When Jesus is being tried before the Roman Governor, Pilate, Jesus says to Pilate, “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” (John 18:37 NIV) Pilate replies with a question with which philosophers have wrestled for centuries, “what is truth?” (John 18:38 NIV)
Wikipedia says “Truth is the property of being in accord with fact or reality. In everyday language, truth is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it, such as beliefs, propositions, and declarative sentences.”
In our post-modern culture, truth is thought of largely as subjective, and while we might bristle at that notion, it does have validity in certain contexts. Imagine a two-car traffic accident on I-95 with four witnesses. The police ask all four witnesses what happened. Each witness tells the truth to the best of his/her ability, but the four stories vary widely. There is one truth about what really happened, yet four people saw the same accident from four different perspectives. Is it any wonder that truth is not always easy to decipher?
For Christians, truth is not about a definition, truth is not about varying perspectives. For Christians, truth, ultimately, is a person. In John 14:6 (NIV), Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
The idea of Jesus being the truth has numerous implications for us. But here are just two that are critical. 1) Since Jesus is the truth, Jesus can be trusted no matter what. 2) Jesus must be obeyed no matter what. After all, Jesus is the truth when He asks us to do something want to do, and Jesus is the truth when He asks us to do something we don’t want to do. Jesus is the truth.
-Mike Johnson