Reality in Christ
And you shall know the truth.
Truth is divine reality sensed through our spirit. The Greek concept of aletheia is translated as truth. The concept stands for revealed truth or unconcealed reality. The truth, or aletheia, is more vital to life than factual correctness.
Man has the capacity to be conscious of God. There is a spirit in man that can know God as Spirit. The Spirit is also described as the Spirit of truth. Spiritual reality can be known through spiritual consciousness. The truth that sets us free is known through God consciousness. Such knowledge of truth empowers our spiritual pursuit and nourishes the inner man in a way that facts never could.
At times, a verse, phrase, or word may come alive and bring some revelation with it. The hidden truth becomes a revealed, palpable, living reality. We know, experience, and sense this reality inwardly. Then we manifest that truth as it develops in us.
Just as physical truth can only be proven by physical sensing, so also spiritual truth can only be proven by spiritual sensing. The inner sense provides evidence that leads to an understanding of the scriptures that changes our view of reality.
Logical constructs and historical facts, while useful, lack the potency required in the context of, You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. The truth that sets free is an inward reality that acts at the level of consciousness.
Christ presented Himself as the embodiment of this reality.
I am the way, the reality, and the life.
Christ, as the last Adam, became the life-giving Spirit. The consciousness of this Christ in us as the Spirit becomes the way, the reality, and the life to us. The “I am” of Christ corresponds with the I AM of God in Exodus as His identity.
The Spirit of truth guides us into the truth.
The Spirit of reality, who proceeds from the Father, He will testify concerning Me; But when He, the Spirit of reality, comes, He will guide you into all the reality.
Here again, the truth or reality, more specifically, refers to revealed reality, to unconcealed truth. That is the meaning of aletheia. The apostles’ experience of this divine reality led them to point out a distinct progression from Moses to Christ.
The law was given through Moses, but grace and reality came through Jesus Christ.
Christ made the reality of God accessible. Believing in Christ is a response to our inwardly knowing this reality. This knowing forms faith. Having come to know, I cannot stay in unbelief.
The Bible refers to this knowledge as gnosis, which includes awareness and experiential aspects. Gnosticism got a bad rap for denying the physical world and for its spiritual elitism. However, the need for gnosis of aletheia remains a key to spiritual vitality. It is accessible to all who seek. The apostles stress the “full knowledge of the truth.”
The intimate, personal, and experiential knowing (ginōskō) precedes the setting free. Believing then proceeds from knowing. This process, which involves the Spirit of truth, should not be pre-empted or replaced by intellectualization, verbalization, or ceremony. In zeal, one can end up sowing tares of falsity alongside the wheat of truth.
We sense reality before it is understood. Knowing spiritual reality is like knowing physical reality through touch, sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Knowing the truth, whether physical or spiritual, involves a sensory process. We know the truth of God by sense and experience God in our spirit. It makes the written words come alive.
We want to make our experiences known and convey them to others. But the statements of truth, however accurate they might be, are not in themselves the reality or the truth. The statements stem from the experience. The stated truth is always one step removed from reality, and in that space, errors can creep in. Therefore, God wants us to know this reality directly, personally, through the sensing of reality in our own human spirit. Believing in statements of truth is inadequate. God desires that we know the truth.
To know reality, we must venture a step closer. We must get to the source of the experience that gives rise to statements about the truth. As we come forward to Him, we are freed from the bondage of inaccurate mental constructs that have invaded and occupied our attention. This freeing of attention makes us available to sense the flawless truth that is there for man to know through His Spirit. In this freedom, we can walk according to our spirit, which is one with His Spirit.
The Spirit is He who testifies because the Spirit is the reality.
God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truthfulness.
And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.
If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.
In physics, truth is discovered from the evidence collected through experiments. In metaphysics, truth is known from the evidence of inner experience. In physics, experiments and proofs rely on sensors to measure properties such as temperature and detect the presence of subatomic particles. We fit sensor data to a model of reality we call the truth. Correspondingly, to know the truth about God, man must know God through experiencing the Spirit of God in his own spirit. In this experience, man is the sensor, the God-sensor. That is how we come to know reality in its native state. God desires that man have such knowledge of truth.
Truth is potent and active. It is far from passive knowing. Once we come to the knowledge of this truth, the Spirit of reality abides with us. We embody the truth.
Even the Spirit of reality, whom the world cannot receive because it does not behold Him or know Him; but you know Him because He abides with you and shall be in you.
For the sake of the truth which abides in us and will be with us forever:
The consciousness of this truth actively performs many functions within us. It causes us to be brought forth, hear His voice, be sanctified, grow up into Him, be purified, and speak the truth.
He brought us forth by the word of truth…
Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.
Sanctify them in the truth.
But holding to truth in love, we may grow up into Him in all things
Since you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth
We live and walk according to the truth and become fellow workers in the spreading of this knowledge of God with all those who have gone before us and all those who are with us. This truth also brings us to the church. The church functions as the pillar and base of the truth, announcing it to the world.
…that we may become fellow workers in the truth
Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, an unashamed workman, cutting straight the word of the truth.
I have no greater joy than these things, that I hear that my children are walking in the truth.
…church of the living God, the pillar and base of the truth
Although God desires all men to be saved and to come to the full knowledge of the truth, and the truth brings much joy to us, there is a struggle in receiving the truth. The words of one who knows the truth can upset long-held beliefs and can cause much vexation, especially among those steeped in tradition. The people gathered at the temple bitterly opposed Christ after He declared His identity as one sent by the Father, to be the light of the world and to set people free.
But now you seek to kill Me, a man who has spoken to you the truth that I heard from God. Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to hear My word. If I speak the truth, why do you not believe Me? He who is of God hears the words of God;
Words inspired by the Spirit work together with the Spirit to convey the truth to the new man. Receiving the teachings concerning the truth can bring us the Spirit of reality. It can awaken our consciousness toward God, making us alive to God. Inspired words are written from a revelation of reality that indwells the writer and of which the writer is a witness. Reading scriptures and inspired writings causes us to know the truth through a process that involves the Spirit. Man is supposed to know the truth of God through a sense that can be awakened by receiving the words of truth.
The sense of God in our spirit brings us out of the old man into the new man.
And put on the new man, which was created according to God in righteousness and holiness of reality.
God gives to the new man a new understanding of reality. The new man with a new consciousness can walk in a new way. If we ask, seek, and knock, the truth is opened and revealed to us by God Himself.
