Through The Bible in a Year - August 10, 2026

“‘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 18:37-38

It is one of the most haunting questions in all of Scripture. “What is truth?” And then Pilate walked away—back outside, without waiting for an answer—because he had a problem to manage, a crowd to placate, a political situation to navigate.

He asked the most important question a human being can ask. Then, he left the room before the answer could reach his ears or his heart.

The irony is staggering. Truth was standing right in front of him. Jesus had said in John 14:6: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” The answer to Pilate’s question was the man he was about to send to be tortured and crucified.

Of course, Pilate wasn’t asking philosophically. He was asking cynically—the weary shrug of a man who had long since concluded that truth was whatever the most powerful person in the room decided it was. Yet, he walked away from the only person in the room who was more powerful than he and left behind the answer to his question that would have changed everything.

Our culture asks Pilate’s question constantly—“What is truth?”—usually with the same cynical assumptions: that truth is relative, negotiable, constructed by whoever holds the most power at the present time.

But the Gospel of John is making an entirely different claim. Here truth is not a philosophical concept; it is a person. Truth walked into Pilate’s courtroom, stood before human authority, and refused to deny His status or purpose even when such denial would have saved His life.

That same truth—that same person—made available to one as cruel and evil and weak as Pilate is still available to everyone who will stay in the room long enough to hear the answer. The tragedy of Pilate is not that he asked the question, “What is truth?” It’s that he left before he would let the answer – the person – reach his heart.

Respond: Are there questions you’re asking but walking away from before the answer can land? Are there truths about Jesus—about yourself, about your sin, about your need—that you’ve been running from rather than receiving Christ’s answer?

This week, stay in the room of God’s truth. Don’t ask the question and then manage your schedule, or answer your email, or distract yourself with a movie. Ask, “What is really true about where I find myself in life and what is giving me heartburn or hope, loneliness or love, failure or fulfillment?” Then, before you leave that room of self-reflection, let the person and ministry of Jesus tell you what is true. He is. If you will not walk away from Him, He will be your hope, love, and fulfillment every day and forever. That is the truth.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, Your Jesus is the truth—not a concept, but a person. Forgive me for asking the right questions about what is true in life and eternity, and then walking away before His answer can reach me. Help me stay in the room. Let the truth of Jesus reveal the real me to me, and the realities of Your grace to my heart. Through Jesus, let me know the truth of who You are, who I am, and about what Jesus came to do. I don’t want to be Pilate, asking about truth and then walking away before listening to the answer. Help me to hear and to receive the truth of the grace that is in Christ Jesus. In Jesus’ name, Amen.