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Mercy and truth have met together;
Righteousness and peace have kissed.
- Psalm 85:10
If you’ve watched television or listened to a podcast for more than five minutes this year you’re probably no stranger to the expression “speak your truth.” Evidently truth has become subject to whatever I think or wish it to be with the result that your truth, and my truth, and his truth, and her truth are all at a variance… and I guess we’re supposed to just be okay with such nonsense.
But the problem with this is that it is entirely backwards. A Christian worldview, a scientific worldview, views truth not as something to be made, sculpted, and shaped, but as something to be discovered and then conformed to. You see, truth ought to shape our opinion; our opinions don’t shape truth.
In contrast God’s opinions aren’t based on truth like ours. God’s opinions make truthThey are Truth. Light is light because God wills it to be so. Dark is dark because he so wills it. It’s God’s opinion, God’s truth, that the sea is not land and land is not sea, that the sun rules the day and the moon rules the night, that birds live in the sky, fish in the sea, and animals on land, and most importantly that Man - male and female - is his very own image. And God’s opinion, God’s truth, makes it so.
So, nevermind “your truth”, what is God’s truth? Nevermind your opinion of yourself, what is God’s opinion of you? If you try to shape and mold yourself after your own personal opinion of who you are and who you should be you will inevitably miss the mark (which is the literal meaning of the word “sin”). Now, if you would only be quiet (shut up!) for a moment, turn down the noise, and really look at yourself you know that you’re selfish, weak, unkind, angry, afraid, depressed, busybodied, and whatever other pejorative adjectives you might fill in to your sad self-assessing adlib. That is “your truth.”
But God has a different opinion of you. The Apostle Paul tells the Galatians, he tells us, that if you have “put on Christ” if you have “been baptized into Christ” then you are a son, a daughter, of God and God pronounces over you what he pronounced over Jesus at his baptism, “you are my son in whom I am well pleased.” And remember God’s opinions aren’t just opinions, they make things true, they are truth. So as true as light is light and dark is dark, as true as the sun rules the day and the moon rules the night, as true as birds live in the sky, fish in the sea, and animals on land, you are a son or daughter of God, a son or daughter in whom he is well-pleased.
Now, the hardest part of the Bible to believe isn’t the talking snake, or the parting of the sea, or Elijah’s fiery chariot. No. The hardest part to believe is the good news, the Gospel, that God has mercy, that you are his son, his daughter, and that he doesn’t only love you he actually likes you. But Jesus after his own baptism, after his own divine blessing, preaches, ‘believe it’, “believe in the Gospel,” believe the good news: God loves you, God likes you.
So as we close you might have noticed that we’ve not even mentioned Psalm 85 yet! But this has in fact all been a meditation on the 85th in which the Sons of Korah sing “mercy and truth meet,” “mercy and truth walk together,” “mercy and truth are companions.” God’s opinion of you, his mercy upon you, it is true. Believe the good news. Sing the psalm over yourself today because in you “mercy and truth meet.”
~ Michael Kornelis