JESUS said to the Jews (and the words apply equally to all people), “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
In this, as in everything else that Jesus said and did, he was revealing the mind of God, his Father; for he came to manifest his Father to the world. It was the Father who spoke through Christ, in all that Christ said.
God wants every person to know the truth, and God wants them to know it in order that they may be free. God has no use for salves. Only in freedom can an individual serve him. The service of God is to love God and do what he has commanded because we love him and our fellow creatures. In love there can be no slavery.
The truth of God delivers the soul from bondage. And no chains or fetters that can be forged by man can shut out this truth from the soul. God’s truth breaks the bonds of a perverse disposition, of evil habits, of fetters and of everything that can hold back the soul from the pathway of righteousness that leads to eternal life.
If we would be free we must know “the truth.” But what is this? The answer is found in the words of Jesus, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” We must know “the truth as it is in Jesus.” Is this a narrow view of truth? No, indeed; it is the broadest view of truth, the only complete view of truth that can be had.
He who sees not Christ in his investigation of truth, sees not enough of the truth to escape falling into some delusions concerning it.
God wants all persons to serve him; not for his good, but for their good—in order that they may realize all the good and the happiness that life can contain. And to serve him they must be free; no forced service can be acceptable to him. No plan to force men to serve him can for a moment have his approval.
And to be free, men must know the truth,—which is to know him who is “the truth”—“Christ, the wisdom of God, and the power of God.” In the spiritual life—which is the true life—knowledge is not power, save as it is the knowledge of Christ as the power of God unto salvation. He who holds this knowledge, and only he, has truth and freedom.