Nothing new about truth

Solomon said that there is "nothing new under the sun" (Eccl. 1:9).

I've understood that to be true in a variety of circumstances. Death is sorrowful. Marriage is the greatest source of earthly joy (and often sorrow). Sin is devastating. Always. Where there are people, there will be conflict. Where there is Christ, there can always be reconciliation. There is nothing new under the sun.

Yet we sometimes think of the trends of our current age as being new and novel. Postmodernism, the debate over Christ and the atonement, the relationship between justification and salvation, all sound to our ears to be new debates. They're not.

Listen to two statements about truth:

The truth is everything to a Christian.

I fear that the church in this…era has lost focus on that fact. It is no longer deemed necessary to fight for the truth. In fact, many evangelicals now consider it ill-mannered and uncharitable to argue about any point of doctrine. Even gross error is now tolerable in some quarters for the sake of peace. Rather than rightly dividing the word and proclaiming it as truth, many churches now feature motivational lectures, drama, comedy, and other forms of entertainment — while utterly ignoring the great doctrines of the faith. Even people who attack the truth in pseudo-scholarly ways are finding publishers in the evangelical realm and being honored as if they had deep insight.

We must recover our love for biblical truth, as well as our conviction that it is unassailable truth. We have the truth in a world where most people are simply wandering around in hopeless ignorance. We need to proclaim it from the housetops, and quit playing along with those who suggest we are being arrogant if we claim to know anything for certain. We do have the truth, not because we are smarter or better than anyone else, but because God has revealed it in the Scriptures and has been gracious to open our eyes to see it. We would be sinning if we tried to keep the truth to ourselves.

And:

Some things are true and some things are false: — I regard that as an axiom; but there are many persons who evidently do not believe it. The current principle of the present age seems to be, "Some things are either true or false, according to the point of view from which you look at them. Black is white, and white is black according to circumstances; and it does not particularly matter which you call it. Truth of course is true, but it would be rude to say that the opposite is a lie; we must not be bigoted, but remember the motto, 'So many men, so many minds,'" Our forefathers were particular about maintaining landmarks; they had strong notions about fixed points of revealed doctrine, and were very tenacious of what they believed to be scriptural; their fields were protected by hedges and ditches, but their sons have grubbed up the hedges, filled up the ditches, laid all level, and played at leap-frog with the boundary stones.

The first is from John MacArthur earlier today. The second from Charles Spurgeon about 130 years ago. Different continents, and different eras, yet they both speak for this age — and the one that is already past and etched in history's stone. That implies at least two things: 1) we need not be surprised at attacks against our core beliefs. It has always been that way and always will be until the return of Christ; 2) vigilance to protect the truth really is foundational for believers. God said that through Paul's pen; it was true in Ephesus, and it is true for us. We stand on the truth.