“Many of Christ’s followers who personally heard the words recorded in John 8 believed Jesus taught truth. At the risk of offending them (which He did), the Master called them to commit to His teaching. If you continue in My word indicates a lifestyle firmly based on following the message they had mentally accepted. Only when truth became the foundation of living could the promised results be expected.

Even for the disciples who followed all the way to that fateful betrayal, actions based on truth were required. When they argued about who was greatest among them, Jesus assumed the role of a servant to wash their feet. He pressed home the truth: service is greatness. Christ’s actions and words must transform the disciple’s actions, not merely inform his mind. If you know these things, He says, you are blessed if you do them.

Although knowing is never enough, too often, we stop with gaining knowledge. We live in an information age which equates knowing with being. People hear; they understand, yet they do not act in life’s critical moments. To understand why, we must go back to the nature of truth. You have heard it said of old comes before the truth. No person hears with an empty slate….

I fear that very few meditate on truth long enough to be transformed by the work of God’s Spirit. Our crowded, noisy lives make little allowance for meditation. No matter how powerfully and clearly a passage is expounded on a Sunday morning, it is all too often lost in a flood of entertainment, family interactions, business matters, or a hundred other daily pressures. For many Christians, just getting into the Word is enough of a challenge.”

Art Nuernberg

EI School of Biblical Training, CORE VALUES, 8-10