Truth That Will Not Set You Free

Don: The story of the adulteress was a trial not just of the woman, who represents all of us sinners, but also of the Mosaic law, which represents “small t truth.” Jesus addressed the woman’s case directly, but he addressed the issue of the law only indirectly, by trumping it with grace. This is the principle espoused by Paul when he wrote:

For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.

So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous. The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.  (Romans 5:17-21)

The notion that grace overcomes sin seems to be the capital T Truth that will set us free. In a trial, for judgment to occur there must be an accusation that the law has been broken, there must be evidence, and there must be at least two witnesses:

“A single witness shall not rise up against a man on account of any iniquity or any sin which he has committed; on the evidence of two or three witnesses a matter shall be confirmed. (Deuteronomy 19:15)

The undermining of witnesses seems to be an important principle in the implementation of the grace of God. The small t truth is that we are all sinners condemned by the law; the capital T truth is that when we come to the big T Trial, there will be no witnesses, as there were none for the adulteress:

…Jesus said to her, “Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more.” (John 8:10-11)

The concept of a trial in which there are no witnesses—no accusers—seems pervasive in scripture; most notably, in the final judgment:

Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night. And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death. (Revelation 12:10-11)

We know that it is “the adversary”—the devil—who is the accuser of “the brethren.” The association between devil and accuser is so close that the Greek word for accuser or slanderer is diabolos (διάβολος), from which was derived the English word devil.   So accusation is the work of the devil and is often unjustified, as was the case with Job:

The Lord said to Satan, “From where do you come?” Then Satan answered the Lord and said, “From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it.” The Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil.” Then Satan answered the Lord, “Does Job fear God for nothing? Have You not made a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But put forth Your hand now and touch all that he has; he will surely curse You to Your face.” Then the Lord said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your power, only do not put forth your hand on him.” (Job 1:7-12)

The devil proceeded to torment Job, but Job might have been one of the blessed Jesus was referring to when he said:

“Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:11-12)

The accusations may also be true, as appears to be the case in the story of the adulteress. But in the absence of accusers and witnesses she was set free by the capital T Truth of God. Jesus was very clear in saying that he did not condemn the woman. Elsewhere, Jesus emphasized the contrast between the condemnation of the law and the grace of God:

Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” (John 5:45-47)

We are accused of sinning against the law, with the devil calling for its full and uniform application, resulting in death—the wages of sin. (Romans 6:23)

This concept is not a revelation of  the New Testament; it was revealed in the Old:

“No weapon that is formed against you will prosper;
And every tongue that accuses you in judgment you will condemn.
This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord,
And their vindication is from Me,” declares the Lord. (Isaiah 54:17)

“Ho! Every one who thirsts, come to the waters;
 And you who have no money come, buy and eat.
 Come, buy wine and milk
 Without money and without cost.
… Seek the Lord while He may be found; 
Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way
 And the unrighteous man his thoughts;
 And let him return to the Lord, 
And He will have compassion on him,
 And to our God,
 For He will abundantly pardon. “For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
 Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
 So are My ways higher than your ways
 And My thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:1-9)

The Truth that sets us free is that where sin abounds, grace abounds even more.

Jesus emphasized why it was so important not to judge, accuse, or bear witness against others when he said:

“Do not judge so that you will not be judged. For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and behold, the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:1-5)

Our own vision is so impaired that we have no right to judge that of anyone else. The story of the adulteress did not invalidate the law itself; it invalidated our standing as accusers, witnesses, and judges.

Alice: It is a powerful notion. We are all sinners in God’s eyes, so who are we to judge others?

Michael: But aren’t we self-accusatory? “Judge not, lest ye be judged” to me implies not that you will be judged according to the way you judge others but rather that you will be judged according to the way you judge yourself. In other words, you will be judged not by an external judge but by yourself. The injunction seems to be against applying judgment intended only for you to others.

Alice: Job’s three friends told Job the truth insofar as they saw it, but they failed to see the capital T Truth that Job saw. He eventually told God “I had only heard of you, but now I see you.” Similarly with Mary: She saw the big T Truth while the Pharisees saw only the small t truth. The big T Truth can only be seen in the person of God—of Jesus. Any other kind of truth, such as the truths of Job’s friends, is not the big T Truth.

Don: In the story of the adulteress, the truth of the law of Moses is not in dispute. It is not false, but it is not a truth that will set one free.

Alice: When we judge one another we often do so on the basis of truth. If we see someone commit murder, we know it is true and therefore have every right to accuse that person of murder. We know it is true, yet it is not a liberating Truth. I often wonder if Truth is what we see when we are honest with ourselves, when we look inside ourselves.

David: I agree it is a matter of looking inside and that it is the self-judgment Michael spoke of. To me, it boils down to the recognition that God Is. The only way to discover that is to look inside onseself. I don’t know of any other potential source. We may find assertions of the Truth in scriptures but they are not where the power of the Truth that will set one free resides. One can only be set free inside, spiritually. One will not be set free by virtue of the intellectual process of reading a holy book. One is set free spiritually, inside oneself. Job’s friends were examining his situation intellectually, but Job knew that the Truth lives in a level deeper than the mere intellect.

Jay: Scripture certainly is full of accusatory stories, yet there seems to be something powerful and new in the notion that God removes accusers from the Judgment. There was no judgment in the Garden—the concept did not exist—until the snake accused God of holding something back from Adam and Eve. I wonder if there is a difference between accusing and judging?

David: The Beatitudes tell those who suffer the most awful lives that they are blessed because their “reward in heaven” is great. It seems that a miserable life on earth is not itself a blessing; the blessing comes later. At some point in a hard life, recognizing the Truth that God Is could potentially set one free of the misery, but at what cost? As both Job and the rich young ruler discovered, the Truth can be very expensive—in this world.

Jay: Both big and small t truth can be important; none more so than the spiritual big T Truth that God Is. Yet in the earthly realm we have to rely on small t truths to bring some order to daily life. They govern or influence or at least in some way relate to the big T Truth.

David: Job had to continue living on earth after he learned the big T Truth, and to do so he would have had to accept society’s small t truths just in order to get along, never mind succeed as he did.

Jay: Those blessed in the Beatitudes presumably include those who are persecuted on the basis of offending someone’s notion of a small t truth. No-one gets persecuted just for believing that God exists; they are persecuted for how they handle the small t truths that may mediate one’s relationship with the God of the big T Truth. I happen to relate to the big T Truth of the existence of God through the small t truths of Seventh Day Adventism. For me, this is a blessing. It brings a structure to my life that helps me relate to the existence of God. Problems might occur if I were to confuse the small t truths of Adventism with the big T Truth about God, but otherwise Adventism is a critical component to me in relating to the existence of God.

Don: One problem might be in trying to impose one’s small t truths on others.

Robin: Which every denomination on the planet seeks to do.

Jay: The purpose of the denomination is to convert people into becoming more like us. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I think Adventism is a good way for me and might therefore be good also for someone who is like me or who seeks the same kind of interaction with God and one’s fellow Man. There is then nothing wrong in wanting to share my experience and understanding with such people. I would hope they would convert, but I would not seek to impose it on them. It may be stretching it but I think God is calling on us to tell people about our relationship with him, to share the things that go into the making of that relationship.

Don: It’s tricky because the next logical step is to impose one’s views on those who reject conversion.

Robin: This SDA church is our community, a place where we can feel secure and not be considered crazy for celebrating Sabbath on a Saturday. I’m sure members of other denominations feel the same way about their church. I wonder if God didn’t want salvation to be much simpler than this. There was only one injunction in the Garden: Leave that tree alone!—which we ignored. Then we got not one but Ten injunctions, which we also tend to ignore. Then Jesus came along and gave us the plain and simple Truth straight from the horse’s mouth—and his Truth was either rejected, or where it was accepted (in the Christian church) it began to be fractionated. God tried to make it simple for us, but it is we who turn the simplicity of the big Truth into a complicity of small t truths.

Jay: I would prefer “universal” to “simple.” It covers all people. We tend to want our truth to be exclusive—to be not for everybody but only for people like us.

David: We do seem to have turned the simple Truth of I Am into something exceedingly complicated though our Bibles and Korans and so on. The Truth may be hinted at in scripture but ultimately is only to be found inside onseself. Jay’s argument of church as a place of comfort and fellowship can logically be extended from Adventism in particular through Protestantism and Christianity in general to Religion as a whole. But even disregarding our patent inability to maintain fellowship within the ranks at any of those levels, they are all established around and focus more on small t truths than on the big T Truth.  Perhaps, as regards this life, that is not a bad thing; but it does not bode well for the next. We in our small group have opened this Pandora’s box and because we are so close as a group we seem to be able to handle it, but it is a very hard message to get across to the masses. In a way we are using the Bible to point out its flaws, yet Jesus seemed to me to do the same.

Robin: Is the Bible really hard to understand or is that we don’t try hard enough? Our spiritual journey is one of single steps. The more we read and pray for the spirit to help us, the more we understand. But because we are human it takes much longer than we would like to understand it. It’s not the Bible’s fault. I was long perplexed about whether the Adventist’s Sabbath was the same seventh day that was in Eden. There are experts who claim to have calculated the correctness of it and experts who claim the opposite. We really cannot know the truth of the seventh day. This is very disturbing to an Adventist, given that its keeping is a commandment and therefore important to God. Through much prayer, and by surrendering my insistence on getting to the bottom of it, I’ve come to the belief that no matter where we are in our different time zones it makes no difference. God knew that times and calendars would change. Sabbath is the seventh day in whatever time zone or calendar our society has adopted. As long as it is kept as a holy day, we are in obedience.

Chris: Our relationship with God is a give-and-take. What we have to give God in return for his blessings is how we treat the small t truths that we have, because they affect the relationship. If I use my small t truths to accuse others, then they affect the relationship negatively; but they can be used in a positive way and to good effect on our relationship with God.

David: The relationship exists inside us, not in a book. So prayer can help, when it is aimed at big T Truth. A couple of days ago there was terrible news of an IS fighter who publicly executed his own mother at the behest of his IS colleagues because she had urged him to leave IS. Where should one turn at such a moment? To one’s “heart”—one’s inner light, or to one’s Koran-quoting confederates? To the Truth, or to the truth? The problem is that people believe their Korans and Bibles to be the big T Truth. They live their lives by that. A small t truth asserting the day of the Sabbath might not matter much but a small t truth that justifies matricide most certainly does matter—if one is going to live one’s life according to the small t truths of scriptures and dogmas.

Michael: But what about the responsibility of the 19 year old man who killed his mother? Wasn’t he more responsible than the Koran?

David: The young man and his confederates replaced their inner light with their Koran. They replaced their direct personal relationship with God and the Truth with an indirect, impersonal, mediated relationship.

Don: When used as a vehicle to foster a relationship with God, small t truth has value and can be salutary; but when it becomes accusatory, condemnatory, and judgmental then Jesus called it into question, especially given our tendency to want to promote the small t truth to big T status. Jesus specifically told us not to fault the views of our brother because our own views might be even more distorted. We are in no position to accuse, condemn, or judge.

Alice: Paul also said that Jesus and righteousness mark the end of the law. So if we follow the little t truths of the law to the end, we should end up in the right place.

Don: If we would live our lives and pursue the big T Truth with humility it might lead us there. Unfortunately we are inclined to promote the little t truth to big T Truth on the basis of our own experience and prejudice.

Alice: Isn’t it good that God uses our weakness in practicing small t truth as teaching opportunities? As long as we are walking in the law, we are developing a deeper relationship with God and getting closer to the big T Truth almost without realizing it.

Don: Someone said that we don’t see the world as it is; we see it as we are. If we were to recognize and be humbled by that, then perhaps we should take the opportunity to let the little t truth lead us, embolden us, enable us to reach the big T Truth. But when we are convinced we see the world as it is, we are on a slippery slope.

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