Jesus said, ... ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free (John 8:32).
And if you shall know the truth, then obviously you don’t know it now. And if you shall be free, then obviously you are not free now.
Jesus declares in no uncertain terms that, before you meet Him, Who is His Father’s Word (John 1:14), you neither know the truth, nor are you free. You may know many things, but truth is not among them. And you may be many things, but free is not one of them.
But if this verse is simply left as it is quoted here, the hearer always wrongly infers that this is a “What is truth?” statement from Jesus; that ‘whatever’ truth may happen to be, it will be known, in time, with certainty, always, by some inevitable means, no matter what. As if Jesus were saying, Just hang around long enough, and sooner or later, ‘whatever’ the truth happens to be, will always show up. Because, after all, Ye shall know the truth.
But that’s really only the second half of Jesus’ actual quote. And that makes this half-quote a very misleading misquote. It’s the little-known first half that qualifies the oft-quoted second half with a specific condition which changes its meaning entirely from a “What is truth?” statement into a “Where is truth?” statement.
If you continue in my word, then are you my disciples indeed, Jesus says first, then adds in the very same breath, and you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free (John 8:31–32).
Where is truth? Only, says Jesus, in my word.
But in the very same breath in which He assures us that His word is the only ‘where’ in which truth can be found, He also informs us that, apart from a concentrated and disciplined effort on our part, the ‘what’ of truth that can only be found in His word will never be found.
According to Jesus, even if you do know where to find the correct ‘source’ of truth, there is no guarantee you will ever find the correct ‘substance’ of truth. Astonishingly, finding the truth is not a foregone and inevitable conclusion even if you do come to Jesus to find it. It’s strictly an if-then proposition. And if there is no if, then there will be no then.
If you continue in my word, then are you my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
Only if you continue until you become my disciples. Mere casual inquiries will never uncover this truth of which Jesus speaks. And that fact tells us something we never knew before we heard these words: the truth that Jesus promises is “hidden” truth. Hidden from all who are not willing to continue in His word until they become His disciples.
This truth, if it is to be found, will be certain to be a ‘non-intuitive’ truth. And because His thoughts are not our thoughts by an entire universe, this truth, if it is found, is very likely to be an utterly ‘counter-intuitive’ truth.
Intuitive truth, by its very definition, never requires any kind of continuance-unto-discipline to uncover. It’s simply never necessary. Its apprehension is, instead, immediate. I look at the sun, I close my eyes immediately. My hand touches the hot stove, I remove it immediately.
Intuitive truth is both instinctive and immediate. No need for three day seminars or long tutorials on the nature of light or heat before I close my eyes or withdraw my hand. No need for a continuance-unto-discipleship.
Intuitive truth is instant truth. Easy truth.
But the truth of which Jesus speaks is neither instant nor easy. The fact that it requires discipleship to find, tells us that this is a different kind of truth than any other. A truth not readily apparent and not easily seen. A truth that will forever remain hidden from non-disciples.
And therein lies the immeasurable difference which identifies it exclusively as His truth.
If I take you to the fourteenth floor of a downtown building and say to you, “Don’t jump out this window and you shall know the truth,” you will immediately apprehend the meaning of my words.
You will not come back a week from now and say, “What an undisciplined moron I am. I’ve jumped out that fourteenth floor window six times already since you told me not to. I know I need to discipline myself in that ‘don’t-jump’ way of thinking because I really do want to know the truth, but that ‘don’t jump out the fourteenth floor window’ is such an unnatural way of thinking to me that I’m finding it really difficult to wrap my mind around such an abstract and obscure concept.”
No, you’ll take one look out that window, fourteen floors down, give me the two thumbs-up, and say, “I got it!” There’ll be no need for any long-term continuance-unto-discipline as you jump out the window over and over again until the truth slowly and finally emerges from the shadows of non-intuitiveness. No. You’ll get it instantly. First time you look down.
But that’s exactly how it doesn’t work with Jesus’ truth. This is truth unlike any you have ever seen before.
These are the words of that One Whose thoughts you’ve never even thought, nor could have ever thought. These are the words that are immeasurably different than your own by precisely an entire universe.
You will not understand the truth of these words the first time you look down at them. Or the second time. Or the third. To find this truth, you’ll have to jump out this window, over and over and over again.
If the first time you hear the words of Jesus, you say, “I got it!” then the only thing we can know with absolute certainty is, “you don’t got it!” To know this truth, discipleship is required. And that is why so few will ever know it.
The root of the Greek word for “disciples” is the word methe, from which we derive the word “mathematics.” No one is born intuitively knowing mathematics. It must be taught. And learning it requires strenuous, difficult, and tiring effort.
Imagine your calculus teacher announcing on the first day of class, “Just do whatever comes naturally and you’ll get it. You can figure this out without one word of instruction from me. No discipline is required because you’ll intuit it correctly the very first time you try.”
God’s thoughts are not your thoughts and never have been. They are completely and utterly ‘unknown-to-you’ thoughts. And His ‘unknown-to-you’ thoughts are not even from the same side of the universe as your own ‘already-known-to-you’ thoughts.
If you find His words easy to understand, that simply proves beyond any doubt that you’re misunderstanding them by precisely an entire universe.
Jesus says, in effect, that you will find the truth of His words to be so non-intuitive, so counter-intuitive, so un-recognizable as truth, so un-like what you would ever have expected truth to be and to look like, that only a continuance in those words to the point of discipline, like that required to learn higher mathematics, will ever reveal the truth that is in them.
To know this truth will require a calculus-like effort.
But unless you’re convinced beforehand that this is the only ‘where’ in which truth can ever really be found, you’ll just skip this class. It’s just way too hard.
And in real life, who needs calculus anyway?
The real problem is, you cannot find what you cannot recognize. And in your search for truth, if you are unaware that truth can be found only in the immeasurable difference between His thoughts and yours, you will search for the truth, but fail to recognize it even if you do see it.
You will make the fateful mistake of looking for something familiar. And like Mary Magdalene on resurrection morning, everybody in the garden – including the resurrected Christ – will still just look like a gardener.
Because His thoughts are not your thoughts and His words are not your words, His truth is also not ‘your truth.’ His truth is immeasurably different, different precisely by an entire universe, than yours. And His truth can only be recognized in its immeasurable contrast to your own.
How different is your ‘truth’ from His truth?
Your truth chooses only the strong and the wise and the noble in this world.
His truth chooses only the weak and the foolish and the despised in this world. (1 Corinthians 1:27)
Your truth prays, “O Lord, make me strong.”
His truth answers, My strength is made perfect in your weakness. (2 Corinthians 12:9)
Your truth bids you, “Take up your crown and live.”
His truth bids you, “Take up your cross and die” (Mark 8:34).
You must see what God sees like God sees it, because God sees nothing like you see it. His thoughts are never your thoughts. And your thoughts are never His thoughts. And unless you know in your search for truth, to look only for those things which are immeasurably different from that which you would naturally expect, it wouldn’t matter even if God dispatched a heavenly star in all its heavenly glory, with its celestial spotlight illuminating ten thousand-thousands of wildly worshiping angels, right before your very eyes:
It still wouldn’t be enough to convince you that truth really smells like a barn.
Consequently, you must submit yourself to the discipline of His non-intuitive, counter-intuitive, backwards-and-upside-down-from-yours, always-smells-like-a-stable-instead-of-a-palace kind of truth.
In a world filled to the brim with nothing but your own thoughts and those of others exactly like them, successfully identifying His thoughts among all the rest requires an against-nature, alien, and thoroughly other-worldly point of view.
The untrained and the untutored in that search mistakenly believe that truth will be found in the familiar and the friendly, and in the native and in the known, and in the easily accepted and the easily acceptable.
They believe truth has always been one of the family. Something they already knew. Something they grew up knowing. That truth can always be found hiding somewhere among all the thoughts that they already think every day.
They imagine truth to be, at worst, like the prodigal son, perhaps wayward for a season, but now eager to return home. That all they need do is throw open their arms and embrace it – and truth will be right back where it always belonged.
Nothing – and I mean nothing in the entire universe – could be further from the truth about the truth.
Truth is not of this world. And never has been. Truth is a foreigner. A stranger in a strange land. Truth is a pilgrim. And an alien. Truth is hostile to earthly surroundings. And they are hostile to truth in return. Truth is never familiar and never friendly. Never native and never known. Truth speaks a language never uttered here before, with words hidden from the foundation of the world.
Truth shocks and amazes, bewilders and astonishes, distresses and offends with its unexpected and altogether immeasurable differences. In this world, truth is never crowned. Truth is always crucified.
Truth is precisely, exactly, and only what you never imagined, or could imagine, truth to be. And in the end, truth can only be recognized by its immeasurable difference to what you always thought it was.
My thoughts are not your thoughts, declares God. Not once. Not ever. No exceptions.
One final word here about difference:
Don’t let anyone convince you, no matter who they are, that truth’s real immeasurable differences – the ones that really matter most to your life and your future – are somehow measurements between an ‘us’ and a ‘them.’
Every day, countless people devote their unceasing and seemingly tireless efforts to measuring and remeasuring, ad nauseam, the distances and differences between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ Between the conservatives and the liberals, between the blacks and the whites, between the Wall Streets and the Main Streets, between all the haves and all the have nots – and between a thousand other things, equally and exactly as meaningless in the end.
These, they assure you, represent the very bottomless abysses of divide, the very largest and most important, unspannable distances and differences that have ever existed in the whole of the human experience.
Poppycock. Balderdash.
Those are nothing. Those are children squabbling over toys on the playground. Those distances and those differences are nothing by comparison to this distance and this difference.
This isn’t some measurement between us and them. This is the measurement between us and Him.
And because He’s God and you’re not, in the end, this will be the only measurement that counts.