TRUTH
The knowledge of the One True God totally
depends on God’s self revelation.
In every other field of study we depend
on our effort, exploration and education.
Our only source of correct information
about God is His Word Who became flesh
as Jesus Christ full of grace and truth, the
Unique Son of the Father, the Eternal I AM,
the way, the truth and the life.
THE LIFE
” The life was manifested and we have seen
and bear witness and declare to you that
eternal life which was with the Father and
was manifested to us.” ( I. John 1.2).
THE WAY
He is the way and the truth. There is no
other way to access the Father and He
is the truth of God’s revelation full of glory.
THE TRUTH
Here is what Karl Barth says in Church Dogmatics:
” As a man among men He is a human Thou, and as
such distinct from all mere things. Now as a Thou,
man is not merely an existential determination of
the I, but the sum of all the objective reality of
the world”.
This is another way of saying that He is The Truth.
GOD BECAME A MAN IN JESUS CHRIST
Again continuing from where we left, Karl Barth says:
” And in Jesus Christ God becomes and is man, the
fellow- man of all men. As God He is not merely one
of many such fellow-men, nor is He merely the idea
of fellow-humanity. We are speaking of ” the Father’s Son,
by nature God.” He became and is man, the fellow-man of
all men; and therefore Thou, not merely in a simple, but in
a supremely objective reality, the human Thou, which as
such is also directly the Thou of the one eternal God.”
SINCE GOD IS WITH US (IMMANUEL)
THE WHOLE HUMAN SITUATION CHANGES
The fact that we just saw here changes the scope,
prospect and context of what it means to be human.
Again, Karl Barth continues:
” The fact is rather that God Himself, in His deep mercy
has taken upon Himself to exist also in human being
and essence in His Son, and therefore to become and be
a man, and therefore this incomparable Thou.
God Himself is in the world, earthly, conceivable and
visible, as He is this man. We have to do with God
Himself as we have to do with this man.
God Himself speaks when this man speaks in human
speech. God Himself acts and suffers when this man
speaks and suffers as a man. God Himself triumphs
when this One triumphs as a man. The human speaking
and acting and suffering and triumphing of this one man
directly concerns us all, and His history is our history
of salvation which changes the whole human situation,
just because God Himself is its human subject in His Son,
just because God Himself has assumed and made His own
our human nature and kind in His Son, just because God
Himself came into this world in His Son, and as one of us
” a guest this world of us He trod.” ”
THE HOLY SPIRIT COMES
As Karl Barth continues:
“And as and because the Holy Spirit is the coming of
Jesus Christ Himself, and His witness this disclosure
to men concerning themselves, He and His witness are
in fact the self revelation of Jesus Christ and as such
the basis of the knowledge of Jesus Christ.
We have to realize that God’s own revealedness for us
is God’s own person and God’s own work.
All the comfort, all the power, all the truth of this
revealedness depends upon the fact that it is with God
that we are dealing.
All our understanding of this revealedness depends upon
the fact that we identify it with God Himself, ruling out all
other possibilities but God’s possibility. We have therefore to
realize that as the recipient of revelation man is brought
under God’s judgement. It is only because of this that he is
brought under God’s promise. It is only because of this that
God meets him as the One who intercedes for him, who
undertakes and directs his cause, who does not quench his
own ability and will and accomplishment but subordinates
it to His own, since man must always be subordinated to God,
if God’s glory is to triumph and man is to be helped.”
HUMAN FREEDOM VS DIVINE FREEDOM
Again continuing from above:
” We are to understand, therefore, that for God to be
revealed involves the dislodging of man from the
estimation of his own freedom, and his enrichment with
the freedom of the children of God. This negation, the
negation of man through God’s eternal grace and mercy, is
only the obverse of his position as a child of God, as a member
of the covenant between God and man. But this obviously means
that the negation of man cannot be put into effect any more than
his position as a child of God except through God’s own action.
Thus God’s possibility triumphs over the very imprisonment
in which we are involved, where we only fulfill our own
possibilities and only believe in our own possibilities.
The self-enclosed uniqueness of man, who only has and
knows his own freedom, is overarched and enclosed and
finally relativized through the uniqueness of God and His
freedom in which He is resolved to have fellowship with this
man and once and for all to be his Lord.”
HALLELUJAH! THANK YOU LORD JESUS!