Dec 13
7
Mark then well the importance of the Truth of God, for in these days men are apt to set light by it and, for the sake of peace and quiet, to lead us to suppose that contrary things can also be true.
The Truth is not only important, but substantial in its character. The Gospel which God has revealed is so essentially THE Truth there is nothing false, as there is nothing trifling in it. It is Truth unalloyed. It is Truth which ought to be undoubted. It is a vile sin to imagine that there can be any fallacy in the utterances of an Infallible God! Let everything else we credit be a lie. Let all that man has asserted and proved be swept away—God’s Words are the Truth, substantially and really so!
The Truth, moreover, is a thing of unity. It is not said “truths,” but “THE TRUTH.” God’s Truth is only one. Have you ever noticed, in the great summary of Doctrines, that as surely as you believe one, you must believe the rest! One Doctrine so leans upon the others that if you deny one, you must deny the rest. Some think that they can believe four out of the five points and reject the last. It is impossible! God’s Truths are all joined together like links in a chain. There is but one Truth, and one system of the Truth of God. “Then,” say some, “tell us how to discern the Truth.” You may judge of it by three things—by God, by Christ and by man. That is, the truth which honors God, the truth which glorifies Christ, and the truth which humbles man. Unless a Doctrine exalts God, unless it acknowledges Him Monarch of Creation and gives Him absolute power over His creatures— He the Potter and ourselves the clay, He molding the vessels as seem good in His sight, we the vessels that are molded after His pleasure, God everything and ourselves nothing—that doctrine is not the Truth of God. And unless a Doctrine magnifies the Atonement—if it asserts that the Atonement may fail, that it was made for many who do not benefit by it, that God’s purpose in redemption is in anywhere frustrated—it is not of God, it is of Satan! If a doctrine teaches that man is possessed of good natural powers, that he is not so fallen as the Bible states, that he can do something to help himself, that his exertions can meet with God’s Grace half way, that he can assist a little in the work of salvation, or, at any rate, that he can preserve himself from falling and hold on his way with steadfastness, it is a man-glorifying, God-dishonoring doctrine! Cast it to the winds, for it never came from above. God never intended it to be preached otherwise than as the very foil of blackness against the brightness of His own Truth! C. H. Spurgeon