When I read the dialogue between the Jewish leaders, Pilate, and Jesus in John 18:28-38, I am amazed at how familiar Pilate’s argument sounds, and at how much I can sympathize with his frustration. We are prone to thinking that postmodernism, relativity, and an inability to find the truth are new problems. But just look at the jadedness with which Pilate retorts, “What is truth?” It is a rhetorical question. He expects no answer–he seems to assume that it cannot be answered.

It is staggering to think that 2000 years ago–before Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism were world religions, before the bulk of western philosophy was written, and before modern technology put us in touch with almost every world-view the world over, this was still a impossible question and a tiered debate.

Now the problem is that people rely on different methods to determine truth. Some use personal experience. They have to smell it, taste it, touch it, hear it, feel it, see it for themselves to believe it. On the other hand, some only believe in what can be proven through logic or the scientific method. It must be observable, testable, repeatable, deducible to be true.

It becomes even more complicated because it is painfully obvious that not everyone has the same experiences, or interprets them the same way. And even in the scientific community there are differences of opinion on major issues. These contradictions have led many people to say like Pilate, “What is truth?” and throw up their hands in frustration.

In the passage we see Pilate caught between different world-views. He is torn between his concept of truth and that of the Jewish leaders. He has to leave his house because the Jewish concept of right and wrong does not allow them to enter it. Then Pilate asks them to deal with Christ according to their own laws because according to his laws Christ is innocent. But that is unacceptable to them. Fundamentally, there is a disagreement over truth.

Pilate was an educated man. He was a Roman governor. He probably would have been up on contemporary political and philosophical debates. And like many people today, a myriad of convincing yet contradictory arguments may have created in him a deep doubt that the truth could ever be known.

The problem with all the ways that we normally determine what is true is not that they are wrong, but they are not enough. Experience is a great teacher. And we can certainly learn about the world through the Scientific method. But we can never learn by experience what comes after death. And no microscope, no matter how powerful, will ever be able to see spiritual things. The problem arises when we make either of these helpful yet finite ways of knowing into the ultimate way of knowing. For then we are assuming that God can be comprehended by our human minds–that we can look at the facts and be the ultimate judge.

If Pilate were not so frustrated and had listened carefully to what Christ said he might have caught this. He might have noticed that when Christ entered the conversation, he did not take either side. Christ did not side with Pilate and plead innocence. And he did not confirm what the Jewish leaders said by claiming to be a violent revolutionary. Instead he declared, “My kingdom is not of this world. For this purpose I came into the world–to bear witness to the truth.”

This is exactly what we need to solve our truth conundrum; something to break in from outside our world with an ultimate perspective. Take the old illustration of the blind men and the elephant, where each one feels a different part of the elephant’s body and tries to describe the elephant. It is long and flexible like a snake says one, feeling the trunk. No it is flat and broad like a wall says another, feeling the side. No it is thick and round like a tree says a third, feeling the leg. These are accurate but incomplete descriptions. They need someone who can see the whole elephant to tell them what it is really like.

Christ is the one who can see the whole elephant. He came into the world so that we can know the truth. Speaking about Christ, John chapter 1 says, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

The amazing thing is that we can know truth at all. Like all abstract virtues truth comes from the person of God. God is truth, just as God is love. It is an aspect of his perfect character. We would not know what truth was if God had not graciously revealed that aspect of his character to us. If left to our finite reasoning, we would indeed be at an impasse–we would have to throw up our hands like Pilate and say, “What is truth?” Instead God sent us truth in Christ Jesus, and in the Bible, his written word. As Christ prays in the garden of Gethsemane, “Your word is truth.” And as Christ says in John 14:6 “I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the father except by me.”

We cannot–we must not–put our finite mental processes above the revelation of the one by whom we were all created, and who died to redeem his creation on the very day we remember tonight. In the person of Jesus Christ, communicated to us in the Bible, we have Truth incarnate.