant truth, and the purpose of studying at Harvard was to know Christ better and to know all things in Christ. Thus, whatever area of knowledge concerned them, they sought to extend man’s dominion under Christ.
Only knowledge leads to knowledge. In other words, if you have a difficult problem in trigonometry, you must know trigonometry in order to solve it. You must have knowledge in order to gain knowledge.
If you begin without God and without a given deposit of knowledge, you can never know anything. The moment you set God aside and say, “I know nothing and I will begin from zero,” you can never arrive anywhere. Just as you cannot solve a trigonometry problem without knowledge of trigonometry, so if you begin knowing nothing, you can never come to know anything.
Knowledge opens the door to knowledge. That is why man must be taught. That is why God, in the beginning, taught man in the Garden of Eden and later through His Word. He established certain principles by which man could know—principles by which man could trust his senses and trust his reasoning when it is governed by God.
For us as Christians, truth is propositional because language itself is propositional. Language communicates reality—or it is not language at all, but falsehood.
The primary word for truth in the Old Testament comes from a verb meaning “to support” or “to uphold.” In another form, the same word means “a pillar.” It carries the sense of something firm, fixed, morally directed, upright, stable, and steadfast.
This is very important: the biblical meaning of truth includes moral direction.
Remember that in the world God created there is coherence in all things; everything is interconnected. Therefore, truth must not be separated from morality, nor morality and truth from salvation.
What is true is also what is morally directed. What saves man is inseparable from what is true, from what is moral, and from what sanctifies.
In other words, knowledge and truth are not neutral. They are moral. They are connected to redemption. They are aspects of the coherent reality of God.
Jesus Christ said:
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
John 14:6
Ultimately, the truth is Jesus Christ. Therefore, as our text declares:
“If you abide in My word, you are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
John 8:32
To the extent that a man is a disciple of Christ—to the extent that he abides in the Word of Christ and in the life of Christ, becoming a part of His being, a member of His body, of His redeemed humanity—to that extent the man is free. To that extent he knows the truth.
Man’s awareness of truth, therefore, is an integral part of his growth in Christ—his growth in sanctification, his growth in all the things that belong to God—because of the coherence of reality.
The greatest slavery, as our Lord said, is slavery to sin, because it separates man from God and therefore from truth, from salvation, and from all things. It blinds and destroys.
Therefore, they are truly slaves. In reality, they are not free. They do not know the truth.
Our Lord weaves all these things together. No man can be separated from God and at the same time be close to the truth.
Excerpt taken from the book Salvation and Godly Rule by R.J. Rushdoony.
