Rom 3:4 Let God Be True
Rom 3:4 Let God Be TrueJason Wyse
Market Street Fellowship
091025
Rom 3:4 “Indeed, let God be true, and every man a liar…”
One thing that I have been struck with recently is man’s capacity for living life
completely ignorant of Truth. In fact, this is the only way that the natural man can live.
Blinded by self, there are an infinite number of ways that we miss the truth, and there is
always only One Way that it can be found. There are an endless variety of ways to be
wrong, and only One Way to be right.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that there is also only one way to be wrong,
and that is to be “not Christ, but I.” And within that are an infinite number of
manifestations of that wrongness.
So we need not get anxious and think that that is a lot of pressure, and wonder “how do
I know if I am getting it right?” Relax, and rest assured that, in the flesh, we are most
certainly NOT getting it right. The flesh IS the thing that is wrong. In the flesh we are
unable to discern, know, or manifest truth. It is foolishness to us. And there is the
opportunity for an immense freedom in that realization, for while we strive and labor to
find truth and purpose in the flesh, HIS yoke is easy, and HIS burden is light.
Throughout the ages, man has had all sorts of ideas about God; what he is like, how to
reach him, how to please him, how to serve him, how to become like him, even how to
become him… but God has always had only one idea about Himself, and everything of
God is wrapped up in the person of Christ.
In fact, God does not really have “ideas,” he has Truth. He does not have “opinions” or
“strong feelings” about things, He simply has Truth. And it is not even “his” truth, as if
there are other truth options: my truth, your truth, etc. Truth is what is real, there is
only one reality, and it belongs to God. He has exclusive rights to it... it is bound up with
who He is. It is of him, and only found and known in Him, in the only relationship that he
has ever offered man, and that is IN CHRIST, the very one who claims “I AM the truth.”
I said in the beginning that the flesh has a limitless capacity for living life unrelated to
truth. Well, one could also say that God lives completely unrelated to the flesh. In other
words, our blindness has no bearing whatsoever on God’s purpose, which is the same
yesterday, today, and forever.
I picture one of those time-lapse cameras, where you can see extremely slow,
imperceptible things happening very rapidly. Picture the earth in this way, with all the
myriad pursuits of man swirling about, as days, years, decades, and generations go by.
And right in the midst of that hurricane stands the CROSS: immovable, eternal, and
always fully available to those who would lose their life to find His… those who would
become a “living sacrifice,” having died, being crucified with Christ along with their
passions and desires, to gain the person of Truth in their soul as life.
As human beings, we are “free,” in a sense, to pursue whatever we could possibly dream
of on the earth. I often think of how we assign relative purposes to different things on
the earth. What is the best way to spend a lifetime? For example, I could strive to be a
master teacher, impacting thousands of lives throughout my career, and find purpose in
that. Or, I could work to catalog the DNA of every plant species on earth, not even
scratching the surface by the time I died, and find purpose in that (I actually heard that
on the radio). Or, I could lock myself in a giant warehouse full of index cards, and spend
50 years alphabetizing them. No one will stop me from doing any of those things.
But regardless, the Person of Truth stands unchanging, everlasting, and continually
offered in the midst of man’s false imaginations, self-obsession, and infinite variety of
vain pursuits.
As long as he lives, man is a liar… by his very nature contrary to Truth. You and I never
become the truth. The Lord is always the “I AM” of truth, and in his increase and our
decrease, we are made to see, know, and walk in truth. But it is always HIS.
In Isaiah chapter 59 we find an awesome picture of the state of man.
Separated from God
1 Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened,
That it cannot save;
Nor His ear heavy,
That it cannot hear.
2 But your iniquities have separated you from your God;
And your sins have hidden His face from you,
So that He will not hear.
3 For your hands are defiled with blood,
And your fingers with iniquity;
Your lips have spoken lies,
Your tongue has muttered perversity.
4 No one calls for justice,
Nor does any plead for truth.
Sin Confessed
9 Therefore, justice is far from us,
Nor does righteousness overtake us;
We look for light, but there is darkness!
For brightness, but we walk in blackness!
10 We grope for the wall like the blind,
And we grope as if we had no eyes;
We stumble at noonday as at twilight;
We are as dead men in desolate places.
11 We all growl like bears,
And moan sadly like doves;
We look for justice, but there is none;
For salvation, but it is far from us.
14 Justice is turned back,
And righteousness stands afar off;
For truth is fallen in the street,
And equity cannot enter.
15 So truth fails, And he who departs from evil makes himself a prey.
This is our state. Groping about, blind and dead. Now we see back in verse 1 that God is
not unmerciful, his hand is not unable to save or his ear unable to hear, the problem is
that, not only are we are separated from God, but we REFUSE to seek truth. Not only are
we unable to know or understand truth, we also rebel against it!
Every human on the planet would claim to desire truth, but when that Truth is a person
whose life means your death, it becomes a very different matter.
When Christ was on the cross, those who walked below called for him to come down, if
he truly was the Son of God. Do we not do that today? “Come down off the cross. Then
we will believe you.” A cross-less Christ is no threat to anyone. A cross-less Christ is
simply a package of suggestions. A cross-less Christ is religion, or the Dalai Lama, or
Bono… a good teacher who requires discipline, or commitment, or a positive
attitude…but not your life. The Cross, the Truth, is a death threat to the natural man.
So, not only do we live contrary to truth, Paul says in Romans 1:18 that men actually
suppress the truth. He goes on to say that:
22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and changed the glory of the
incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and
four-footed animals and creeping things.
The truth of God is testified to in the natural creation, but turning to see the fulfillment
of truth in the indwelling Christ would require the complete decimation of all that we
know to be our life. So, man turns inward. And as a result, makes truth according to
what he can see, touch, know, and understand with the natural mind; making God into
the image of a man, or a cow, or a bird.
Someone said recently that it is much less dangerous to be ignorant of something, than
to
SUBSTITUTE something in its place. To substitute our ideas of God in place of his
revealed truth leaves no room in our hearts. Apart from truth being revealed in me, I will
substitute my own image every time.
Now, remembering the hopeless state of man as described in Isaiah 59, let’s return
there to see a picture of the Lord’s solution.
15. Then the LORD saw it, and it displeased Him
That there was no justice.
16 He saw that there was no man,
And wondered that there was no intercessor;
Therefore His own arm brought salvation for Him;
And His own righteousness, it sustained Him.
17 For He put on righteousness as a breastplate,
And a helmet of salvation on His head;
He put on the garments of vengeance for clothing,
And was clad with zeal as a cloak.
21 “As for Me,” says the LORD, “this is My covenant with them: My Spirit who is
upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth, shall not depart
from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your descendants, nor from the mouth
of your descendants’ descendants,” says the LORD, “from this time and
forevermore.”
Note that the solution is of God, from God, and unto God. HIS OWN ARM brought
salvation FOR HIM. There is no place for man’s ideas here… or for man at all.
Israel thought that because they had the law, they were somehow special, different from
other men. And they were – but only as a picture of Christ. Really their nature was no
different from any Philistine. Paul speaks of this clearly in Romans 2, which will bring us
around again to our starting verse.
The context here comes out of a discussion of the value of circumcision. Paul clearly
explains this beginning in Romans 2:25.
25 For circumcision is indeed profitable if you keep the law; but if you are a
breaker of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. 26 Therefore, if
an uncircumcised man keeps the righteous requirements of the law, will not his
uncircumcision be counted as circumcision?
28 For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is
outward in the flesh; 29 but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision
is
that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from
men
but from God.
Romans 3
3 For what if some did not believe? Will their unbelief make the faithfulness of
God without effect? 4 Certainly not! Indeed, let God be true but every man a
liar.
Will our unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect? Certainly not! Why?
Because unbelief is of flesh, and God deals in spirit and truth. Our belief or lack of belief
have no bearing on the faithfulness of God, because He is always faithful to His
purpose… the Father is always faithful to the Son.
So, Truth stands in spite of our ideas. The Jews clearly felt very strongly that outward
circumcision was necessary to please God. Paul says, NO, the only thing that pleases
God is the “circumcision of the heart,” in other words, that which circumcision SPEAKS
of: the removal of flesh from his sight. Is this something that man can accomplish? Does
flesh have the power to remove flesh? Of course not.
Look at Abraham. He saw with the mind of the Lord what the outward picture spoke of,
and his faith, not the circumcision, was counted to him as righteousness. In Romans 9,
Paul says that Abraham received the “sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness
of the faith which he had while still uncircumcised, that he might be the father of
all those who believe.”
For Abraham, circumcision was an outward sign of what had already become an inward
reality. And we walk in the same truth, the same faith, that Abraham had. The difference
is that Abraham could not bear the life of God in his soul… he could only see it from afar
as a promise, an expectation, and this was credited to him as righteousness. How much
more, then, should we - who are the temple of the Holy Spirit, called “the Spirit of Truth”
- live and walk in that reality?
What then is required of us? What is left for us but to know the person of Truth? Once
we recognize our blind, helpless state, what can we do other than despise the flesh and
run to the cross?
I was reminded again of Jesus healing Bartimeus, the blind man. All that Bart knew was
2 things: 1. that he was blind, and 2. that Christ alone could give him sight. He knew
nothing save his desperate need for the Son. “Son of David have mercy on me!” Should
that not be the cry of our heart at every waking moment? I feel as though every time I
have a true view of Him, that is my heart’s reaction. “Son of David, have mercy on me.”
“And throwing aside his garment, he rose and went to Jesus.”
It is the acknowledgement of our blindness, our complete lack of understanding that
indicates a heart that is beginning to soften, to turn to the Lord. In John 9, the Pharisees
thought they had sight, and there was nothing Jesus could do for them.
39 And Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, that those who do
not see may see, and that those who see may be made blind.”
40 Then some of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these words, and said
to
Him, “Are we blind also?”
41 Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you
say,
‘We see.’ Therefore your sin remains.
Bart did not need to hear teachings about Christ…he needed CHRIST. True teachings are
helpful, but they can easily become a substitute for seeking to know Christ Himself. It is
the difference between knowing about a person and knowing a person.
(Colin and Ben analogy)
As we come to know the One who dwells in us, he reveals Himself as truth. To know Him
is to know what is real. If we walk in the Spirit, the “Spirit of Truth,” we shall not fulfill
the lust of the flesh. Why? Because in his presence no flesh can dwell. In the presence
of truth, no lie can stand. Those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh, along with its
passions and desires!
So Truth Himself dwells in us. Psalm 51 says:
5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
And in sin my mother conceived me.
6 Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts,
And in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom.
God desires the revealing of his Son in us, and he will bring it forth. Remembering
Isaiah: He brings salvation with his own arm.
I will close with one last scripture. Zechariah 8:3:
3 “Thus says the LORD:
‘ I will return to Zion,
And dwell in the midst of Jerusalem.
Jerusalem shall be called the City of Truth,
The Mountain of the LORD of hosts,
The Holy Mountain.’
This is where we now dwell! Hebrews says that we have “come to Mount Zion and to the
city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.” Even more than that, we are now HIS
dwelling place. The very One who is the Truth, and the Way, and the Life, now is all
things in us.