Pride, Truth and Humble Pursuits

Many elements of biblical truth perplex the human mind.  Many of them exist which do seem to contradict one another.  However, to react by attempting to reconcile those two truths and so change or edit them is to place yourself in the role of God.  Such has been the constant endeavor of the wicked human heart.  “Ye shall be as gods…”  It is a pride found in Satan himself.  My plea, friends, is that you lean not on your own understanding but embrace God’s revealed word as the only source of truth as we may know it.

I think of Christ’s priestly prayer when he prayed, “They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.  Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.  As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.  And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.” John 17:16-19

Our God is not of this world; he is above and over it.  He is not bound to our finite minds.  His sovereign word is truth, and only by grace are we able to grasp it, if at all.  If we don’t understand truth, our reaction as his people must never be to modify it.  It should always be to embrace it, however confusing.  In the midst of our confusion, our enlightened eyes should prayerfully and diligently pursue even more enlightment in the Scriptures.  This is a humble pursuit.  God is not the problem or the conflict.  We are.  We have no other course but a humble pursuit of God’s own will.  We will find no truth in ourselves or in our minds because we are not its source.  Humble pursuits are found under the mighty hand of God, where he reveals himself to those who ask him.

“The various elements of truth stand in perpetual antithesis, sometimes requiring us to believe apparent opposites while we wait for the moment when we shall know as we are known.  Then truth which now appears to be in conflict with itself will arise in shining unity and it will be seen that the conflict has not been in truth but in our sin-damaged minds.” -A.W. Tozer, “The Knowledge of the Holy.”

Pride will not find truth; it will only suppress and twist truth until it fits its need for understanding.  Humility, though confused and bewildered, says simply with the Psalmist in Psalm 86:8-11

“There is none like you among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like yours.  All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord, and shall glorify your name.  For you are great and do wondrous things; you alone are God. Teach me your way, O LORD, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name.” (emphasis mine)

Working with you to humbly pursue truth in its only revealed source,

Vince R.