What if you uncovered the truth about life but made a startling discovery—that truth is not a concept but a Person. You may think you are ready to know the truth, but are you ready for the truth to know you?
This is the curious Christian teaching about coming to know Jesus Christ. It is the claim that the pursuit of truth includes reason, study, and intellectual rigor—but also relational aspects like friendship and fidelity.
Even if you are not religious, the Christian teaching of Truth as a Person sets a beautiful narrative before us: You are known and loved by the very thing that structures the universe.
But what does this teaching really mean?
It is a uniquely Christian belief that starts as a simple distinction between person and concept but then unfurls into an entirely new way of looking at reality…
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Discovering Jesus: A Relational Path to Truth
You might think of Jesus as a distant figure from old stories or as a symbol for rules, but Christianity offers something different: a chance to meet him as a person. The Bible captures this when Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).
Christians take this seriously. Jesus is the Truth. St. John says Jesus, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, is the Logos (John 1:1), which can mean Word in Greek, but also can mean the “rational order” or “ordering principle” of a thing. So, when John says the Logos made all things (John 1:3), he means Jesus gave order and structure to reality. St. Paul adds that not only did Jesus create reality, but He still holds reality together (Col 1:17).
St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that “truth is the conformity of the mind to reality.” Christians will claim that Jesus is the Truth, because He gave reality its order and intelligibility. In other words, if you know Him, you know the truth of all things.
Yet, coming to know Him is less like academics and more like forming a friendship. It has layers that unfold with both mystery and meaning, like any two persons coming to know each other.
Knowing Jesus: Building a Foundation for Understanding
Truth may be relational, but it is not relative. Knowledge has a role, and it is important. The first step is coming to know Jesus—who he is, what he taught, and why it matters. Christian teaching says: “To gain the happiness of heaven we must know, love, and serve God in this world.”
And here is a secret—those three movements are presented in order. You must know something before you can love it, and if you love something, you will serve it. In other words, knowledge is a prerequisite for love—not something contrary to it.
A husband and wife will tell you that they love each other more today than they did twenty years ago. How? Because in their love, they have come to know each other better and that deeper knowledge is an invitation to deeper love.
Christians often tell people to love Jesus. But can you love Jesus without knowing Him? Not some “Jesus” fashioned from the fads and fashions of the current culture—but rather the real Jesus who entered history.
A lot of people debate whether to love Jesus—but few spend the time to know Him and His teachings.
Loving Jesus: Growing a Heart for Connection
Knowledge of Jesus prepares the heart for love. Like with any person, Christians do not believe this can be forced or rushed. Relationships take time. Christianity makes room for this love to grow as cultivated by knowledge and time.
Picture nurturing a garden: it needs care, time, and the right conditions.
The amazing concept here is that you can be loved by the Truth. It is not simply that you were made by the Logos but that you are also loved by Him. Jesus is not some distant God—but, as St. Augustine says, He is closer to you than you are to yourself.
Serving Jesus: Living Out Your Understanding
Love turns into action. It is not demanded but rather freely given. You come to know and love the Truth—so now you act according to it. It is interesting to note that in Christianity the moral conversion—what should I do?—comes last, though it is often spoken about the most. Yet, people typically will not serve what they do not know or love.
If there is a moral failing, a failing in the service, then maybe the love is deficient. Christians may say one thing with their words, but their heart has already drifted—and the symptoms of this show in immoralities.
You always serve what you love—but unfortunately, at times, you may love yourself more than anything else. Christianity sees love as the animating principle of life, you want to be loved and to feel happy. It moves us and our actions.
Like tending to the garden, service or the moral life is fruit. It takes time to cultivate—to align the intellect and heart and to do what is right.
The Truth Will Set You Free
The Christian idea that Truth is a Person is captivating because it is relational. You can love the Truth, and the Truth can love you. It is an invitation to know, love, and serve the very person who holds you and existence in being.
Even if you are not Christian, the interplay between knowledge, love, and service crates a dynamic map of the soul in communion with others. Knowledge is an invitation to love, but love makes our knowledge grow—inviting us to greater love and service.
Whether you are Christian or just curious about Christian spirituality, the concept of Truth as a Person merits serious consideration for those who wish to know God and ascend.
Take that first step on the ascent, seek knowledge, and watch how it invites you to love, service, and a higher sense of belonging.
The Ascent is here to help.
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Dcn. Harrison Garlick is a deacon, husband, father, Chancellor, and attorney. He lives in rural Oklahoma with his wife and five children. He is also the host of Ascend: The Great Books Podcast. Follow him on X at Dcn. Garlick or Ascend.
Precisely. The Christian claim about truth as Person isn't just theological speculation - it represents the culmination of ancient understanding about logos as the rational principle underlying all reality.
What John's Gospel achieves is revolutionary: the identification of this universal ordering principle with a specific historical person.
The traditional metaphysical framework understood that logos functions as both the source of intelligibility in things and the principle by which minds can know them. When Christianity claims the logos became incarnate, it's asserting that the very structure of reality has taken personal form - not as metaphor, but as ontological fact.
This transforms epistemology fundamentally. Knowledge becomes participatory rather than merely representational.
You don't just know about the logos - you encounter him directly. The ancient philosophical problem of how universal principles relate to particular instances gets resolved through this union: the universal logos acts through the particular human nature of Christ without reduction or separation.
The crisis of meaning in modernity stems precisely from our reduction of truth to propositional content divorced from its personal, relational foundation.