He Already Knew
John 18:38 - Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and said to them, “I find no guilt in him at all.”
On July 30 of this year, one of the world's recognized authorities on fake video admitted that even he is regularly fooled now. Sam Gregory helped build a rapid response team that does nothing but verify footage for journalists and human rights investigators, and he says he has a hard time telling real from synthetic anymore. And he’s notalone. One analysis pooled fifty-six studies and found that people, on the whole, do no better than chance at spotting a fake.
And detection software isn’t really helping either, because it regularly passes fakes and flags real footage. Legal scholars have a name for what happens next, and it may be worse than the fakes. The liar's dividend. Once anything can be faked, anything real can be denied. Get caught on camera and say it wasn’t you. Hear your own voice on a recording and call it AI. So seeing a thing happen is no longer proof that it happened.
Which makes the words in this verse land differently than they used to: “What is truth?” Jesus just said He came into the world to bear witness to the truth. Pilate asked what truth was while the Truth stood in front of him, and then he walked outside. But keep reading, because the next sentence is the point: “I find no guilt in him at all.” Pilate asks whether truth is even a thing, and then states a fact about a real man, in public, on the record, as the magistrate responsible for the case. And he’s right! It’s a completely accurate verdict! He doesn’t know everything, but he knows this. The man is innocent.
So Pilate’s problem was never that the truth was out of reach. He got close enough to see what justice required. But his cowardice eventually overruled. He tried every exit. He sent Jesus to Herod. He offered the crowd its holiday prisoner and put Jesus on the ballot. He had an innocent man flogged and brought Him back out. Three times in John’s account he says he finds no guilt in Him. Then he hands Him over. Pilate doesn’t lose the truth, he loses his nerve.
Sunday morning we hung a plumb bob on that post. Good ‘ole Bob! He didn’t care how the room voted. Well, Pilate held the plumb line in his own hands, read it correctly, and took a show of hands anyway. And this is where a coward becomes the stage God uses to show us the gospel. Pilate calls Jesus guiltless and treats Him as guilty. Meanwhile Barabbas, a man mixed up in insurrection and murder, walks out of that building free. Nobody found Barabbas innocent. He walked because Jesus was handed over. That’s a living picture of the cross, standing in the street before the cross is even raised. The righteous for the unrighteous, to bring us to God. Barabbas went home without paying for it. So does everybody who belongs to Christ.
Which means Pilate’s question isn’t only a warning for skeptics. Because we, too, can say the right things, the true things, and still take the coward’s way out. We know the apology to our spouse needs to begin with “I was wrong” and end before the word but. We know we should’ve stopped the conversation when everyone at the table began tearing apart someone who wasn’t there. We know we need to call the friend whose calls we’ve ignored since the argument. None of that is complicated. We know what truth requires, but we’re afraid of what obeying it might cost.
So, in just a couple hours you’ll get to do what Pilate would not. Walk into a room full of people saying true things out loud, and stay there while those things search you. Then go out and live, love, and give like Jesus this week, in a community running on competing claims and convenient doubts and carefully managed silence. The plumb line doesn’t move when the room votes. Neither does He!
Head: Recognizing the truth is not the same as submitting to it.
Heart: Let Christ’s courage in you steady your courage for Him.
Hands: Defend the absent person the next time the conversation turns against them.
Prayer: “Father, thank You that Jesus stood in my place and set me free. Forgive me for knowing what is true and being afraid to act on it. Make Your voice louder than the crowd, and give me courage to obey with gentleness. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
-PK