Chapter Two: Can We Know What Is True?

Text: John 18:33-38 | Supporting: John 14:6; Romans 2:14-16

The Question Before the Question

In Chapter One, we established that the evidence for God is sufficient, and that the real battle was never in the head. But there is an objection that attempts to end this trial before it starts, and you have heard it, probably this week. “Well, that’s true for you.” “Everyone has their own truth.” “Who’s to say?”

Notice what that objection does. It does not answer the evidence. It dissolves the courtroom. If truth is a private matter, then there is no case to weigh and no verdict to render, and this whole book is a waste of good paper. Therefore, before we go one question further, we have to settle this one: can anybody actually know what is true?

It so happens that the most famous version of this question was asked, face to face, of Jesus Christ Himself.

The Text: John 18:33-38

Hear the Word of God:

“Therefore Pilate entered again into the Praetorium, and summoned Jesus and said to Him, ‘Are You the King of the Jews?’ Jesus answered, ‘Are you saying this on your own initiative, or did others tell you about Me?’ Pilate answered, ‘I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests delivered You to me; what have You done?’ Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.’ Therefore Pilate said to Him, ‘So You are a king?’ Jesus answered, ‘You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.’ Pilate said to Him, ‘What is truth?’ And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews and said to them, ‘I find no guilt in Him.’” (John 18:33-38, NASB 1995)

The irony of the scene

Consider that room. A Roman governor, the most powerful man in the province, is looking at a beaten Galilean carpenter. And the carpenter has just said the most staggering thing a prisoner ever said to a judge: “For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth.”

And Pilate asks the question of the ages. “What is truth?”

Brothers and sisters, the Truth was standing three feet in front of him. The One who would say “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6) was close enough to touch. Pilate asked the right question in the presence of the only Answer there has ever been.

What Pilate did next

Look at verse 38 again. “Pilate said to Him, ‘What is truth?’ And when he had said this, he went out.”

He did not wait for an answer.

Therefore, Pilate’s question was not a question. It was an exit. It was a way of ending a conversation that was moving toward something he did not want to face. Remember that, because most of the time, when somebody today shrugs and says “well, what is truth anyway, who’s to say?”, they are not doing philosophy. They are doing what Pilate did. They are leaving the room.

Part One: Why We Believe

Let us do what Pilate would not do. Let us stay in the room and answer the question.

What truth is

Here is the plainest definition you will ever need. Truth is when what is said matches what is. If I say the tractor is out of fuel, and the tank is dry, I spoke truth. If the tank is full, I spoke falsehood, no matter how sincerely I said it.

Now, there are two kinds of statements in this world, and the confusion of our age comes from failing to distinguish them. Some statements are preferences. “Chocolate is the best ice cream” is a statement about me, not about ice cream. It cannot be true or false in any meaningful sense, and arguing about it is pointless. Other statements are claims of fact, and some claims of fact carry life-and-death weight. Consider the label on a medicine bottle. That label is not a preference. It matches the contents or it does not, and if it was filled wrong, sincerity will not save the patient. A mislabeled bottle can kill the man who trusted it completely.

The relativist’s error, whether he knows he is making it or not, is to file God, right and wrong, and Jesus Christ under preference. But Christianity has never made preference claims. It makes claims of fact, and they carry life-and-death weight. God exists, or He does not. Christ rose, or He did not. These are statements about what is, true for everybody or false for everybody, and your feelings about them change them exactly as much as your feelings change the contents of the bottle.

The statement that refutes itself

Now test relativism by its own rules. “There is no absolute truth.” Is that statement absolutely true? “Nobody can really know anything.” Do you know that? “Everyone has their own truth.” Is that true for everyone?

Each version of the claim fails its own test. To announce that there is no truth is to make a truth claim, and the statement refutes itself the moment it is spoken. Two Christian writers, Frank Beckwith and Greg Koukl, wrote a book on relativism and titled it accurately: it leaves a man with his feet firmly planted in mid-air.

There is also a practical test: nobody lives as though truth is relative. The same man who says truth is relative expects the bank to apply objective arithmetic to his account, expects the pharmacist to deal in facts rather than opinions, and drives across bridges built by engineers who did not treat load limits as preferences. And the moment he is wronged, he appeals to a standard. “That’s not fair.” Fair by what standard? A man reveals what he actually believes about truth by how he responds to being lied to.

The shield and the sword

Now, some of you are thinking that you have not heard anybody say “there is no absolute truth” in twenty years, and you are right. Relativism did not die. It changed vocabulary. Today it sounds like “my truth” and “speak your truth,” like “you do you” and “who am I to judge?”, like “that’s just your interpretation” when the Bible comes up, and like “that’s my lived experience,” said in a tone that ends the conversation. The claim is the same. Truth is treated as personal property rather than shared reality.

But something else happened alongside it, and you have seen this too. The same voices that treat God and morality as private possessions are fiercely absolute about their causes. Their opponents are not mistaken, they are evil. Relativism serves as a shield for the personal, and absolutism serves as a sword for the political. And before anybody in this room gets comfortable, understand that every camp in our fractured country runs its own version of this, each side with its own certified set of facts and its own list of unforgivables. This is not one tribe’s disease. Jesus told us where it comes from: out of the heart of men. Therefore, the mirror hangs in every house, including mine.

But here is what I want you to see, because it turns the whole battlefield into evidence. The sword proves our point better than the shield ever did. A consistent relativist would shrug at injustice. But moral outrage, real anger at real evil, only makes sense if evil is objectively real, for everybody. The man burning with anger over oppression is appealing to a standard that stands above every government, every culture, and every opinion poll, and that is precisely the rulebook Paul said was written on his heart. The greater the outrage, the greater the debt to the Author he denies. The Rulebook witness from Chapter One is testifying again, whether the man realizes he called him to the stand or not.

And notice that Pilate was no relativist either. He asked “What is truth?”, he declared “I find no guilt in Him,” and then he handed the Truth over to be crucified anyway, because the crowd was loud and his position was at stake. For Pilate, truth was negotiable under social pressure. Our age did not invent that. It only gave it better tools.

The rulebook problem

I will make this concrete with a true account about sheep.

A man once imported a flock of hair sheep with the goal of building the hardiest flock in America, and his method was nature’s own method. He exposed them to disease, to intestinal worms, and to the pests that kill sheep, and he let nature sort them. The weak died. The vulnerable were culled. Only the toughest survivors were ever bred. It worked. Their descendants are among the hardiest sheep in America today. The method was effective. It was not compassionate.

Therefore, when a skeptic tells you that we do not need God for goodness, that evolution explains morality because kindness is “good for the community,” point him to that sheep pen. Nature’s version of good for the community is to eliminate the weak, favor the strong bloodlines, and let the sick die. Survival of the fittest, applied consistently, produces hardy sheep. It does not produce hospitals. It does not run food pantries. It does not sit up all night with a dying widow. Yet the skeptic prizes exactly those things, kindness, compassion, protection of the weak, the very behaviors nature’s program would eliminate.

Understand me, brothers and sisters. His compassion is real, and I thank God for it. The problem is that his worldview cannot account for it. When he calls compassion good, he is appealing to a rulebook nature never wrote. And Paul tells us whose handwriting is in that rulebook: even those who never had the Law “show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness” (Romans 2:15). The man who denies the Author is still reading from His book. He cannot help it. It is written where he cannot lose it.

Part Two: How We Share It

So how do you carry this on Tuesday, when somebody at the shop says “that’s just your truth”?

First, as always, get the diagnosis right. Most people who say “who’s to say?” are not philosophers. They are holding up a shield. If truth about God is real and knowable, then it has claims on them, and the throne is at stake again. It is the same heart problem we identified in Chapter One, and the same line applies: evidence answers the head, but only surrender answers the heart.

Therefore, do not lecture the shield. Ask questions instead, and here are two to keep ready.

The first is the gentle turn. When somebody says “that’s true for you,” ask kindly, “Help me understand. When you say it’s true for me, do you mean it’s actually true, or do you mean I like it?” That one question puts the distinction between preference and fact on the table, and most people have honestly never considered it.

The second is the mirror. “Is it absolutely true that there’s no absolute truth?” Ask it gently, not as a trap, and give the man room to think. You are not trying to win a point. You are inviting him to examine his own foundation.

One more tool, because you will meet this. Sooner or later somebody will plant their flag on “my lived experience,” and I want you to handle that flag with care, because your instinct will be to argue with it, and that is exactly wrong. Honor it first. What happened to that person is real, it may be absolutely true, and if it was church people who did the hurting, say you are sorry before you say anything else. Then, gently, make the distinction. What happened to them is a fact. What it proves is an interpretation. “Christians wounded me” can be absolutely true, while “therefore Christ is false” is a separate claim that must be examined on its own evidence, because Christ should be judged by Christ, not by the worst people who ever borrowed His name. You are not arguing against their experience. You are inviting them not to let their worst experience write the verdict on the most important question of their life.

And when the moment is right, move the conversation off of philosophy and onto a Person and an event. Jesus did not say “I teach the truth,” and He did not say “I found a truth that works for Me.” He said “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). And He staked that claim on an event, a Roman execution and an empty tomb. Either He walked out of that grave or He did not. There is no preference option available on an empty tomb. We will weigh that evidence carefully in the chapters ahead, but plant the flag now: Christianity does not ask the world to try a perspective. It reports something that happened.

Finally, remember how Pilate’s story ends. He asked the question of the ages and left the room before the Answer could speak. Within hours he handed the Truth over to be crucified, all while announcing “I find no guilt in Him.” The tragedy of Pilate was never that he asked “What is truth?” It is a good question, perhaps the best question. The tragedy is that he did not stay for the Answer. And some of the people you love have been leaving that room their whole lives. Your job, this week, is not to trap them in it. It is to stand in the doorway, gently, and give them one more reason to stay.

The Charge

Truth is real. It can be known. The statement “there is no truth” refutes itself, and the man who denies the Rulebook cannot stop appealing to it. Therefore, the courtroom stands, and the trial continues.

So here is the charge, the same one that ends every chapter in this book. The evidence is in. The verdict is yours.

The Juror’s Assignment: This week, listen for truth being treated as personal property or as feelings. You probably will not hear “that’s true for you” anymore, so listen for its grandchildren: “my truth” and “speak your truth,” “you do you,” “who am I to judge?”, “that’s just your interpretation,” “that’s my lived experience,” or a claim answered with “that’s harmful” instead of “that’s false.” Catch one example, write it down, and ask yourself on paper: is the speaker making a claim of fact, or stating a preference? And would they still talk this way about something done to them?

Next: Chapter Three, Has God Spoken?