What is the church’s role in a rel­ativistic age? Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 3:15, 16. It is to pro­claim and defend the truth. He likens the church to a temple in the ancient world, situated beside the market place, with pillars that upheld a great edi­fice.

In the same way he says the Christian churches are the public face of God’s truth. They exist to propagate, lift up and hold out the truth. There are other func­tions such as educational work or social service that the churches engage in. But their primary task is to make sure that the surrounding world in each generation contacts God’s truth. The churches are trustees or stewards of the truth, held accountable for their discharge of this responsible task.

So what is truth? Truth is what corre­sponds to reality. When people tell the truth the expectation is that they will give the facts of the case. Then those of us who were not there will have a fair idea of what took place.

The sciences are programmed to tell the truth in the various fields of human investigation and knowledge. Of course, even then the truth can be, and sometimes is, skewed by personal prejudice, ideolog­ical commitments, insufficient or inaccu­rate information. But the intentional goal of the sciences is to find out the truth within a subject area.

As a result there are different kinds of truth. For example, mathematical truth is not the same as the truths of sociology, some truths about humans are not rele­vant to animals, and so on.

Actually, the truths that the sciences deal with are limited in two important ways. First, they are limited to the data coming out of their defined field of enquiry. Second, they are restricted to the space-time world and so are relative to it.

Christian truth is different because it deals with ultimate reality and so is absolute and unchanging. It tells us about God — who He is, what He is like, His purposes for the world and interaction with the world. With Christian truth we are able to transcend mentally and spiritu­ally the limits of space and time, so as to engage with truth that is infinite and eter­nal. Christian truth provides us with an archemedian point for judging all other truths.

This is why Paul describes this truth (1 Tim. 3:15, 16) in two ways (great is the mystery of our religion).

First, Christian truth is great. This is because it centres and sources in God who is Truth itself (Westminster Confession of Faith 1:4). The wonders of the universe and the natural world hardly compare with the profound and astonishing truths of God’s Self-revelation. One thinks here, for example, of the wonders of the Triune God, the Person of Christ, the transaction of Calvary, Christ’s resurrection, the sec­ond advent and the new creation. More than philosophy, theology begins and is carried on in wonder.

Second, Christian truth is mysterious. This is because it is a matter not of human discovery or invention but of divine dis­closure and giving.

An offshoot of this nature of truth is that it is also intensely personal. God is himself the Truth that addresses us and claims us. As Augustine found so long ago, “You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.” Ultimately truth is know­ledge of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit — the three-Personned God.

The poem of Francis Thompson (1859-1907) The Hound of Heaven is the timeless statement of this quest of the divine Lover and the final surrender of the human individual to that absolute Love that “follows, follows after”.

So what is Christian truth? Paul sums this up in verse 16 in the words of an early hymn or confession of faith. Each of its lines tells us something precious about the nature or content of Christian truth.

First, the truth about Jesus Christ is the truth about God (he was manifested in flesh). God was manifested in flesh. (The variant readings here say “who” or “God”. In the transcription process of Greek MSS the two words could have been easily confused.) God is implied as the subject of the sentence if not actually stated. Christian truth is about the entrance of God in Person into the contingencies and relativities of this world.

Paul’s words recall those of his fellow-apostle John:

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God ... the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth ... the law was given through Moses but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. John 1:1, 14, 17

Jesus is the truth because Jesus repli­cates for us in human form who God is and what He is like. To see Jesus is to see God, to know Jesus is to know God, to listen to Jesus is to listen to God, to hon­our Jesus is to honour God. Outside of Jesus there is no god or saviour.

Second, the truth about Jesus includes the once-for-all event of His resurrection (He was vindicated by the Spirit). Christ was vindicated by the Spirit when He was empowered to live again from the grave in which He lay. In a relativistic age the res­urrection of Jesus carries special relevance.

Rolfe Hille writes in the European Journal of Theology (11:2, 2002):

In view of the fact that hedonism has become the most influential postmodern worldview, we should confront modern man anew with the historical reality of the resurrec­tion of Jesus Christ. In our world of facts, no one may expect that people believe on the basis of myths or just symbols to deal with the difficult experience of death. In view of the problems of human misery, sickness, and death you cannot preach sal­vation and man’s ultimate completion simply in a metaphorical fashion.

If you wish to do something about reality, you can only do it by confronting the fact of this world with other facts. Therefore, Paul’s method of argument in First Corinthians 15:1-8 is also still very important. Only the historical facticity of the resurrection has the power to move people to seek the risen Christ who is still alive today.

Third, the truth about Jesus Christ reaches beyond the human world (he was seen by angels). It impacts on angels. God’s creation is more than the empiri­cal world of the physical universe. Jesus is king of angels. They exist as actors and witnesses in the carrying out of God’s purposes in history and the natural world.

When Jesus came, lived, died and rose again the angels were active participants in his earthly struggle and victory. They announced his birth, resurrection and return; they assisted him in the desert temptations and the conflict of Gethsemane. They are intensely inter­ested in the drama of redemption.

Fourth, the truth about God in Christ “has been proclaimed among the nations”. This follows from Paul’s description of the church as an agent and institution of light in a dark, ignorant, wilful and wicked world (1 Tim. 3:15).

In his letters to the churches in Revelation Jesus represents them as lamp‑stands to illumine their local communi­ties. When churches lose or compromise the light of truth they lose their light (and salt), and become worse than useless. So says Jesus (Mt 5:13-16).

The task of proclamation rests ulti­mately with pastors and teachers, ordained by the church for this purpose. This primary responsibility must be dis­charged globally and cross-culturally to all people groups, sectors of Australian society, those of other religions and belief-systems or none. This is the Lord’s personal commissioning (Mt 28:18-21), but we are not left to our own resources. We have the objective promise of Christ’s ultimate and universal authority to do the work; we have the subjective promise of His Presence through His Spirit poured out at Pentecost and still today.

Fifth, God’s truth in Christ demands a response of faith (He was believed on in the world). What is faith? Faith is self-commitment to Jesus Christ as Liberator from sin and Lord of the future, according to the Scriptures. Faith means giving up the right to run our own lives in our own interests, instead handing them over to the right of Jesus to run them for his and others’ interests.

Abraham Kuyper expressed this famously —

no single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest, and there is no square inch in the whole domain of our human experience over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’.

Man is a traveller through this physical cosmos to an eternal home with or out­side of God. The journey home to God begins with the radical transaction of per­sonal faith in Jesus Christ. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6).

Sixth, Christian truth encompasses the whole story of Jesus (He was received up in glory). This includes His ascension when He was received up in heavenly splendour. There is a meta-narrative that matters because it transforms our own short stories. It is the truth about Jesus Christ from the cradle through the cross to the crown, according to the four Gospels.

It is a single and singular story. By faith we make it our own, or share it as our own, or join it with our own. The result is a transforming friendship that goes with us through life and transfigures death (read Luke 24:13-35 imaginatively). Having suffered with Him here, we will be glorified together with Him when He comes in his kingdom.