Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”
John 18:38
Pilate’s question cuts straight to the heart of the matter. Lodged deep within the heart of every man is the desire to know truth. The problem is like Pilate many aren’t actually seeking truth. Instead they attempt to define it for themselves. Pilate utters his ironic question believing truth is ultimately unknowable. The tragedy is quite literally the truth was staring him in the face.
Jesus told Pilate, “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice,” (John 18:37). When we seek to define truth for ourselves we end up so lost and turned around. We would need divine intervention to get us back on track. Thankfully, Pilate was not the only one who could come face to face with the truth.
I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.
Perhaps I should back up a bit. I decided to start this series after seeing a trend in the way Christians engaged the world. I made a curious observation: Christians largely have no idea what we believe or why we believe it. Satan’s question in the garden has reverberated through time to shake the Church to its core: “Did God really say…?” Like Eve reaching out for the fruit, Christians are abandoning the faith once passed down by the saints by chasing after the philosophies and ideologies of the world.
Many Christians have reduced the authority of Scripture and the Church to mere opinion. They have relegated them to the distant past of a less enlightened time. Rather than concern themselves with questions of fidelity and morality they concern themselves with politics and policy. The result is that what was once taken for granted has now been largely lost. The loss of truth leaves behind a war torn hellscape in which those who seek to be faithful struggle to survive even within the Church.
You know what I mean. Strike up a conversation with a fellow Christian about sin, sexuality, abortion, marriage, identity, the role of men and women, church attendance, Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, closed communion, judgement, hell, or even…truth, and you better prepare for an argument. I asked myself why this is so and keep returning to the same answer: truth no longer is important. Instead, people would rather feel good and not cause offense. Without realizing it, though, they gave up the one thing that mattered: Jesus.
Why would I be so bold to say this? Because Jesus Himself said, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.”
A Faith to Be Confessed
What people seem to have lost is that unlike every other religion or philosophy, Christianity is primarily a faith of confession. Jesus told His Disciples, “Whoever confesses Me before men I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father.” Just before He ascended, Christ commanded His Disciples turned Apostles, “In this manner go: making disciples by baptizing and teaching them.” I have wanted to ask Christians who tell me I cannot say that another Christian’s belief is wrong or that I should not be concerned with what divides us when the last time they read Scripture was.
Over and over in the Old Testament God concerns Himself with fidelity and condemns idolatry. His main charge in the prophetic writings is that His people forgot His name and word by turning from the truth. In the Gospels, Jesus commands us to confess the truth and repeatedly warns us to not give in to deception. You almost cannot read a single epistle in the New Testament without encountering a warning of false teachers. Paul commands in Romans that we are to mark and avoid such teachers. He also speaks of those who have destroyed their faith by giving in to such false teaching.
The Truth about Truth
So why does this all matter? God desires all come to the knowledge of the truth and be saved (1 Timothy 2:3-4). We were blinded and bound in the devil’s domain. Dead in our sin. Enemies of God. Unable to know the truth. That is, until the Truth came to us. Jesus is the Word of God incarnate. He testified to the truthfulness of God’s whole Word, in word and deed. The Spirit then leads us on to seek the truth in all things.
When we want to know the Truth, not just our “truth,” then we turn to God’s Word. There we will find all we need to know, and His Word will even train us how to think. I desire through this series to help equip you. We’ll look at many different topics we encounter while engaging the world. We will seek the truth through it all, no matter how hard it may be. I pray you will join me in this endeavor to learn the truth. Amen.
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