The Liar's Paradox
"One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, 'Cretans are always liars...' This statement is true" (Titus 1:12).
If you've ever taken a course in logic you've encountered The Liar's Paradox. It appears in many forms, but the simplest way to frame it is to imagine a 3x5 card with a single sentence on each side. On one side you read, "The statement on the other side of this card is true." You flip the card over and read, "The statement on the other side of this card is false." You turn the card over and over until your brain shorts out.
Paul could have had this paradox in mind (it was known in Aristotle’s time) when he quoted Epimenides, a 6th or 7th century B.C. philosopher who wrote, in a work entitled Cretica that "Cretans always lie..." Since Epimenides was a Cretan and Cretans always lie can we believe Epimenides? Paul resolves the puzzle on this occasion with his terse assessment: "This statement is true."
There’s a parallel truth found elsewhere in this letter. In the introduction Paul writes of the "hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies (lit: “the un-lying God”) promised before the ages began and at the proper time manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the command of God our Savior" (Titus 1:2,3).
Here we have a rock-ribbed, iron-clad, unqualified, unmitigated, unrestricted, unequivocal, no ifs, ands, or buts promise of eternal life to those who have put their trust in Jesus (whom Paul preached). In the crucified, risen, glorified Christ we see the end for which we were made and the certainty that we shall attain it, based on the word of One who cannot lie.
Jesus made the same assertion, using the strongest negation that the Greek language can supply: “Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never, ever, under any set of circumstances whatever die" (John 11:26).
So, though we, like Titus, live in a culture of lies we have a promise from One who cannot lie: In Christ we will never die, a calming conviction as we pile up the years. There is a hymn which says, “For he to die is ready / Who living, clings to Thee.”
And so I write tonight as I "lay me down to sleep.”
If I should die before I wake,
I know the Lord my soul will take.
David Roper
7.11.19
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I always give you a thumbs up; I just don't know how to post an image in this comment section!!
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