Hi how are you all? I pray you have had a good week and weekend. It is nearly September holiday season in our country and is spring which makes for warm days and cooler nights. I love this time of the year. No jumpers in the day and can easily sleep at night. What’s your favourite season?
This blog I want to talk about knowledge and truth. In the current world we live in, a lot of us mistake knowledge for truth and vice versa. The Bible distinguishes between them and so should we. But how do we do this and how can we tell when knowledge is truth? Great questions! Let’s explore.
First of all, what is the Oxford dictionary definitions of knowledge and truth. Knowledge means facts, information, and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. Whereas truth means the the true facts about something, rather than the things that have been invented or guessed.
Can you start to see the difference? Knowledge = facts but truth = true facts. So you can have and acquire knowledge but it might not be true.
The Bible says in John 8:32 that we will know the truth and the truth will set us free. It also says in Daniel 12:4 that knowledge will increase. We can certainly see that happening. Technology is advancing faster than we can buy it and keep up with it. Telescopes can see further into the universe than ever before.
In our kitchen, we can buy gadgets that tell us how to cook or even say a command and another gadget will read the recipe. But my question is are these things bringing us closer to God or further away. We have more time saving things but less time for God.
So what is the answer? It is found in John 8:31. It is the place we find the truth. It is the Word of God and not just it sitting on the shelf but all of us knowing it intimately.
There is a person in the Bible that speaks clearly on the difference between knowledge and truth and that is the apostle Paul. Let’s look at the scripture in Philippians 3, starting at verse 4:
“anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so: 5 circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee; 6 concerning zeal, persecuting the church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.
7 But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. 8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; 10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, 11 if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead”.
In the first paragraph above of the verses, Paul was spouting off who he was in the flesh and the knowledge he obtained.
- He was blameless in relation to the knowledge of the law but totally off the mark in the truth of his relationship with Jesus.
- He had knowledge of God as a Pharisee but not the truth as a disciple of Jesus
- He persecuted the church because of knowledge as he didn’t know the truth about Jesus
But thank goodness Jesus met Paul on a Damascus road and showed him the truth of Who He was so that Paul could say all the knowledge he had counted as nothing once truth was known.
May we all be like this with our truth about Who Jesus is, more of a reality than knowing about Him.
I will leave you with what the New Living Translation states in 1 Corinthians 8:1b – “But while knowledge makes us feel important, it is love that strengthens the church”.
It is only truth that sets us free not knowledge. It is only truth that causes us to love, not knowledge. And it is only truth that will anchor us to Jesus in the world we live in.
Seek truth and keep living the life God intended for you.
Bless you heaps
Karen
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