How does Chaucer explain the importance of truthfulness in the poem?

“Truth” is the title of the poem, and the concept’s importance to the work is emphasized by the line that repeats at the end of each stanza, “And truth shall deliver you, have no fear.” Yet it’s a little hard to identify exactly what truth means here, or why it is so important. After all, none of the poet’s advice to Philip directly concerns dishonesty, but is instead much more focused on self-sufficiency and humility. In some sense, these are both forms of truth, according to the poem's speaker. To attempt to rule or change others is to be dishonest with oneself about the stubbornness of the world, while to seek wealth, fame, and power is to fail to accept the facts of one’s own life as they are. Still, truth here seems like more than a trait the righteous man might embody. Instead, it is an external force, one that repeatedly “delivers” Philip from the difficulties of his life, as long as he focuses on heaven and seeks to rule himself. So what, or who, is truth?

In medieval poetry, God often appears as the embodiment of various abstract concepts. For example, in religious plays, Jesus sometimes appears on stage as “Wisdom.” In the theological poem Piers Plowman, God is also sometimes called “Nature,” “Charity,” and, indeed, Truth. Chaucer seems to be doing something similar. Although God appears as an individual in the third and fourth stanza, he also acts in this world as “truth.” This is not truth in the sense of a correct statement about a particular matter, but rather something more all-encompassing—the ultimate truth of the world. On a short human time scale, money, power, and fame appear important. But the truth, governed by God, is that only virtue matters in the long run. Thus, he who seeks to be virtuous will eventually be delivered by this truth.