Truth
Knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come — the eternal reality that frees the soul.
Of all the words men use, none has been more contested than “truth.” In every age the world has asked Pilate’s question — “What is truth?” — and walked away before the answer could be given. The world treats truth as a thing men make: a preference, a perspective, a story agreed upon by the powerful. But the scriptures reveal truth to be something men do not make and cannot unmake. It is older than the world, independent of the mind that perceives it, and bound up with the very glory of God.
To understand truth rightly is not merely to win an argument. It is to see reality as God sees it — and, seeing it, to be made free.
The Revealed Definition
In a revelation given through Joseph Smith, the Lord defines truth in words found nowhere else in scripture. They are spare, exact, and total:
“And truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come.”
Notice what this definition refuses to say. Truth is not knowledge of things as they appear, nor as we wish them to be, nor as a culture has decided to regard them. It is knowledge of things as they are — in their actual being, past, present, and future. Truth is therefore anchored not in the knower but in the thing known. It is a description of reality itself.
This makes truth eternal and unchanging. Because God comprehends all things as they are, were, and are to come, His knowledge is perfect truth; and because reality does not bend to opinion, truth cannot be voted into or out of existence. It is independent of every human construct — the firm ground on which all real knowledge stands.
Truth, Light, and the Glory of God
The same revelation that defines truth places it at the center of all things. Truth is not an isolated abstraction; it is woven together with light and with intelligence, and it shares in the nature of God Himself.
“Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.”
Here truth is called “the light of truth” and identified with intelligence — a reality so fundamental that it “was not created or made, neither indeed can be.” Truth is uncreated. It is co-eternal with God. The Lord goes on to teach that this light and truth is also self-existing and free:
“All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence.”
Truth is “independent in that sphere in which God has placed it.” It does not depend on us for its existence; rather, all existence depends on it. And this same truth is the substance of God’s glory:
“The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth. Light and truth forsake that evil one.”
This is one of the most staggering statements in all of scripture. The glory of God — the radiance, the power, the very excellency of Deity — is light and truth. To gather truth, then, is to gather the raw material of glory. And truth is not neutral: “light and truth forsake that evil one.” The more truth a soul receives, the more it turns away from darkness. Truth and righteousness move in the same direction.
Truth Can Be Lost
If truth is glory, then its loss is the gravest of tragedies — and the Lord warns that it can indeed be lost. Truth is not held automatically; it is held by obedience and by faithfulness to what God has revealed.
“And that wicked one cometh and taketh away light and truth, through disobedience, from the children of men, and because of the tradition of their fathers.”
Two thieves of truth are named here. The first is disobedience — when a man will not live the truth he has, he loses even that. The second is “the tradition of their fathers” — inherited error, the false ideas a culture passes down so quietly that no one thinks to question them. Truth, being reality, never changes; but our hold upon it is fragile. It must be obeyed to be kept, and it must be examined against the word of God lest tradition crowd it out.
Christ Is the Truth — and the Truth Makes Free
Truth is not finally a proposition but a Person. When Jesus described Himself, He did not say He taught the truth or knew the truth — He claimed to be it.
“Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”
Because Christ is the truth, knowing Him is the knowing of reality as it ultimately is. And He promised that such knowledge does not bind — it liberates:
“If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
The freedom Christ offers is not freedom from truth but freedom through it. A man who believes a lie is bound by it, however comfortable the lie may feel; only reality can set him at liberty. And that truth is found in God’s own word, for the Savior prayed to the Father:
“Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.”
Truth does more than inform; it sanctifies. As reality reshapes the soul that receives it, the disciple is made holy — conformed at last to things as they really are.
Knowing Truth by the Spirit
How, then, does a mortal lay hold on truth that is eternal and independent? Not by reason alone, for reason can be deceived; not by tradition, for tradition can mislead. Truth is finally confirmed to the soul by the Spirit of God, whose very office is to lead into truth.
“Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth.”
He is named “the Spirit of truth,” and the Book of Mormon makes the same promise with a sweeping certainty — there is no truth so large that the Holy Ghost cannot witness of it:
“And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.”
The Spirit is uniquely suited to this work because the Spirit deals in reality and never in pretense. Jacob taught that the Spirit’s testimony is a testimony of things as they actually are — the very language of the Lord’s own definition of truth:
“The Spirit speaketh the truth and lieth not. Wherefore, it speaketh of things as they really are, and of things as they really will be.”
“Things as they really are, and as they really will be” — this is precisely “things as they are… and as they are to come.” The Spirit testifies in the exact grammar of eternal truth. The same Holy Ghost who is the Spirit of truth speaks only of reality, and so His witness can be trusted without reserve.
To Love Truth Is to Be Made Free
Gather these revelations together and a single vision emerges. Truth is knowledge of things as they are, were, and are to come. It is uncreated, independent, and eternal — the light by which God Himself is glorious. It can be embraced through obedience or stolen by disobedience and false tradition. It is embodied in Jesus Christ, written in God’s word, and confirmed to the heart by the Spirit of truth, who speaks of things as they really are.
To love truth, then, is not to love our own opinions, nor the comfortable traditions we inherited, nor the verdicts of the age. To love truth is to love reality itself — to love things as God sees them, because God sees them as they are. It is to prefer the firm ground of what is over the shifting sand of what we wish were so.
And this love is never in vain. The God who is the very light and truth of all things has promised that those who continue in His word shall know the truth, and the truth shall make them free. To seek truth is to seek God; to receive it is to receive His glory; and to be filled with it is, at the last, to be made wholly and forever free.