Dear Blessed Believer,
The name of our ministry contains an intentional double entendre. The Word of God is the truth (John 17:17), and because it contains the very life of God (Eph. 4:18), it is the living truth (John 6:63; Heb. 4:12). As such, the word “living” is an adjective. But God intends that His truth be practiced, that is, He wants us to make “living” a verb by being living epistles of His truth. In that sense, being “verbal” means more than just speaking the Word; it also means doing it.
As you know, most of our beloved brethren in the Body of Christ are hampered by a lack of knowledge of the truth, for which there is no substitute, and without which, truth cannot precisely be lived. But 1 Timothy 2:4 tells us that God wants each Christian to come unto a thoroughly applied knowledge (epignosis) of the truth. Our Father desires that we put His truth in our “inner parts” (Ps. 51:6) so that we might not sin against Him (Ps. 119:11). At the bottom line, it is always against God (and the Lord Jesus) that we sin (Ps. 51:4), but of course it is always a human being who bears the brunt of our self-centered actions.
God looks on the heart of each person, and He does not measure the quality of one’s life by how much Bible he knows, but by how much knowledge of the truth he practices in his relationships, that is, how much of the heart of God does he manifest. We can objectively measure the quality of our lives by the quality of our relationships with people (Mark 12:28-31; 1 John 4:20 and 21). Many Christians who know only a little biblical truth are faithfully practicing what they know, and the Lord will reward them for that.
The Greek word for truth is aletheia, which means “that which is in accordance with fact or reality; that which actually is; that which is genuine and substantial; the revealed essence of something.” That is, transparency, or “what you see is what you get.” Biblically, the opposite of truthful living is “hypocrisy,” which means there is a disparity between one’s words and his actions. It is significant that several times in the KJV, a form of aletheia is translated “indeed,” showing that one’s deeds are to correspond with his words. In Greek, hupokritos means “wearing a mask” (see anupokritos in Rom. 12:9 [“without dissimulation”]; 1 Tim. 1:5 [“unfeigned”]; James 3:17 [“without hypocrisy”]—KJV). Our goal in The Living Truth Fellowship is to “GET REAL” with one another, and with all men. When we sign off, “Yours truly,” we want that to mean something.
Jesus Christ is our supreme example. In John 17:17, he said: “your word is truth,” and he had exerted a lifelong effort to learn it, as evidenced in Luke 4 when, with a kind of bowling motion, he unrolled a very lengthy scroll that had no verse numbers or paragraphs and quickly found the place in Isaiah 61:1 and 2 that we today designate with only a comma! But Jesus also LIVED the truth so flawlessly that he could say, I AM the truth (John 14:6). In other words, he BE true. And those are the two sides of the coin of truth, if you will: doctrinal and practical, propositional and relational. Without both sides, that coin won’t spend, that is, people won’t “buy” what we have to offer.
In what can be considered a focal verse for TLTF, Ephesians 4:15 contains a unique Greek construction found only elsewhere in Galatians 4:16, where the noun, “truth,” is made into a verb. In every version I looked at, the translators put the verb “speaking” even though it is not in the text. Here is the NIV, for example:
Ephesians 4:15 and 16
(15) Instead, speaking the truth [aletheuo] in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.
(16) From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
In the Greek text, the noun aletheia (truth) is made into a verb (aletheuo), and a more vivid rendering would be “truthing it,” that is, living the truth by being true to truth. It is significant that “truthing it” looks to be the only way to grow up in Christ, and it would follow that those not living the truth are not growing. In this new (ad)venture, we will do our best to be true to truth so that in our segment of the Body of Christ, verse 16 will be a living reality.
Galatians 4:16 and 17
(16) Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth [aletheuo]?
(17) Those people are zealous to win you over, but for no good. What they want is to alienate you from us, so that you may be zealous for them.
Here we see that if you choose to be true to truth, you will be opposed by those who are not, and that often this will be due to their desire for power, control, and the praises of men. Of course, in conjunction with Satan’s tactic of attacking truth tellers and accusing them of doing exactly what he himself does (as when the Pharisees told Jesus that he was the one who had Beelzebub), such people will always turn things around on you in that same way.
Luke 8:15
But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.
AMEN!
