Refusing the Truth

“The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”—2 Thessalonians 2:9-12

We live in a world of competing worldviews—each is considered by some to be true, but only one really is. We are, like Pilate, faced with truth—Jesus Christ. Jesus claimed to be truth incarnate, the fact, reality, and embodiment of truth itself. God is truth, and if He were to have anything within Him that was not true, then He would fail to be God. For as God, He must be true and perfect. Christ claimed to be “the truth” (John 14:6), and it is only the truth that will set us free (John 8:32)—that is, Jesus Christ Himself. When Jesus was before Pilate, He gave the purpose for which He came. He said,

“You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to My voice”—John 18:37. 

Jesus, who is the personification of truth, came to bear witness about Himself, to show the way of God’s salvation. It is all the more bewildering then to hear Pilate’s response to Jesus’ explanation: “What is truth?”—John 18:38. Pilate was face to face with truth Himself and could not see who He really was.

During the end times we are told in Scripture of the coming of a “lawless one” who will come with a great deal of fanfare, demonstrating great acts of power and wonders for the sheer purpose of deceiving those who don’t want Christ. He is not coming to deceive the innocent—no, he is coming to deceive those who refuse to see the truth of who Christ is. There are two things we must pay attention to here. The first is a question: do we love the truth? Have we embraced the Gospel of Christ? If we do not love the truth, then we are not saved. Only those who love the truth of who God is and what He has done in Christ will be saved. There is no other way. If we fail to love the truth, then God will give us over to something else—something far less, a great big lie that will destroy us. We are created to believe in God—there is a God-shaped vacuum in each one of us. The only difference between a believer and unbeliever is that the believer chooses to have that vacuum filled by God, by whom it was intended to be filled all along. But, the unbeliever chooses to have that vacuum filled by something that doesn’t belong there. This is the competing worldview discussed earlier. Both worldviews promise truth and the right fit for your life, but only one is true. One leads to life and one leads to death—we all must choose.

The second thing we must pay attention to in today’s verse is also a question: are we cultivating our love for the truth? Our souls must cling to some type of belief, and if we give ourselves over to any manner of sin, we are failing to cultivate a proper love for God. As the author of Hebrews has written,

“Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end”—Hebrews 3:12-14.

We must hold onto truth—that is Christ. We must cling to Him, making sure that we are cultivating our relationship with Him so that we do not depart from truth, nor be given over to a lie. May God enable each one of us to forsake the sin that so easily trips up our souls, and may He give us the strength and discipline that is absolutely essential to cultivate a daily walk with Him. Amen.