There are two ways to view truth. The first is to look at truth as content. The second, more importantly, is to look at truth as connection.

Truth as content is what we often do in church, where we look at discipleship as merely knowledge transfer. But the essence of truth is not just content, it’s connection.

God’s Word is truth, and unless we are connected with His Word, His truth, His reality, we don’t know truth.

God intends truth to be connected in a living relationship with Him that is transformational.

In contemporary narrative, we say things like: Truth is relative. There is no absolute truth. Therefore, we must be gracious and tolerant.

To say truth is relative is to say you can substitute truth. Really? In the world of medicine, we are never told: “You must be tolerant. You can substitute medicine with poison.” In the world of building skyscrapers, you cannot substitute cement with Playdoh. In the world of flying an airplane, you cannot substitute fuel with water, because it matters. They are absolutes.

And when it comes to spiritual truth in the spiritual life of the spiritual foundation God has given in His Word, we make substitutes. 

Truth is under attack when we substitute it with something else. 

Satan’s chief attack, therefore, is against truth. And his chief weapon is deception, because he knows that when truth is compromised, everything else is compromised.

4 cornerstones of truth we must guard

There are four arenas of  truth that are critically attacked by the evil one. 

1. The truth of God’s goodness

In the Garden of Eden, the focus of Satan’s attack was on the goodness of God.

He comes to Eve in Genesis 3:1, and says: “Did God actually say it?”

In other words, he was sowing doubt in what God had spoken. Faith is compromised with doubt.

Satan’s dark whisper and deception is: God is not really good, because He knows if you were to take what He tells you you shouldn’t take, you will be like God.

Satan robbed Eve of the truth. It was the biggest scam in human history.

Everything revealed in the sacred Bible is the revelation of the love of God, the wisdom of God, the power of God. In His glorious majesty, He created us in His love, purely out of His goodness and covenantal grace. Satan came and deceived Eve and Adam out of paradise.

The human logic thinks: If (only) I have the ideal circumstance, the ideal situation. But my situation is not ideal, therefore I cannot love and follow God. 

But Adam and Eve were in paradise! You cannot get more ideal than that. Then how is it that there could be paradise lost? Because the foundation of truth was compromised the day they believed that God was shortchanging them. They failed to see that the heart of God’s truth is His love, that God is eternally, infinitely and lovingly good.

If you believe God’s Word, ground it on this fact: No matter what my circumstance is, my God is good. He has allowed it for our good. He has allowed it to tutor us in things that otherwise we cannot learn.

Then we can give thanks. Because my God is good and He loves me.

2. The truth of God’s authority

Truth under attack is actually authority under attack.

At the three-fold temptation of Christ in the wilderness, the focus of Satan’s attack is on the authority of God.

Temptation no. 1: Command these stones to become loaves of bread. (Matthew 4:3)

The temptation was to dismiss, deny, marginalise the authority of God, presume on His sonship and take things into His own hands. 

Temptation no. 2: If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. (Matthew 4:6)

This is similar to the first, but there is a twist: He will command His angels to lift you up. In other words, deny the authority of God and rationalise it away with misquoting, twisting, the Scriptures.

Temptation no. 3: All these I will give to you if you fall down and worship me. (Matthew 4:9)

What is at the heart of this temptation? It is the temptation to take a shortcut, a convenient way, that is apart from God’s will. 

Satan believed Jesus would fall. He believed that, as long as Jesus is on His throne in the heavens, he cannot touch the Son of God, King of Kings, God himself. But when God became man, Satan went: You are now on my turf. I’ve got you.

And so he tried to tempt Jesus three times in the wilderness. What was Jesus’ reply all three times? It is written. It is written. It is written.

Jesus was declaring to Satan the authority by which he operates – the Word of God.

If Satan believed Jesus could fall and waited for an opportune time for Him to fall (Luke 4:13), what about the rest of us? We are a walkover.

The only way to have victory in this spiritual warfare is the same way Jesus showed us: It is written. It is written. It is written. Truth matters. The Word of God matters.

What is the ultimate authority in your life and mine?

We have to understand that spiritual warfare is re-establishing God’s authority in our life. Otherwise Satan will come and short circuit everything.

Who is the ultimate authority in your life? You will determine the decisive battleground of whether you win or lose in spiritual warfare.

3. The truth of God’s gospel

Satan is the god of this world, small ‘g’, and he says he has blinded the minds of the unbelievers (2 Corinthians 4:4). Because they cannot see the light of the glorious gospel of love in Christ Jesus.

When we talk about the ultimate reality of God, the question is: If God can do anything, why not just cancel away sin? The answer to that is to realise what God can do and what God would do are two different things.

Can He do anything? Yes, because He is God. Would he do anything? No, because He is God.

He cannot compromise His own justice. Our God cannot become lawless or unrighteous or unholy. And therefore, now there is a dilemma: God loves us, humanity, as His glorious creation. We are His masterpiece. He created us, not just as one of the many creations, but to be adopted as children of God. But the Bible says because we have sinned against God, we have fallen: For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)

Then why doesn’t He just cancel sin? Because He’s holy, because he’s just. So what did God do? God did the unthinkable: God sent His Son to die on the cross for our sins, so that believing in Jesus, we have life eternal, for there is no other name under heaven by which man is to be saved except in the name of Jesus.

When God searches our heart, the Bible says, all of us have sinned and come short of the glory of God. 

So how many ways are there to heaven? Zero, because our hearts are compromised in sin. But when there is no way, God punched through a dilemma, and He sent His Son, and He made the way, and His name is Jesus. That’s the glory of the gospel.

And if we believe the gospel matters, then you and I must rise as disciples to share the gospel in our divine assignments, to declare with our life that Jesus saves. How can we possibly say the gospel is glorious and wonderful, but we don’t share the gospel, or if we don’t preach the gospel with our life, our testimony? There’s a missiological impetus to discipleship. 

4. The truth of God’s grace

If Satan cannot prevent God’s grace to us, He will pervert God’s grace in us.

For certain people have crept in unnoticed, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality. (Jude 1:4)

How does that happen? One of two ways: We take God’s grace for granted. Or, worse, we turn God’s grace into licence for sin, living a double life.

The evil one deceives us into thinking we will find happiness in a double life. We will not. True joy is when we come under the authority of God to walk in the goodness of God, where we know of the power of the gospel of God, and we live under the grace of God.

Double life within the heart leads to a double love, a double loyalty, a double mindedness.

When we think in terms of spiritual warfare, we must re-cultivate in our souls that single eye for the single Master, in that singleness of vision and heart for His purposes, His glory, His truth.

How then can we win the victory if God’s authority, God’s grace, God’s gospel, God’s goodness are under attack?

The secret: It is written. It is written. It is written.

There is a need for dependence. It comes a full cycle: Discernment in the truth of God as revealed by his Word; obedience by taking directed action; and because we don’t have the strength to keep on obeying, keep on surrendering, we lean in on God for His strength and wisdom. We walk in dependence.

I want to encourage all of us that it is possible to live the Christian life if truth is not compromised.

Truth is not meant to be content. It is meant to be a connection in dependence when we walk under the shadow of the Almighty, re-establishing His authority on our lives, so that we can walk in His goodness, in the transforming power of the gospel, and in the light of His grace.

This article is an excerpt of Rev Edmund Chan’s message at IDMC Singapore Conference 2024. It has been edited for length and republished with permission.

More messages from IDMC 2024:

Can challenges at work build your faith? Head of research at DBS Timothy Wong on finding meaning in the marketplace

Why church leaders fail, how they can finish well: Rev Dr Peter Tan-Chi at IDMC