In the beginning, according to the apostle Paul, man lied because man chose to lie. These are they who changed the truth into a lie and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator... (Romans 1:25)
The word “changed,” metallasso in the Greek, means “to exchange.” They exchanged His truth for their own “truth,” so that their “truth” might now be sourced not in God the Creator, but in man the creature.
The purpose of that exchange was to allow man or his appointees to be worshipped and served in place of God. However, man could hardly claim the right to be worshiped and served unless he was lord and keeper of his own truth. Ye shall be as gods had been the exchange’s promised result (Genesis 3:5). And it is incumbent upon a god to have his “own” truth. A god without the ability to define the substance of his own truth would hardly be a god at all.
Therefore, the substance of our thoughts and words is now immeasurably different, different by an entire universe from God’s, because, according to Paul, that is the fruit of our willing exchange and its resultant need to redefine truth in our very own terms. The exchange of the truth for the lie left man with only the thoughts and words that appeared, to his newly-opened eyes, to be the truth.
His thoughts are not our thoughts and His words are not our words, because our thoughts and our words are the leftover lies of that fateful and willful exchange.
However – and this is critically important to understand – our words are not lies, first and foremost, because of their immeasurable difference in substance to God’s truth.
Our words are lies, first and foremost, because of their immeasurable difference in source to God’s truth.
Or to say it another way, what ‘first’ makes every man a liar is, surprisingly, not his wrong answer to the question of “What is truth?”
What ‘first’ makes every man a liar is his wrong answer to the question of “Where is truth?”
Not “What is truth?” but “Where is truth?”
That is the original point of disputation between God and man – and the continuing point of disputation to this very day. That is the original reason for the immeasurable differences between God’s thoughts and man’s – and the continuing reason for the immeasurable differences to this very day. And that is the origin of the very first lie ever told – and the continuing origin of all lies told thereafter to this very day.
In the garden, the serpent did not ask Eve, Hath God ‘said’? His was not a question of the substance or content of ‘what’ God had said. Eve was neither deaf, nor did she have a bad memory. She knew exactly ‘what’ God had said, and proves it when she replies, of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. No, the serpent asked instead, Hath ‘God’ said?
It was never a question about whether or not God had actually spoken. Of course He had!
Nor was it a ever a question of whether or not Eve really understood what God had said. Of course she did!
It was not a question about the substance of the words themselves, but a much bigger question about the very source of the words, Himself.
Where was truth? That was the question. Was the truth in God alone? Or could it be found, just as well, somewhere else outside of God? Would one be forced to depend on God’s words alone as the only source for truth, or was there yet another source? Another source, perhaps, according to the serpent, in the new words of new gods. New gods, with new eyes, whose new words would be more fully informed of the truth than the old God’s ever were.
The real question was never about whether or not God had the first say about where truth was. Both the serpent and man knew the answer to that question already.
The real question was always about which ‘god’ would have the ‘final say’ about where truth was. And only man could answer that.
And in one fateful moment of time, man answered the real question. And in that instant, God’s word ceased to be the sole and only where of truth, and another’s word took its place.
Now, man had a new answer to the question of “Where is truth?”
Now, where is truth? Wherever man, the new god, says it is.
And now, what is truth? Whatever man, the new god, says it is.
The idea of a separate, private, and personal domain of ‘truth,’ apart from God’s, was not original with man. Neither was the desire to be worshipped and served as God, in the place of God. Both were authored by another and man simply borrowed them (Isaiah 14:13–14).
And both ideas had always been found together. The ideas of worship and truth are so intrinsically bound together that Jesus says, ... the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him (John 4:23).
He Who is the source of truth is He Who rightly deserves to be worshiped. There is another who had always believed that as well.
Jesus explains, He [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar and the father of it (John 8:44).
The devil abode not, or “stood not,” in the truth. He departed from God as the only Source of truth, and by that departure, now stands in another place, the new source of ‘truth,’ the new where. And from this new source, in this new place, man now draws his own new substance for his very own new ‘truth.’ And where is that new where in which man now stands?
When the devil speaks a lie, said Jesus, the place from which he speaks is of his own. That’s the new where. The Greek word for “own” is the word idios, meaning “pertaining to self, one’s own; by implication, private or separate.” It’s that from which we derive the word “idiom,” a phrase whose meaning is separate from the literal meaning of the constituent words: a “change of words” – or, in this case, an exchange of words.
Lies are nothing more and nothing less than separate words. Idios words. From the beginning, says Jesus, the devil abode not in the truth, but had his “own” separate words, the very first separate words from God’s words. According to Jesus, man’s own separate words were birthed in him by his new father, the father of all separate words.
Said the serpent to Eve, Precisely to the contrary of what that Source told you, Ye shall not surely die. Allow me to give you another word from another source, he said to her: A private word, a personal word, a word of your very ‘own.’ An ‘idios’ word. Your own word, separate from God’s word. A word so special and so different that, when you act on this word, it will cause you to ‘see’ exactly like God Himself sees. And when you have your very own eyes to see like God sees, you’ll finally decide for your very own self, like real gods always do, what is really good and what is really evil. (Genesis 3:4)
Unlike the serpent, Jesus was very careful to describe His manner of speaking as being anything but idios. Anything but private, personal, or separate from God’s. According to Jesus, He Himself had none of His ‘own’ words. Not one single word. He, unlike the serpent, was satisfied not only to faithfully deliver the words of Another, but in reality, to be the very Word of Another:
My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. (John 7:16)
For I have not spoken of myself; but the father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say and what I should speak. (John 12:49)
The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself. (John 14:10)
... and the word which ye hear is not mine but the Father’s which sent me. (John 14:24)
I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things. (John 16:13–16)
I have given them thy word. (John 17:4)
I have given them the words which thou gavest me... (John 17:8)
Unlike the first man, the Second man answers the question exactly to the contrary. Hath ‘God’ said? the devil, in effect, asks of Jesus in the wilderness temptation. Yes, Jesus answers. ‘God’ hath said: It is written..., It is written..., and It is written... (Matthew 4:1–11).
According to Jesus, the ‘where’ of truth can be found in only one place. And not to find truth in this place is not to find truth at all. According to Him, there is one, and only one, Source of truth.
Jesus prayed to His Father in the garden of Gethsemane, Sanctify them through thy truth: Thy word is truth (John 17:17).
That’s where truth is, says Jesus: only in Thy word.
To “sanctify” is simply “to separate unto God.” The serpent’s ‘truth’ had separated as well. But not unto God.
Jesus declares that the truth that “separates unto God” can be found nowhere except in His Father’s word. And the power of this word to separate unto God lies in the fact that this word is itself separate unto God. It separates unto God because it is the only word already separate unto God.
This separated truth, found only in His separated word, in turn separates all those who believe that word from all those who do not. And more than that, His separated word separates men away from their ‘own’ separate words, their idios words, back unto God and His word.
According to Jesus, those who are not separated from their ‘own’ words by this word are not themselves truly separated unto God.
Simply said: if Thy word is truth, as Jesus declared it is, then that which is not Thy word is not truth.
“What is truth?” is the age-old question of philosophy. Always asked, and never satisfyingly answered.
At His trial, that’s exactly what Pilate had asked Jesus: What is truth? (John 18:37)
But Jesus gives Pilate no answer to his question, because Pilate has asked the wrong question first. “What is truth?” has always been the wrong first question to ask God.
That question, when asked first, has far too many answers, about far too many subjects, from far too many sources.
The only right first question to ask God concerning truth is not “What is truth?” but “Where is truth?”
That question has only one answer. And that answer comes from only one Source.
The only right answer to the only right first question to ever ask God about truth is the one that Jesus would have given to Pilate, had he asked it:
“Where is truth?”
Exactly where you would never have imagined to look:
Standing right in front of you.