What does it mean that God is truthful?

Question 2090

God’s truthfulness means that everything God says is reliable, that he never deceives and never errs, and that his word can be trusted without reservation because it answers perfectly to reality. To say that God is truthful is to affirm two things at once, that he knows all things as they really are and that he always speaks in accordance with what he knows. There is no gap in him between knowledge and speech, no shadow of pretence, no flattery and no falsehood. God’s truthfulness is the bedrock on which every promise in the Bible finally rests.

This attribute is more comforting than it may first appear. We live in a world thick with half-truths and broken assurances, where even the people we love sometimes let us down. Against that background, the doctrine of God’s truthfulness comes as cool water to a thirsty soul. Here is one who has never once spoken a false word and never will, whose every promise is as good as fulfilled the moment it leaves his lips.

What God’s truthfulness means

When we speak of his truthfulness we are describing the perfect agreement between what God is, what God knows, and what God says. The Hebrew word that lies behind much of this is emeth (אֱמֶת), which carries the double sense of truth and faithfulness, for in the Bible these two ideas belong together. A God who is true is a God who can be relied upon, and a God who can be relied upon is one whose words correspond exactly to the way things are. The Greek term aletheia (ἀλήθεια) likewise speaks of what is real and unconcealed, the very opposite of pretence.

God’s truthfulness therefore has more than one face. It means that he is the true God as opposed to the empty idols, the only one who really exists and rules. It means that his knowledge is true, that he sees everything as it actually is and is never mistaken. And it means that his speech is true, that what he declares can be taken to the bank without fear of disappointment. Each of these belongs to his nature, so that truthfulness is not a standard God lives up to but a reality God simply is.

This is why deception is unthinkable in God. A liar twists his words away from what he knows to be the case, usually to gain some advantage. God has no advantage to seek and no reality he needs to hide from, so the very motive for falsehood is absent in him. God’s truthfulness flows from his self-sufficient fullness, the being who lacks nothing and therefore has no reason ever to deceive.

Why God cannot lie

Scripture does not say only that God happens not to lie. It says he cannot. Writing to Titus, Paul speaks of the hope of eternal life which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began. The word he uses, apseudes (ἀψευδής), means free from all falsehood, incapable of it. This is no limitation on God’s power. It is the perfection of his character, for the inability to lie is a glory, not a weakness, just as a good man’s inability to enjoy cruelty is a mark of his goodness.

The writer to the Hebrews makes the same point and draws comfort from it. He says that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to our hope. Here his truthfulness becomes an anchor for the soul. Because it is impossible for God to lie, his promise and his oath stand as twin pillars that can never fall. Numbers had said it long before, that God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind, for what he has said he will do.

So his truthfulness is not fragile. It rests on the impossibility of falsehood in a perfect being. A God who could lie would be a God you could never finally trust, for you would never know which of his words to believe. The God of the Bible is not like that. Every word he has spoken carries the full weight of his unchanging character behind it.

Truthfulness and the written word

Because God is truthful, his written word is true. Jesus prayed to the Father, sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth. If the speaker is incapable of falsehood, then what he breathes out cannot itself be false. This is the deep root of our confidence in the reliability of Scripture, that it comes from a God whose truthfulness guarantees its content. The doctrine of inspiration and the doctrine of his truthfulness stand or fall together.

We have set out the case that the Bible really is the word of God in whether the Bible is truly God’s word, and we have looked closely at what it means for Scripture to be God-breathed in the study of the word theopneustos. Both of those truths lean back upon this one. If God cannot lie, then a book that God has spoken cannot mislead us in what it affirms. God’s truthfulness is the warrant for trusting the Scriptures with our very lives.

This does not mean that every speaker quoted in the Bible tells the truth, for Scripture faithfully records the lies of the serpent and of wicked men. It means that what God himself asserts through the human authors is wholly trustworthy. The record is true even where it reports falsehood, because the One standing behind the whole is the God in whom there is no darkness and no deceit.

Truthfulness and the promises of God

The practical sweetness of this attribute shows itself most of all in the promises of God. A promise is only as good as the one who makes it, and God’s truthfulness means that his promises are gilt-edged and unbreakable. When he says that whoever comes to him he will never cast out, he means it and will keep it. When he says that nothing can separate his children from his love, that word is as sure as his own being. The believer’s assurance is built not on the strength of our faith but on the faithfulness of the God who cannot lie.

This is the firm ground of the believer’s security. Paul tells Timothy that if we are faithless, God remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself. Our salvation is held in place not by our wavering grip but by the steadfast truthfulness of God, who will not go back on his word of grace. The God who has promised eternal life to all who trust in Jesus has bound himself by his own truthful nature to bring every one of them safely home. This same truthful God is the One we come to be knowing God personally, and the friendship he offers is as reliable as he is.

It also helps us as we read the promises rightly, distinguishing what God has actually committed himself to from what we may only wish were true. God keeps every promise he has genuinely made, and learning to tell his settled will from our own desires guards us from disappointment, a matter we have weighed in the difference between God’s will and his desire. Where God has truly spoken, his truthfulness ensures the outcome.

When God’s word is questioned

There are moments when life seems to contradict the word of God, when the wicked prosper and the faithful suffer, and the tempter whispers that perhaps God has not spoken truly after all. The Bible does not hide from this. Paul faced the objection head on and answered it with ringing confidence. Let God be true though every one were a liar. When our experience and God’s word appear to clash, the fault lies always with our reading of the evidence, never with the truthfulness of God.

The serpent’s first attack in Eden was aimed straight at God’s truthfulness. He asked whether God had really said what he said, and then flatly denied it, telling the woman she would not surely die. Every temptation since has carried something of that same poison, the suggestion that God’s word cannot quite be trusted and that we would do better to write our own rules. To stand firm in the truthfulness of God is to refuse that lie and to take him at his word even when we cannot yet see the outcome.

Faith, in the end, is simply treating God as truthful. It is taking him at his word because he is the kind of God who cannot break it. The patriarch Abraham did exactly this, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised, and it was counted to him as righteousness. To trust God’s truthfulness is not a leap in the dark but the most reasonable response a creature can make to a Maker who has never once spoken falsely.

So, now what?

Rest your weight on the promises of God, for the One who made them cannot lie. If you have been anxious about your standing with him, take your eyes off the unsteady ground of your own feelings and fix them on God’s truthfulness, which does not rise and fall with your moods. He has said that all who come to Jesus are received, kept, and brought home, and his word on the matter is as good as done because of who he is.

Let this attribute also shape the way you read your Bible. Come to it as the word of a God who cannot deceive you, expecting to find truth and not error in what he affirms. And let it search your own speech, for the children of a truthful God are called to be people of their word in a world grown weary of broken promises. The more clearly we see God’s truthfulness, the more we will love both his word and the honesty he calls us to live out before him.

“in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began.” Titus 1:2