LifeLink Devotional

Friday, April 2, 2021

If you want to have some fun today, ask the next person you see to define truth. Okay, maybe that isn’t what you call fun, but it certainly would be eye-opening. I predict that you will find multiple people who believe that truth is determined and defined by one’s individual experiences. Truth has become relative to most people, which serves the purpose of validating one’s own choices.

Things haven’t changed all that much since the days when Pilate asked Jesus about truth. We read about it in John 18.

John 18:33-38  So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. 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.” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, “I find no guilt in him.“

Pilate had the same problem as people today: they ask the wrong question. Asking “What is truth?” may serve our immediate need to validate our current choices, but it does not reveal truth. The correct question we must ask is “WHO is Truth?”

It appears that Pilate only asked his question about truth to end his conversation with Jesus because he immediately goes outside to talk to the Jewish contingent.  Pilate had no real interest in knowing the truth. He seems satisfied to define truth only within the context of his own experiences and for his own benefit. If he genuinely wanted to know the truth, he would have waited for Jesus to answer, and Jesus would have revealed Himself to Pilate because Jesus is the Truth.

In John 14:6 Jesus told His disciples that He is the Truth. He went even further in his conversation with Pilate by revealing that the only way to define the truth is by being in the truth. Jesus said,  “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.” The only way to answer the what is truth question is to first be in the truth, and Pilate was not. Neither were the Jews. Neither are most people today who are trying to define truth. The determination of truth can only be made once we are in the truth, and that means being in Jesus.

It is futile to engage in debate about truth with those who have rejected the truth that truth is a Person not a position.  Praise God that we know the truth because we are in the Truth. Go and proclaim Jesus to others who want to know the truth. He is the only answer to their search.

Pastor John