The One Full of Grace and Truth – What Is Truth?
VBC Albuquerque · Dec 7, 2025
This sermon explains the concept of truth (alētheia) in the context of a modern world filled with deception and misinformation. Truth is not relative or dependent on personal emotion, but rather unveiled reality revealed through Christ and Scripture. Truth is grounded in the nature and character of God, and Christ himself is complete truth, along with the Gospel message proclaimed by the apostles.
The sermon opens by identifying the urgent need of modern society to understand truth, especially for a generation growing up amid social media and artificial intelligence. The pastor points out that we live in an era of fake news, deepfakes, and increasingly sophisticated online deception. Harvard President Claudine Gay serves as a prime example of erroneous contemporary thinking: when asked whether calls for genocide against Jews violate Harvard's bullying policy, she replied "it depends on the context" and later spoke of "my truth," illustrating a philosophy that relativizes truth.
The second section develops the modern false view of truth: that truth is relative, context-dependent, with no absolute truth. The pastor exposes faulty arguments such as "true for you but not for me," "strong emotion equals proof of truth," or "success proves truth." The sermon especially addresses questions of morality, lifestyle, speech, faith, and religion: how to know which religion is true among Buddhism, Confucianism, Islam, or Christ. The pastor refutes the parable of the blind men touching an elephant by pointing out that there must be one sighted person who knows the complete truth about the elephant in order to explain to the blind people who only know one part.
The third section establishes the theological foundation of truth based on God's nature. The pastor teaches that truth does not rest on objects, circumstances, trends, culture, or society, but on the absolute nature of God. The Trinity is truth itself: Christ is truth, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth. Because God cannot lie, His word revealed in Scripture must be truth. Conversely, Satan is the source of lies, and whatever contradicts God's nature is a lie. Heaven must be all truth because God cannot accept lies and sin, while hell is full of lies, malice, greed, and hatred.
The fourth section analyzes specifically how John uses the word truth (alētheia) with particular frequency and meaning. This word appears 25 times in John (compared to 110 times in the entire New Testament), with 24 instances either directly used by Christ or written by John about Christ. Adding 8 uses of the adjective "true," the total is 32 times, showing that Christ and truth are the central themes of John. Truth is revealed through Christ (14:6), taught through His word (8:31-32, 8:40), and given through the Holy Spirit (14:16-17). Christ is not merely full of grace and truth but is himself truth, complete in all His speech, attitude, conduct, thoughts, desires, plans, and relationship with God. The balance between grace and truth is essential: truth without grace becomes cruelty, while grace without truth becomes deceit and meaninglessness.
The final section applies the message to reality: if we depart from Scripture and its teachings, we depart from truth. Truth is not found in trends, modern philosophy, social media, politicians, or personal emotion. The Gospel of grace and the message proclaimed by the apostles is truth, and anyone who proclaims another gospel is accursed (Galatians 1:6-9). The sermon emphasizes that where there is God, there is truth; where there is no God, there is no truth.