Thoughts are always delivered to us in the form of words.
And because words are nothing more than the containers in which thoughts are transported from one mind to another, as long as they preserve the content of the original thought without leakage or spillage along the way, any words in any language would serve equally as well as any other to transport any thought that any thinker thinks. Even God’s thoughts.
However, in the special case of transporting God’s thoughts, we could only be certain that the particular words used had successfully preserved their content if, and only if, His thoughts arrived to us with their original immeasurable difference from our own thoughts still intact.
The words would have to pass the “Isaiah test,” exactly like the thoughts did. Send His thoughts in any size, shape, or color of word-container that you will, but make sure they arrive to us still containing the same immeasurable difference from our own with which He originally thought them.
Otherwise, if the truth of His words, upon their arrival to us, was what we already thought it would be before we heard them – then we would know for certain that something had been leaked and lost along the way.
That would be the critical test: between the content of His words and the content of our words, there would have to remain, intact, the same gigantic, universe-crossing, immeasurable measure of difference that always distinguishes His thoughts from our thoughts.
Thoughts or words, it wouldn’t matter. If on arrival to us, His were not enormously different than our own – different by an entire universe than our own – then they could not possibly be His.
Send that word-package back. It could not have come from God.
And very quickly, while we’re on the subject of sending packages back: the next time some especially spiritual type – any especially spiritual type – tries to convince you that God sent him to bring you the real straight skinny on all-things-spiritual, ask him – before he even gets started – Isaiah’s “test question.”
Ask him if he really understands that there is an entire immeasurable universe of difference between everything God thinks and everything he thinks. And wait for an answer. If he gives you a blank stare in return – and he probably will – tell him you left the shower running and you’ll get back with him later. Much later.
He may want you to think that he’s a college graduate in spiritual matters, but you’ll know, because Isaiah told you right here, this guy isn’t even out of grade school. Don’t let him waste one minute of your time pretending he’s an expert. He’ll have nothing to say to you of any value whatsoever.
All of his paintings may be extraordinary, remarkable, and beautiful Da Vincis. But they won’t be the one priceless One that you’re really looking for. Send that word-package back as well. It also could not have come from God.
Every characteristic, without exception, that appears in God’s thoughts, must of necessity appear in His words as well. As are His thoughts, so are His words. There is no difference between them whatsoever.
Therefore, if God’s thoughts are not your thoughts, not by an entire universe, then likewise, His words will not be your words, also, not by an entire universe. If He doesn’t think anything like you, then there’s no way he talks anything like you. No way around that simple and logical conclusion.
And because of that, rather than saying, My thoughts are not your thoughts, God could just as easily and just as truthfully have said through the prophet Isaiah, My words are not your words. But he didn’t.
He said that, instead, through Paul.
In response to the question of whether the unbelief of some men in regard to any of God’s words invalidates the faithfulness of God Himself to any of His own words, the apostle Paul cries out in protest:
Your thoughts, declares Isaiah, are immeasurably different than God’s. Your words, declares Paul, are incompatibly different with God’s. Both for precisely the same astonishing reason:
God’s thoughts and words are not your thoughts and words, says Paul, because His are true – and yours are not.
According to the apostle, all of those immeasurable differences that exist between our thoughts and God’s thoughts – those that we ignore as unimportant or view as simply benign – are in fact, when voiced, categorical, absolute, and unmitigated lies. They are the dreadful and telling tokens of an unseen and evil-intentioned estrangement from God.
For God, it has never been about some men’s unbelief, declares Paul. It has always been about all men’s unbelief:
Not that some men are liars, but rather that every man is a liar.
There is none righteous, says Paul, no, not one (Romans 3:10). And there are none that are not liars; no, not one.
All have sinned and come short of the glory of God, he declares (Romans 3:23). And all are liars and come short of the truth of God.
Every throat is an open sepulchre. And under every mans lips, is the poison of asps, he proclaims (Romans 3:13). And every man is a liar, and none are not liars. Every man. Every word. Every time. Without exception.
The immeasurable difference between God’s thinking and our own is finally unmasked for what it really is: it is the lie.
Stripped of all its pretense and posture, the foundation of man’s real and only relationship with God is finally revealed: His thoughts are not our thoughts, and His words are not our words, because God is true, but every man is a liar.
And the distance between the truth that He speaks and the lies that we speak places God and us as far apart as any two things in existence can possibly be:
Precisely an entire immeasurable universe apart.
And astonishingly, this very idea, that God is true but every man a liar, is, by Paul’s declaration, the bedrock of all right thinking about God and man. This is square one. This is ground zero. And according to the apostle, if you get this wrong, you get everything after this wrong.
This is where you rightly divide and correctly order an entire immeasurable universe of thought with only one single stroke. With one single line of division, drawn precisely down the middle between God and man, you place God on one far side of the universe – and man on the other far side of the universe – and make sure they never touch anywhere in the middle.
God is always true – and man is never true.
And God is never a liar – and man is always a liar.
And that is the real immeasurable difference, says Paul, that currently and continually exists between God and every man.
This command by the apostle Paul, to let God be true but every man a liar, is alone the single and solitary thought among all other thoughts which divides all those who will find the truth, from all those who will not.
This is the thought which divides the strait gate from the wide gate and the narrow way from the broad way. This is the division which requires that which every man finds most difficult, foreign, and antagonistic to his own natural mind. And because of that, few there be that find it (Matthew 7:13–14).
Listen very carefully: this is the very place where every publican who goes home justified smites his own breast and says, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”
And this is very same place where every Pharisee, who goes home condemned, also smites the breast of every publican and says, “God be merciful to him a sinner.”
This is where we finally lay bare the real stone of stumbling and the real rock of offense for every Pharisee and his kind:
Every Pharisee would most gladly let God be true – and even more gladly, let every man be a liar – except for one.
And that one exception is the razor edge of divide that sends the sinful publican home justified, and the righteous Pharisee home condemned.
This is that which guarantees both the humility and the ultimate exaltation of all who receive it, and the self-exaltation and the ultimate abasement of all who reject it.
Paul’s words are nothing less than sight to the blind. This is the only vantage point from which you will ever be able to see the real immeasurable difference that lies between every one of God’s thoughts and words, and every one of yours.
Without the conscious decision on your part to be a liar, you may very well let God be true, but you will make the fateful mistake, like the Pharisee always does, of letting yourself be true as well.
And because you know your own thoughts, but are totally ignorant of the immeasurable differences that lie between every one of your’s and every one of God’s, unless you allow yourself to be made a liar, you will, without fail and without even knowing it, change His thoughts and words when you hear them to conform to your own, instead of changing your own to conform to His.
And consequently, yours will become the joyous search to discover all the likenesses between God’s thoughts and your own. And you, along with every other Pharisee, will find them in abundance.
Let God be true, but every man a liar, you will hear the apostle Paul demand. “Every man,” you will whisper to God, “except for me.”
And when you go up to the temple to pray, unlike the sinful publican, your only idea of a humble and heartfelt prayer will be, God I thank thee that I am not as other men are.
Far from wanting this dividing difference to disappear, Paul would call heaven and earth to record a witness against it. “Don’t blot this out!” he would protest. “Build a monument to it!”
This is the immeasurable difference, finally revealed.
Paul would cement this divide permanently into the divine narrative, once and for all, forever more. This, he declares, is the true measurement of the distance, and nothing short of it, that lies between God and every man.
Paul casts his words into the riveting delivery of a divine imperative: You, he demands, Let God be true, and You, but every man a liar.
Let God be true. The word “let” in this verse is the Greek word genomai. It’s an active verb that means “to cause to be,” “to create,” or “to bring into being.” It’s that from which we derive the words “generate” and “genesis,” and describes the very act of creating something out of absolutely nothing.
And here, with that one imperative word, Paul directs you to assume the role of creator.
Here, it is you, not God, who are responsible “to cause to be,” or “to bring into being,” not in the cosmos at large as God once did, but in your own heart and mind, that which establishes God’s thoughts and words to be absolutely and categorically true, at all times, under every circumstance. Every word. Every time. No exceptions. You, he demands, let God be true.
Paul is not requiring that you somehow create reality. Only God can do that. You are instead charged here with creating conformity to reality. It is not that you will somehow make God true in some larger sense of the word. He is already true in every sense of the word.
Here, you are simply required to reconstruct the truth of your own perspective in conformity to the truth of His. To bring your own “not-like-His” thoughts and words back into agreement with His own “not-like-yours” thoughts and words. A conscious agreement that has, according to the apostle, never existed in you before.
The fact that Paul commands you to create it means that it does not now exist, and would never occur, neither naturally nor accidentally, apart from your own effort. Even God will not create this agreement for you, nor in you.
This is your work, not God’s work. This will be your creation, not His creation. In you, it does not exist, and cannot exist, until you make it so.
So, Paul says, make it so: you let God be true.
But that’s only half the work. And by no means the harder.
But every man a liar. This second part is the more troubling to our natural way of thinking.
The only way to make every man a liar is to conclude that everything you naturally say about spiritual things – and everything every other man naturally says about spiritual things as well – everything, without exception – is in direct and willful disagreement with everything God says about those same things.
The only way to make every man a liar is to concede that there is an entire universe of difference between everything you say and everything that God says. And that everything He says is right. And that everything you say is wrong.
If that is not the case, then every man is not really a liar. And in that case, God becomes one, for falsely accusing you of being one. Don’t miss the apostle’s point. There is a great deal of difference between simply being wrong, and being a liar. That difference is the difference of intent.
Paul is not requiring that you count every man wrong.
Paul is requiring that you count every man a liar.
Men are already liars. No need for you to make them so. You are simply instructed to create a world in which you agree that they are – and that you are as well – indeed, already liars.
You are instructed by the apostle to create a world where you may readily confess that you and God are currently in an ongoing relationship which is accurately characterized by the absolute maximum amount of disagreement that could possibly exist anywhere in the entire universe; a world in which you and God sit on polar opposite ends of agreement about truth, in both thought and word; a world where the disagreement is continually so sharp and so substantial that it justifiably warrants your permanent assignment to a very special category of existence before God – one which, prior to this, you would never even have imagined designating for yourself.
That is, from now on, you are to number yourself among the liars.
Here, you are not allowed to regard yourself, or any other man, as intrinsically good but somehow simply misguided, or the tragic victim of circumstances somehow beyond your control.
No. Here, you are simply a liar.
God already counts you one. But here, you are directed by the apostle to count yourself one as well; to create a place where you, for the very first time, may concur with God’s accurate assessment of all that you think and say.
Here, you are directed by the apostle to genomai a world in which you will willingly agree with Him to always count yourself a liar.
Imagine that: the one time in your life you are allowed, nay, commanded, to create a world like God once did, and in your new garden the only role that is appropriate for you to play – is that of the serpent.
Why must it be so?
Going all the way back to the first garden of Eden, God’s words have always vied with the words of others for believability. In the competition for your belief, there are only two contenders: God and everyone else. Ultimately, you will judge God to be believable only to the extent that you judge yourself and everyone else to be unbelievable.
And unfortunately, there in the beginning, God was not the one you judged to be believable. In that first garden, with someone other than God, in Adam, all of mankind made a much different agreement. In that agreement, every man would be true, but God would be the liar. According to the apostle, you must now break that first agreement by making a new one.
So that you won’t even be tempted, ever again, to even try to believe someone other than God, the apostle directs you to assign yourself, and every other man, to a position of permanent un-believability:
Every man – a liar. Permanently.
From now on, for God only will be reserved the position of permanent and irrevocable believability. According to Paul, when it comes to all matters spiritual, you must never again count yourself as true.
That status will be reserved for God alone. Let God be true. Always and alone. But every man a liar. Always and alone. God will be the sole source of truth. He will not share that position with you, nor anyone else.
And any truth that you, the liar – or any other men, the liars – speak from this moment on will be strictly accredited to God’s account and to no one else’s. Particularly not your own.
Any truth that you will ever have in your mind or in your mouth, after this, will only be truth, on loan, from Him: truth from the One Who thinks nothing like you; the One Who has never thought anything like you. Truth from the One Who speaks nothing like you; the One Who has never spoken anything like you.
My thoughts are not your thoughts. Not one. Not ever. No exceptions.
Why must every man be labeled a liar?
From the very first moment a person is labeled a liar, we begin to examine his every subsequent statement in light of that label. His every word is scrutinized to find not the truth, but the lie.
Liars lie. That’s what they do. That’s why they are liars.
Paul says you must genomai the spiritual world in which every man, without exception, including yourself, is a liar; that is, one whose own word in spiritual matters is never trustworthy again, simply because of who he is: he is a liar. Every word. Every time. Without exception.
So here’s what I suggest you do: make your line of liars. Make it long. Include every man. And install yourself at the head of the line.
You will now be authorized to scrutinize every word of your own, and every word of every other man as well, to find not the truth in those words – there is none – but the lie. And the truth of God’s word will be that which becomes glaringly apparent by its contrasting universe of difference to every other word not like it.
His thoughts are not your thoughts. Ever. And His words are not your words. Ever. His words are true. Your words are not. And His are only those which are not like yours. Not by an entire immeasurable universe of difference.
Therefore, outside His word, trust no one else’s.
Most especially, not your own.
From now on, you will be the liar. And God will be the True.
And here, in your new-found world of agreement with God, for the very first time ever, as strange as it may sound, it will only be the willingly self-labeled liars – that ever speak the truth again.
And those who will not willingly label themselves as such will continue, by default, to make God the liar, and by default, to make themselves the true. Just like the Pharisee.
Let God be true, but every man a liar.
Every man. Every word. Every time. Without exception.