Truthful

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF JOHN

TRUTHFUL

John 3:31-33

31 "The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks as one from the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above all. 32 He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts his testimony. 33 The man who has accepted it has certified that God is truthful.

 NIV

We are still in the response of John to this argument between his disciple and some Jews. Here John makes it very clear there is a great distinction between Jesus and the rest of us. Jesus is the only one who has ever been in heaven in the presence of the Father and the Holy Spirit. But John makes it even clearer that Jesus, although we always think of him as one of the Trinity, is God. Jesus is above all, and only God can be above all. John has been inspired to see Jesus as Emmanuel, God with us. John also makes sure we understand that we are not from heaven, but are but creations of God, here on this earth. We should know our place in creation as being from the earth, and we cannot speak any other truth than what we know, and all we know, no matter how much that might be, is only about the earth, while Jesus being from above speaks about things from above. What John is saying here is all about accepting Jesus Christ as God, as the Savior, as Lord of our lives, as the one who is above us, who created us. If people reject what Jesus says, they will never understand the reality of truth, for all they can know is facts of the earth, which in truth is all about Jesus, but they would never see that for they have closed their minds to the real truth. There are even some who study the scriptures searching for knowledge, but miss the truth. Perhaps their motive for this knowledge is misplaced on personal gain. But for those of us who accept the words of Jesus, that he is the Christ, that he is God in the flesh, that what he came to do is satisfy his own need for justice so that we might be saved, we can certify that God is truthful, that the words he has inspired men to write and collect into this one book, the Bible, is completely without error, totally truthful, for as we will see in the rest of Johns response we have the fullness of the Spirit, unlimited amounts of the Spirit so that we may be sure God is truthful. What else is there? Who else has any truth? The fact is that all science, all truth of this earth is simply man discovering what God has created. Yet many are blinded to this truth because they have closed their minds to the reality of God. We will also see their fate in the rest of John’s response. But for now let us simply be thankful for we can certify that God is truthful.