Amelia Earhart. Who killed JFK. Stonehenge. The search for truth mesmerizes us. Perhaps it is because uncertainty makes us insecure. It frightens us. It gnaws at us. It provokes us. We want to know the answer; we want to solve the mystery. As human beings, our deep need to unearth the truth cannot be ascribed to mere curiosity. Surely we grasp for truth because, in the innermost part of our being, we sense that there is in fact a truth to be grasped—that somewhere among all the inconstancies and ambiguities that riddle our existence, there is an Answer. In the midst of uncertainty, truth represents absoluteness, solidity, strength, sureness, purity, durability, power, permanence. It is not any answer we seek; otherwise we would be quite content to conjure up truths out of our own imaginations. We want something we can hang on to. We want something real.

Truth
Many have claimed to have unlocked the truth. Gautama Buddha thought that he had found it under a tree in southern Nepal 2,500 years ago. Pythagoras claimed to have discovered enlightenment in the intricacies of mathematical ratios. Karl Marx "found" truth in class struggle and global revolution. So many versions, renditions, and declarations of truth have emerged out of the human consciousness that it is tempting to conclude that, on an earth populated by six billion human beings, there are six billion different formulations of truth. What is true for you, so the saying goes, may not be true for me.

Our ability to come up with so many different manifestations of truth betrays the fact that we may not comprehend the full scope of all that truth encompasses. Truth is more than a lack of deception. It is more than honesty and integrity. It is more than a right answer, the solution to a riddle, or the unraveling of a mystery. It is more than a religion, a doctrine, a creed, a mantra, a philosophy, an ideology, or a school of thought. There is truth, and then there is Truth. Truth, with a capital "T", is an "ideal or fundamental reality apart from and transcending perceived experience."¹ Truth is nothing less than reality itself, a reality that is more real than anything we may have ever experienced.

"I am the way, and the truth, and the life."² Many claim to have discovered something of the truth, but only one man claimed to be truth itself. This man was Jesus Christ. In Greek, the language of the New Testament, the word for "truth" is aletheia. Aletheia, like the English word "truth," also signifies "the reality lying at the basis of an appearance; the manifested, veritable essence of a matter."³ Thus, when Jesus said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life," He did not just mean that He was truth, but that He was Truth. He was and is reality—uniquely, exclusively, and absolutely.

Jesus Christ is the fundamental reality that transcends any of our previous perceived experiences of reality. If something is real, it is actual and substantial. If something, or in this case, someone, is reality itself, this implies that all other things are neither actual nor substantial, but rather are shadows in comparison to this reality. We may go about our daily lives with the assurance that we can discern reality from unreality just as well as we can differentiate a state of consciousness from a dream. Yet we still may be troubled by the vague, unsettling sense that, despite the apparent solidity of the world around us, there is something more, the realization of which lies just beyond our reach. This something more, this all-inclusive answer, is actually a someone more. The Truth that we seek is a Person, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The fulfillment of the human yearning for a once-and-for-all answer is not a what, but a Who. So to know this greater reality—to know the Truth—we need to know a Person.

A Person
Jesus Christ is God. The Bible tells us that in Him "dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily,"⁴ and speaks of Him as "the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever."⁵ God is immeasurable and unlimited. But approximately two thousand years ago, the infinite God stepped into humanity and became a finite man, Jesus Christ.

Before His incarnation as a man, God must have seemed ethereal and elusive. To some, He did not seem to exist. But when He lived in the form of a man, God was made real to thousands of people in Jesus Christ. For the first time, people saw God, touched God, ate with God, and talked with God. For the many whose lives He touched, the absolute, impersonal reality of God at once became personal and experiential. They experienced all the divine attributes of God expressed in the Person of Jesus Christ.⁶ To a certain extent, of course, human beings possess these attributes as well. But the human expressions of these attributes of God, which include love,⁷ faithfulness,⁸ sincerity,⁹ and joy,¹⁰ are pale shadows of the reality. As common human traits, all of these items are insubstantial and illusory, like Xerox images of the original. When Jesus Christ lived on this earth, however, these divine attributes were fully expressed in human virtues for the first time. Those with whom Jesus came into contact touched not two-dimensional copies of divine attributes, but love, faithfulness, simplicity, sincerity, and joy in their only true and authentic form.

For those who came into contact with Jesus, this Person who embodied and expressed the divine reality of God represented the end of their search for Truth. He was the Answer. When some among them once asked whom he was making Himself out to be, He replied to them simply, "...Before Abraham [the Hebrew patriarch] came into being, I am."¹¹ The Lord Jesus is the great I am. To our every need, desire, yearning, and question, His answer is simply, "I am." Everything that He is—His very existence and being—is the answer to our search for truth and reality. Whatever we need, He is. Whatever we seek, He is. Whatever we desire, He is. It was for this reason that a Samaritan woman who met Him when she came to draw water from a well could leave her waterpot and run into the city to testify that He was the Sent One of God.¹² It was for this reason that a group of fishermen by the Sea of Galilee could, after encountering Jesus by the shore, immediately leave their nets and their livelihoods to follow Him.¹³ It was for this reason that a despised tax collector named Levi could leave all his riches behind to come after Him.¹⁴ All these ones found reality in Jesus Christ.

Spirit of Reality
It may seem that only those who lived at the same time Jesus lived, and who inhabited the regions that He passed through, would be able to touch the reality of God that He embodied. Thankfully, God is free from restrictions of time and space. Jesus Christ promised His disciples that, even after He was no longer with them bodily, the Spirit of reality would dwell in them forever.¹⁵ And so, after He gave Himself to die on the cross for our sins, He was resurrected and, just as He had once become a man, He became a life-giving Spirit.¹⁶ This life-giving Spirit is the Spirit of Christ,¹⁷ and the Spirit of Christ is the Spirit of reality.¹⁸

Just as Christ is the reality of God, the Spirit of reality is the reality of Christ. It is this Spirit who guides us into the reality of all that God is. Jesus Christ promised that "when He, the Spirit of reality, comes, He will guide you into all the reality...."¹⁹ The Spirit of reality is available to us now. If the Spirit of reality, Christ Himself, dwells in us, then God, the ultimate and absolute reality, will be as real to us as He was to the inhabitants of Judea two thousand years ago. We may not, of course, see or touch Him physically, but when Jesus Christ as the Spirit of reality lives in us, all that God is can become our reality and experience.

To satisfy once and for all our search for truth and reality, we need to pray to invite Jesus Christ, the Spirit of reality, to dwell in us. All of our seeking for truth and reality, as expressed in our captivation by the myriad mysteries that complicate the world around us, is a mere echo of the resounding yearning in our being for the reality that is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. We may seek the truth, but the answers we find will never fully gratify us until we realize that truth is a Person. Outside of the Person of Jesus Christ, there is no perfect answer, no novel experience and no positive emotion that will satisfy our seeking. Only when we receive this Person and believe into Him will we be satisfied, for then the Truth will be in us. It is then that the Bible's promise will be fulfilled: "And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free."²⁰

1 Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary, s.v. "truth." (back) 2 John 14:6 (NASB). (back) 3 Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words (MacDonald Publishing Company,McLean, Virginia), p. 1182 (quoting Cremer). (back) 4 Colossians 2:9. (back) 5 Romans 9:5. (back) 6 John 14:7. (back) 7 John 3:16; Ephesians 2:4. (back) 8 Romans 15:8. (back) 9 Second Corinthians 1:12. (back) 10 Philippians 2:2. (back) 11 John 8:58. See also 8:24, 28; Exodus 3:14. (back) 12 John 4:28–29. (back) 13 Matthew 4:18–22. (back) 14 Luke 5:27–28. (back) 15 John 14:16–17. (back) 16 First Corinthians 15:45b. (back) 17 Romans 8:9. (back) 18 John 14:17. (back) 19 John 16:13. (back) 20 John 8:32.

To receive the true life of God, revealed in the living of the God-man Jesus, simply pray the following:

"Lord Jesus, I confess that I need You. Forgive me for not living according to Your standard of truth. Thank You for dying on my behalf and taking away my sins. I receive You right now. From now on I want to live by Your true and eternal life."