Truth Embodied
This is Part 3 of 4 from a sermon on Truth, the first in "The Transcendentals" series preached at Summit Church (Naples) in January 2026. It has been lightly edited for publishing. Click here to listen to the audio.
The apostle John began his gospel like this, “In the beginning was the Word…” (John 1:1)
That phrase is significant. In the Greek philosophical tradition, the word—logos in Greek—signified the animating principal of all life. Essentially, it was the transcendental behind all the transcendentals.
John was certainly aware of this when he used the word logos, but he added an important twist: “…and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made… 14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:1-3, 14).
Jesus: Truth Embodied
John’s twist is that God, the Creator of the cosmos—he who is true, good, and beautiful; he who designed and ordered all things to reflect his truth, goodness and beauty—has an eternal Son through whom he made everything. And his Son—the Word—fully God, became man and dwelt among men, revealing the glory of God’s grace and truth.
As another Scripture says, Jesus of Nazareth is “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3).
And Jesus testified about himself, saying: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).
In other words, Jesus is truth embodied. More than that, he grounds everything that is true. The reason anything can rightly be considered true is because it owes its very existence to him who called it into being. Everything that has truth is true because the Truth made it true.
Implications for the Real World
As we’ve discussed in part 1, everything God made was endowed with truth (intrinsic to its nature), and he has given people the ability to comprehend and appreciate it.
Take the tree example again. A tree is a tree because of what it inherently is, not because people took a vote and decided it was a tree. But where did it get this nature? I am saying that God gave trees their natures.
Think about what this means: reality itself drips with divine purpose. When we recognize and appreciate trees as trees, we are merely grasping reality as it truly is—understanding truth because we are seeing things the way God designed them. But if I point to a tree and claim it is some other type of thing, I am wrong, because I am failing to properly align myself to God’s created order.
And this same logic applies to God’s moral law. It flows from God who is the standard of truth. His moral law is there and is fixed, even if people reject it or fail to recognize it. To deny the existence of an objective moral order—or to claim that something evil is good—is to err and a vain attempt to live in a make-believe world.
Consider how the truth would answer some pressing issues in our society:
If we say that a man is a woman, we are in error because that doesn’t correspond to the reality of how God made man or woman.
If we say that two men are married, it doesn’t make them married, because it doesn’t correspond to the reality of God’s institution of marriage.
If we say that a baby in the womb is only a collection of cells and not a human life worthy of protection, we err because that doesn’t correspond to the reality that at the moment of conception, God said let there be life and made another image bearer.
If we say that another human is not worthy of our respect because the color of their skin, their sex, or their origin, we err because that doesn’t correspond to the reality that every human bears God’s image.
The Good News for Truth Deniers and Rejecters
Because we have turned away from Jesus, the Truth, our ability to perceive and appreciate his truth has been diminished. And in a way, so have we.
Even though we have become diminished and corrupted—unable to clearly discern the truth—we still have no excuse. We are liable to the judgment of God because of it. Our distortion isn’t the result of mere weakness or a moral handicap that was out of our control. Rather, we are volitional creatures, and we have all willed and chosen rebellion against God’s moral order.
Here's the way the apostle Paul explains it in his letter to the Romans:
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. (Romans 1:18-23)
Paul says that everyone can recognize God's reality and our duty unto him, but that we all reject it, choosing to delight in the things he made rather than in God himself. And because of that, we are, in truth, under the wrath of God.
But God, because of his great love, sent his Son—the embodiment of truth. And he sent him to show us how we have all lost our way. And he sent him to win us back to the truth—to take us out of the dark and bring us into the light. But Jesus didn’t remove us from the dark with chains and a blindfold to face the stiff justice of God like we deserved. Instead, the Truth went into the dark, took our chains upon himself and suffered the due penalty of our sins by dying upon the cross so that all who would believe in him could go free.
But we are not free to live however we want. That’s what got us in such a mess in the first place!
Instead, we are free to walk in newness of life and according to the truth as God originally intended his image bearers to walk. We are free to be the kind of people who see the clearest and live the brightest because we don’t follow the dictates of our corrupted desires. Now, we follow the way of Jesus—the truth!
