Friday, February 10, 2012

Devotion: Hating the Truth



[Jesus said,] 13 “I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of My joy within them.  14 I have given them Your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world.  15 My prayer is not that You take them out of the world but that You protect them from the evil one.  16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.  17 Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth.  18 As You sent Me into the world, I have sent them into the world.  19 For them I sanctify Myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.”  (John 17:13-19)

We all hate the truth at one time or another.  When the truth is unpleasant, demanding, or unflattering, we don't want to hear it.  We hate the truth when others share with us (or with others) something that is true about us but is also condemning or embarrassing.  This kind of hating the truth is an emotional reaction toward it.  It is the dislike of what is true, but not the rejection of it.  If we are wise we will take the truth to heart whether we like it or not.  In this way the truth that we hate serves us well.  But there is another way in which people hate the truth that serves them very poorly: disregarding God's Word.

For the most part, we use the word "hate" to describe how we feel about something or someone.  While the Bible uses the word in this way as well, the deeper meaning of the word that is translated as "hate" is "to be indifferent toward, to disregard, or to reject something."  The implication is that what is hated has little or no value for the one who hates it.  While it isn't an emotional response, hating in this way leads to an attitude against what is hated.  What we hate in our minds we end up hating in our hearts and what we hate in our hearts we end up hating in our minds.

Hating is a substantial part of our fallen nature.  Until we are made new in Christ we can only hate God and His Word.  It takes His gift of faith in Christ Jesus for us to love and desire His Word.  Even then, because we are still sinners living in a fallen world, we have a tendency to hate God's Word.  Martin Luther wrote of this in his commentary on Psalm 119:103, "'I delight in the law of God,' that is, 'The words of God are sweet for me'  ... But to the carnal man they are bitter and harsh and full of hate, because his will which is suffering from the fever of sin hates God’s words …"*  We may struggle with loving God's Word, but by His grace we do not hate the truth.

Unfortunately, the people of the world can't help but hate the truth.  And their hatred doesn't stop there. When Jesus said that His disciples had received the truth of God's Word from Him, He also warned them that the people of the world had already begun to hate them.  He knew that the people's hatred of His disciples wasn't personal.  They hated them because He had entrusted His Word of truth to them.  Jesus was making something very clear: people without faith hate the truth and those who believe it.

So much of what people believe and do in our world is shaped by hating the truth.  In place of God's Word, they have set up theories, speculations, and wishful thinking as alternative "truths." To protect their lies, they end up hating what is actually truth and everyone that holds to it.  We should expect the people of the world to hate us — to be indifferent toward, to disregard, and to reject us — and what we believe.  After all, they hated Jesus for bringing them the truth.  In His love God came to this world of lies with His truth to be hated, rejected, and killed so that we could know the truth.  Now that we know the truth, we can overcome the hatred of the world by living and sharing the truth of His love. Because we love the truth, we bring His life giving Word to a world dying from hating the truth.

*(LW, vol. 25, page 334)

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