The armor of God...cont.

“Having your loins girt about with truth…”

As believers we must be lovers of the truth. Christ is described in John 14:6 as “The Way the Truth and the Life”. He is the truth; there is nothing false in Him and so we gird ourselves with truth when we, just like Christ, embrace and walk in present truth not living a lie (living a lie is confessing one thing but living another). Let us consider for a moment, what is truth? It is having Gods true balance on a given matter and not our own intellectual conclusions. In short it’s having the same balanced opinion as God; confessing what He is confessing, embracing what He is saying. One might find at times what He is saying is painful to hear; for He said to one man “…one thing thou lackest…” or to a group of believers “I have somewhat against thee…” This was Gods conclusion, was this truth embraced? We may find ourselves at the receiving end of such truth, how will we receive it?

Loving the truth is having integrity of heart not deceiving ourselves, thinking more highly than we ought to of ourselves. Having a balance works the other way as well, not becoming overwhelmed by our faults when in actuality God’s assessment of us is good (1 John 3:20 – “Beloved If your heart condemn you God is greater than your heart”). Embracing the truth is to be rid of all falsehoods and hypocrisy. It is having the words of our mouth and the meditations of our heart acceptable in His sight.

There is another aspect of being gird about with truth and it is illustrated for us in 2 Timothy 2:15 “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth”. In this instance truth is doctrine; doctrine is so important, it determines where we are going in the Lord, this too requires integrity of heart. Jesus clearly established the connection between the condition of one’s heart and understanding truth, or good doctrine when he stated in John 7:17 that if any man will do His will he shall know the doctrine (understanding truth or good doctrine protects us from being deceived).

In summary we can say this, a false balance is an abomination to the Lord and this applies to the truth as well, whether the truth be for us or against us. This true balance is part of the armor of God needed to defeat Satan and also possessing it gives us a good footing. Finally, we know the Father seeks for those who worship Him in Spirit and in truth (John 4:24) we must also remind ourselves it is loving the truth indeed, which sets us free (John 8:32).