I.　The divine truth, the divine reality, is the Triune God and His word—1 John 5:6:

A.　Reality is the element of God realized by us in the Son—John 1:14.

B.　The divine reality is God, who is light and love, incarnated to be the reality of the divine things—1 John 1:5; 4:8; John 1:1, 14.

C.　The divine reality is Christ, who is God incarnated and in whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily, as the reality of God and man, the types, figures, and shadows in the Old Testament, and all the divine and spiritual things—Col. 2:9, 16-17; John 1:18, 51; 11:25; 14:6:

1.　Because Christ the Son is the embodiment of God, He is the reality of what God is—Col. 2:9.

2.　The truth is the reality of the divine things, and this reality is Christ Himself—John 8:32.

3.　The reality of the divine things came through Christ and becomes the realization of God to us—14:6.

D.　The divine reality is the Spirit, who is Christ transfigured, as the reality of Christ and of the divine revelation; hence, the Spirit is the reality—1 Cor. 15:45b; 2 Cor. 3:17; John 14:16-17; 15:26; 16:13-15; 1 John 5:6.

E.　The divine reality is the Word of God as the divine revelation, which not only reveals but also conveys the reality of God and Christ and of all the divine and spiritual things; hence, the Word of God also is reality—John 17:17:

1.　The Father's word carries the reality of the Father with it.

2.　God's word is the reality, the truth, unlike Satan's word, which is vanity, a lie—8:44.

F.　God, Christ, and the Spirit—the Divine Trinity—are essentially one; hence, these three, being the basic elements of the substance of the divine reality, are actually one reality—1:1, 14; 14:6; 1 John 5:6: 1 John 5:6 This is He who came through water and blood, Jesus Christ; not in the water only, but in the water and in the blood; and the Spirit is He who testifies, because the Spirit is the reality.

1.　This one divine reality is the substance of the Word of God as the divine revelation.

2.　The divine reality thus becomes the revealed divine reality in the divine Word and makes the divine Word the reality—John 17:17.

3.　The divine Word conveys this one divine reality as the contents of the faith, and the contents of the faith are the substance of the gospel revealed in the entire New Testament as its reality, which is the divine reality of the Divine Trinity—Eph. 1:13; Col. 1:5.

G.　The divine reality is versus the lie, the vanity of the old creation, and the idolatrous substitutes of the true God—John 8:44; Eccl. 1:2; 1 John 5:20-21:

1.　The devil's nature is a lie and brings in death and darkness—John 8:44:

a.　With darkness is falsehood, the opposite of truth—1 John 1:6.

b.　The satanic lie is the expression of the satanic darkness—Rom. 1:25; 3:4.

2.　No matter how good, excellent, marvelous, and wonderful a thing may be, as long as it is of the old creation, it is part of the vanity of vanities under the sun; only the new creation, which is in the heavens and not "under the sun," is not vanity but is a reality—Eccl. 1:2-3; 2 Cor. 5:17.

3.　Anything that replaces, or is a substitute for, the divine reality is an idol, and we should garrison ourselves against it—1 John 5:20-21:

a.　Idols are the heretical substitutes for the genuine God and the vain replacements for the real God.

b.　We should be on the alert to guard ourselves from heretical substitutes and from all vain replacements of our genuine and real God—v. 21.

II.　We may know the divine truth, the divine reality, by being in the true One—v. 20:

A.　The Lord Jesus, the Son of God, has come and has given us an understanding that we might know the genuine and real God—John 1:14, 18; 1 John 5:20:

1.　This understanding is the faculty of our mind enlightened and empowered by the Spirit of reality to apprehend the divine reality in our regenerated spirit—Eph. 4:23; John 16:12-15.

2.　Know in 1 John 5:20 is the ability of the divine life to know the true God in our regenerated spirit through our renewed mind, enlightened by the Spirit of reality—John 17:3; Eph. 1:17.

3.　Because as believers we have been born of the divine life, we are able to know the true God and the things of God—John 1:12-13; 3:6, 15; 17:3.

B.　First John 5:20 twice speaks of Him who is true, the true One, the True:

1.　The term the true One refers to God becoming subjective to us, to the God who is objective becoming the true One in our life and experience.

2.　The true One is the divine reality; to know the true One means to know the divine reality by experiencing, enjoying, and possessing this reality.

3.　This verse indicates that the divine reality, which is God Himself, has become our reality in our experience; the God who was once objective to us has become our subjective reality—v. 6.

C.　To be in the true One is to be in His Son Jesus Christ—v. 20:

1.　This indicates that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is the true God.

2.　This also indicates that the true One and Jesus Christ are one in the way of coinherence; therefore, to be in the Son is spontaneously to be in the true One.

D.　The word this in verse 20 refers to the God who has come through incarnation and has given us an understanding to know Him as the genuine God and to be one with Him organically in His Son Jesus Christ:

1.　All this is the genuine and real God and eternal life to us.

2.　This genuine and real God is eternal life to us so that we may partake of Him as everything for our regenerated being.

3.　This refers to the true God and Jesus Christ in whom we are; it includes the fact that we are in this One, the true One, and implies that, in a practical sense, eternal life is the God in whom we are in our experience.

4.　Therefore, the true God and eternal life include our being in the true One and His Son Jesus Christ; now in our experience the true One becomes the true God, and Jesus Christ becomes eternal life.

E.　By being in the True, we know the divine reality intrinsically and experientially—v. 20; John 17:3.