God's Truthfulness

The Lord is the only true God.
He is the living God and the everlasting King.
(Jeremiah 10:10 NET)

Our God is the only true God. He is not a false god, or an imaginary god, but the one God who is truly real. He is the one God who lives and is everlastingly alive as the only completely true God ruling over all that is. He is rock solid reality: always there, always active, never less aware or less active.

He is so rock solidly real that this same perfect reality extends to the words he speaks. He created everything that is by speaking it into being. God commanded it to be and it was. Everything that exists--except for the absolutely Real One himself--came into existence not from other things already in existence, but because God called it all into existence from nothingness. (Hebrews 11:3) What continues to be remains only because God still speaks it. (Hebrews 1:3) Everything we see, smell, hear, touch, taste--everything material or tangible--is only there for us to know because God himself and his spoken word are absolutely true. And what is yet to happen will happen only because God has spoken it into being:

For I am God, and there is no other;
{I am} God, and there is no one like Me,
Declaring the end from the beginning,
And from ancient times things which have not been done,
Saying, 'My purpose will be established,
And I will accomplish all My good pleasure';
Calling a bird of prey from the east,
The man of My purpose from a far country.
Truly I have spoken; truly I will bring it to pass.
(Isaiah 46:9-11)

Everything that is and everything that will be derives all of its existence from the true word of the only true One. He is the intangible reality upholding our tangible reality; the One more real than what is material, for the material derives its reality from him. He is the true and real unseen behind all that is seen.

That God is true also means that he is everything that a diety must be. There is nothing more that he ought to be or will come to be. He is always, ever, fully and completely everything that God must be. He is the absolute Absolute.

God is true, so everything he says about himself and shows about himself corresponds exactly to what he really is. We can be absolutely certain of some things about God because he has declared some things about who he is, and his spoken word about himself can be trusted to be completely true to what he is. Because God is true, God can be known by us: never completely known, but truly known.

The absolute truthfulness of his communication to us also extends to the laws or commands he give us. His laws and commands for human beings are stable and permanent because he is always fully true. What they demand of us corresponds perfectly with what a true human being ought to be. We can learn from them the absolute truth of what we were made to be.

His promises and warnings are also completely reliable because what he speaks as the only truthful One always comes to be. God's faithfulness comes directly from his attribute of truth. God is true; therefore he can be trusted. Our hope is a certain hope because "he who has promised is faithful (Hebrews 10:23)." Proverbs 30:5 tells us that "every word of God is purified", meaning that there is no impurity or falsity in it, and so "he is like a shield for those who take refuge in him." The security that can be found in God is there because his word is true.

Knowing this only true and real God is the key to everything: the source of eternal life itself.

Now this is eternal life--that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you sent. (John 17:3 NET)

And he can be truly known, because as the only truthful One, he declares himself to us, both through creation and through his written word. We have ways to know the only true God--the perfectly real one--through the true declarations he has made.

Those of us who have come to know him--who are his people--need to be real and true as our heavenly Father is real and true. We are being remade into the image of the one who spoke us into existence, so we need to call a spade a spade, and this is particularly important when it comes to our own selves and our own lives. God's people are not people of pretense, but of genuineness. Hypocrisy is everywhere condemned in scripture because it is directly opposed to what God is, and so it is directly opposed to what we ought to be.

Do not lie to one another since you have put off the old man with its practices and have been clothed with the new man that is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of the one who created it. (Colossians 3:9,10 NET)

God's new people are truthful people, people who are being made into the image of the one who created them by his spoken word--by "calling them out of darkness and into his marvelous light."

We can also take comfort in the certainty that we will indeed become one of the truthful ones, because he who calls us "is trustworthy, and he will in fact do this"--that is, he will make us "completely holy" and "entirely blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thessalonians 5:24 NET)." It's a promise from the only true God, who declares the end from the beginning; who truly speaks and truly brings it to pass.