What is Truth? Pilate’s Question for the Ages.
What is Truth? Pilate’s Question for the Ages.
“What is truth?” (John 18:38).
TRUTH: (Hebrew, “emet;” Greek, “aletheia”) Truth is the only absolute in the world. If everything else in the world falls part, only Truth will remain standing; the building blocks of all creation; the framework upon which we build our faith; the true Reality that has established the world’s reality; that which can never be truly altered or changed; that which is universally trustworthy as facts of life; the foundation of what is truly real in our experience; the plumblines from which to measure our lives; that which is common knowledge in God’s mind; that which lines up with God’s perspectives; established facts from God as opposed to a person’s changeable opinions or preferences; that which is solid and certain as opposed to a lie, deceit, an illusion or superstition; the tangible fundamentals issued forth from the intangible mind of God. Truth is always true even when discounted or disbelieved. Since the Almighty God is the ultimate source of all truth, then it follows that the ultimate presence of truth resides in the Trinity of Truth: Father God is Truth, the Lord Jesus is Truth, and the Holy Spirit is Truth.
“One word of truth outweighs the world.” (Alexandre Solzhenitsyn, Russian author, early 20th century);
Emet = a Hebrew word meaning primarily either truth or faithfulness. Emet has also been translated secondarily as stability, certainty, trustworthiness, constancy. In Hebrew, “faithfulness” and “truth” are interchangeable, and the literal meaning is: True to His word; steadfast loyalty; trustworthy; truthful about promises; reliable; constant and dependable; act in good faith; certain in commitment; His word is His bond. Many Biblical scholars believe that John 1:14, where John states that Jesus is “full of grace and truth,” is an intentional repetition of the phrase in Yahweh’s important self-revelation (Exodus 34:6), “abounding in love and faithfulness.” John 1 no doubt hearkens back to Yahweh’s nature in Exodus 34, flatly stating that Jesus is of the very same eternal nature as Yahweh, the glorious God of the Hebrew Bible. The fact that the Hebrews saw truth and faithfulness as interchangeable points to God’s character, that He is true to His word, true to His nature, that God keeps truth certainly and with stability and trustworthiness. God is literally, truly faithful.
God is Truth – the One who created Reality and established it on the earth; the universal Fact that founded the world; the divine Reference Point for all that is true; the one fundamental essence of trueness.
God is Faithfulness – the One who is perfectly loyal to His righteous nature; the Being who is purely committed to His trustworthiness; He who is permanently, unfailingly true to His promises.
“This is why I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the Truth. Everyone who is a friend of the Truth, who belongs to the Truth, listens to my voice.” (John 18:37).
Mission Statement of Jesus. What led up to Pilate’s famous question as he stood toe-to-toe with Jesus? What prompted Pilate’s question was the Son of God giving His life purpose in one sentence: to “bear witness to the truth.” Jesus took on flesh in order to reveal the indisputable fact of God’s existence in the world. Jesus testified to the truth by revealing Himself, the Author of truth. Jesus came into the world to show us that truth actually exists. He became incarnate to show the world what God’s living Truth looks like in real life.
Who, Not What. We don’t know if Pilate was asking his famous question, “What is truth,” as a cynic, a skeptic, a manipulator, or an earnest seeker of the answer. But we do know he asked the wrong question of Jesus, didn’t he? Instead of What, he should have asked Who. Tragically, he didn’t realize that he was staring directly into the Answer to his question, standing right there in front of him. Little did he realize that truth is a Person, not an abstract concept. It’s hard to blame Pilate though, because we don’t normally think of an intangible concept as being a tangible, flesh and blood person. When an abstraction turns out to be an actual Person, so much so that the concept is the Person’s identity, that’s difficult to digest. Is it even possible for a human being to be so saturated with something, so in union with and in synch with it, that the person can be identified as that concept? No, that is humanly impossible. It’s difficult enough to try to understand a divine being who contains all the truth in the universe, but to literally be that truth incarnate? Faith needs to be activated, to say the least. When an established fact like a mathematical concept is understood, that’s one thing. But when that concept becomes somehow a tangible reality and takes on flesh? But to believe in God is to accept that this type of impossibility is possible. As it turned out, Pilate, Truth had a pulse, God’s pulse, and you didn’t have eyes to see it. The certain fact is that Jesus was so deeply joined in union with truth, truth is so invested in Him, that God is actually Truth itself.
Concept to Reality. The more we think about it, though, the more we can see this principle that God loves to turn the abstract into something tangible. In His mercy and wisdom, God makes truth accessible to us by taking the impersonal and making it personal. Word became flesh (John 1:14). Wisdom is embodied in Christ (1 Cor. 1:24); the Spiritual becomes personal (John 14-16). Love is an abstract principle until it is fleshed out, put into practice (1 Cor. 13). Tangible creation was just an idea in the Creator’s mind until He made the material world out of nothing (Genesis 1-2). So for truth to become a Person, for God to be Truth itself, maybe this isn’t so foreign an idea. And it follows that if the Trinitarian Godhead is Truth itself, that means that the Father is Truth, the Son is Truth, and the Spirit is Truth.
“Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.” (Blaise Pascal, French scientist, mid-17th century);