Merriam-Webster’s 2023 Word of the Year was authentic. It means “not false or imitation” and “true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character.” People search for truth, but discerning fact from fiction can be challenging. Editor Peter Sokolowski said, “Can we trust whether a student wrote this paper [or] . . . whether a politician made this statement? We don’t always trust what we see anymore. We sometimes don’t believe our own eyes or our own ears. We are now recognizing that authenticity is a performance itself.”
As what is real becomes less clear, authenticity is something most people crave. This kind of “crisis of authenticity” can be averted as we take in and live out the wisdom of Scripture. Jesus spoke to His disciples just before His arrest, trial, and death (John 13-17). Preparing His disciples for His departure from earth, He also “looked toward heaven and prayed” for them (17:1). He prayed that the Father might “sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth” (v. 17). This implies that what God has revealed in the Bible doesn’t conform to some other standard of what’s true, but it is truth itself and the standard by which everything else is judged.
God calls us to align our lives with Scripture, to conduct ourselves according to its truth. Only by doing so can we become truly authentic, which is very much what the world needs today.
How does the Bible reveal God’s truth? How is it truly authentic?
Dear God, please sanctify me with the truth of Scripture as I serve You.
In John 1:1-18, readers are introduced to biblically weighty words that appear throughout the book, such as life and light (v. 4) and believe (v. 7). John 17 includes significant words that are also found in John 1—Word, glory/glorify, and truth. In John 1:14, these words are clustered together: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Of note is the word truth. There’s perfect harmony between Jesus, the living Word who declared Himself to be “the truth” (14:6), and the written Word (17:14, 17). Christ, the living Word, helps us to be authentic by aligning our lives according to His truth.
