WHOM DO YOU trust? That’s always been an important question, because in a world like ours, it’s risky to assume that other people are telling us the truth. They may be lying to us outright; they may be lying to themselves. They may be acting out of malice, or acting upon misinformation. Moreover, in between the pure black and white categories of true versus false lies a vast grey region of half-truth and personal interpretation. And all of this becomes even more confusing and complex in an age of information technology, when virtually any person saying anything they want — fact, fiction, whatever — can reach a global audience in a matter of seconds.

Who, then, is trustworthy? People are fallible, of course, and can say untrue things without knowing it. But we at least want to know that the people to whom we’ve given our trust are truthful in character; they aren’t intending to deceive us. That’s what we mean when we say that a friend is “true.” It’s not merely about what they say but who they are: sincere and loyal people who can be trusted to do what is right and honorable.

Thus, it’s one thing to “know the truth” in the sense of understanding whether a specific claim is an accurate representation of reality. But it’s another to “know the Truth” — with a capital “T” — in the sense of having a personal relationship with the One who is the source of all small-t truth. And as far as the apostle John is concerned, the two go hand in hand.

THE SECESSIONISTS WHO left the community claimed to know the truth about Jesus, and tried to convince others accordingly. Unfortunately for them, what they believed was false. Was it an honest mistake? And is merely being wrong a sin that leads to death? No on both counts. To John, the problem was not just that they believed what was wrong, but that they refused to believe what was right. Nor is this simply a matter of fact versus fiction; as John would have it, their rejection of the truth was a rejection of God’s own testimony and therefore a personal rejection of God. And death is the consequence of turning away from the only source of eternal life.

To some extent, all of this is reflected in the next to last verse of 1 John:

We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true by being in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. (1 John 5:20, NIV)

This is now the third time in three consecutive verses that John has said, “We know.” Is he being ironic? After all, if it’s true that the secessionists had Gnostic ideals of some kind, then they would have prided themselves on their possession of special knowledge. Against that, John ends the letter by emphasizing what he and his readers really know. In doing so, he uses a verb that suggests physical sight that leads to insight; we see the evidence with our eyes then “see” the truth in our minds and spirits.

As we looked at previously, in his first two “We know” statements, John twice reassures his readers that they are indeed born of God, and because of this are kept safe from the clutches of the devil, even if the world itself is under the devil’s spell. This dovetails with John’s earlier statements about the worldliness of the secessionists which has made them children of the devil instead of children of God.

Now, in his third and final “We know” statement, John tells his readers that Jesus, the Son of God, came to give us understanding, not to fill us with facts and ideas, but to “know him who is true.” The verb John uses here, also translated as “to know,” is not the same as the other three. We’ve seen it before: it’s the verb ginosko, which suggests the kind of knowledge we mean when we say we know a person as opposed to knowing information. The secessionists, by implication, may have thought they knew the truth, but they didn’t know God, the True One.

John’s also uses the same adjective “true” in his gospel. Jesus, the eternal Word, for example, was also the true light (John 1:9), the true bread (6:32), and the true vine (15:1). To the crowds in the temple, he declared his Father to be true (7:28). And perhaps most memorably to John, when Jesus prayed to the Father in the Upper Room, he said, “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (17:3). These words almost seem to reverberate in the ending of John’s letter.

As he closes, John again emphasizes the intimate relationship believers have with God through Jesus, echoing one last time Jesus’ parable of the vine and branches, spoken to the confused and distraught disciples in the Upper Room. In the previous two verses, he’s already told his readers that they are “of” God. But now he reminds them that they are also “in” God the Father because they are “in” Jesus the Son. In this God, the only true God, is eternal life found.

And that statement sets up the final verse of the letter, which on a first and casual reading may seem to come out of nowhere. But John seems to be too thoughtful of a writer to simply throw in one last random thought at the end. We need once again to read the verse in context if we want to understand its significance to his readers…and to us.