which lead to destruction; the principle of spiritual life is here personified as ἀλήθεια, truth, which pro- duces righteousness and holiness. Truth is spiritual knowledge, that knowledge which is eternal life, which not only illuminates the understanding but’ sanctifies the heart. The Holy Ghost is called the Spirit of truth as the author of this divine illumination which irra- diates the whole soul. This truth came by Jesus Christ, John 1,17. He is the truth and the life, John 14, 6. We are made free by the truth, and sanctified by the truth. The Gospel is called the word of truth, as the objective revelation of that divine knowledge which subjectively is the principle of spiritual life. Taking the word in this sense, the passage is brought into nearer coincidence with the parallel passage in Col. 3, 10. Here the image of God is said to consist in right- eousness and holiness of the truth; there it is said to consist in knowledge. ‘‘The new man is renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him.” These passages differ only in that the one is more con- cise than the other. Knowledge (the ἐπίγνωσις τοῦ @eov) includes righteousness, holiness, and truth. No- thing, therefore, can be more contrary to Scripture than to undervalue divine truth, and to regard doce- trines as matters pertaining merely to the speculative understanding. Righteousness and holiness, morality and religion, are the products of the truth, without which they cannot exist.
This passage is of special doctrinal importance, as teaching us the true nature of the image of God in
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