The Truthfulness of God

(Article for publication week of 11-23-2011 AD)

“In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie promised, before the world began” (Titus 1:2).

Our text presents us with a Divine Impossibility- God cannot lie. This Divine impossibility is no limitation on God’s omnipotence, but rather a very strong declaration of His holy character. It is impossible for God to quit being God. That ought to be self-evident, and I invite you to meditate on it and let it sink in. God cannot quit being God, and He will not quit being the Thrice Holy, unchangeable God, and so He cannot lie.

Be sure, God has never gone back on any promise He has ever made. There is nothing in His ways, character, or actions that have ever needed concealment or covering up. Truth is so much of what and Who God is that the God Man proclaimed, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” God will not, yea, cannot lie.

Now this is a most comforting truth for the Christian. Our God is a promise making and promise keeping God. Our text has special reference to the promise that God made with and to Himself in eternity. God made a promise to and with Himself before the morning of time. I love the words of our text this week! “Before the world began”! Oh! What a delightful word to sound forth to the Lord’s people who know their own weakness! God promised eternal life before the world began, before there was a man to try to help Him or try to take any credit for salvation!

We might well ask, “To whom was this promise made, seeing as how it was made before the world began?” The obvious Biblical answer is that God made this promise with and to Himself. God made an everlasting covenant before the world began to give eternal life to a multitude of Adam’s race. This covenant was between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God gave a people to Christ for Him to save. Christ tells us of it in John 6:37-39. “All that the Father giveth to me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out. For I came down from heaven, not to do mine Own will, but the will of Him that sent me. And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which He hath given me, I should lose nothing, but raise it up again at the last day.” God the Father promised God the Son that He should have an innumerable seed. The Son eternally agreed and promised to become Surety for all His people’s obligations to God. At the appointed time, Christ came into the world to redeem us from our sins, as He had promised before the world began. God the Holy Spirit, eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son, promised in eternity to impart salvation to all this chosen and blood bought host, thus they shall all come to Christ as he said.

Praise the Lord, salvation is not dependant on the fickle will of man, but on God Who cannot lie. Salvation has been an accomplished fact from eternity in the mind of God, and not one part shall fail, because again, God cannot lie. The Christian’s hope is well grounded, as our text says, for it is in God Who cannot lie, not in puny man.

God cannot lie!