The truth will make you free

John 8 : 31 - 42

The word "truth" has been used, overused and abused. And very often by 'religious' people. Jesus had a problem with the religious people of his time - they thought they had the 'truth' of God all wrapped up so who was he to teach them? And so often we too think we know the "truth' of God - yet what we have is what we understand by what God has revealed. His revelation is clear yet opaque at the same time - it can be understood by the simple minded and yet even the most learned 'see as in a mirror darkly'. What a paradox. Most humbling though.

In Christ we are shown the fullness of the face of God - yet even then, we cannot fully comprehend the significance of everything he said and did. He taught in parables, he spoke in hyperbole, and he turned the religious group's system upside down - the first shall be last and the last shall be first.

But in contemplating Christ, we can be granted a spiritual intimacy that helps us live our lives in freedom - most significantly, free to love as God loves. The most difficult calling of the gospel. To 'know truths' is easier than to walk in the truth of love. Perhaps that's the difference between knowing the truth with our minds without a corresponding knowing of the heart. Both, not one or the other in exclusion.

As Lent progresses, I am more and more reminded of the great love of Christ who 'loved us to the end' (John 13). Perhaps the truth that transforms as opposed to the truth that leads to prideful rigidity is the truth that Jesus the Beloved of God, calls me the Beloved of God, and in turn I am invited to see others as the Beloved of God. That is a foundational gospel truth that "sets us free". We don't get caught up in all the arguments like Jesus' religious contemporaries - arguments that avoid the main point of the gospel : to love as God loves.