What Is Truth?

Then they led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the governor's headquarters. It was early morning. They themselves did not enter the governor's headquarters, so that they would not be defiled, but could eat the Passover. So Pilate went outside to them and said, “What accusation do you bring against this man?” They answered him, “If this man were not doing evil, we would not have delivered him over to you.” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.” The Jews said to him, “It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death.” This was to fulfill the word that Jesus had spoken to show by what kind of death he was going to die. 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. (John 18:28-38 ESV). What’s your ambition in life? Perhaps you don’t understand the question enough to really answer it. Maybe it would be a good idea to define the word ambition in order to help you answer the question. Webster’s 9th New Collegiate Dictionary defines it this way: “Ambition: an ardent desire for rank, fame or power; or the desire to achieve a particular end.” A very short boy wanted so badly to play basketball. He even told his dad that he wanted to become a pro when he was older. Knowing that his son would never be able to play the game, the dad asked the local coach if there was anything he could recommend to make the boy taller. “You might take him down to the museum and put him on the old torture stretch rack,” the coach said. Several weeks later the coach asked the father if putting the boy on the stretch rack had helped. “Well, it didn’t make him any taller, but he confessed to several things that I never knew he’d done.” Our world is full of ambitious people. We see them in the sports world, in entertainment, politics and business. People all around us are desiring to achieve a particular end; to move up in their company, to build a retirement, to save for college, or to get that first car or home. Pilate was a very ambitious man. He wanted more than anything to impress his Roman superiors and move to a higher position in the empire. The last thing he wanted was to deal with a Jew who thought he was a king, or worse, a god! So we find this ambitious Roman leader faced with Jesus and finally he asks the only question of Him that would truly satisfy his ambitions: What is truth? A great mathematician once said that he was not concerned about spiritual matters until he vividly saw life’s “two magnitudes the shortness of time and the vastness of eternity.” When this truth came home to him, he became a devoted disciple of Jesus Christ. If Pilate had considered these two realities, he would not have condemned Jesus to die on the cross. He knew that the Savior was innocent of the charged against Him. He even had an uneasy feeling that Jesus was not just an ordinary man. But his desire to keep his high government post was greater than his determination to do right. Actually, he obtained little earthly benefit from his decision. The church father Eusebius, quoting from Greek historians, said that Pilate fell out of favor with his superiors and committed suicide before AD 40—less than 10 years after his fateful decree. Since we have no indication that he ever repented of his sin and trusted Christ as his personal Savior, we must assume he died in a lost and hopeless condition. He had not reckoned with the “shortness of time and the vastness of eternity.” Ambition is not wrong. If you are willing to settle for anything less than eternal life, then you will end up like Pilate. He was a man frustrated with life and destined for failure. What is truth? Only Jesus is the truth.