Encountering God: Truth Revealed in Jesus
I'm glad you're here for this last Sunday in the Christian Year, Christ the King Sunday. You can catch a brief 10-minute podcast version each week at God's Time with Chuck Warnock. If you find the devotional or the podcast helpful, please like it and share it on social media. Don't forget the questions for further reflection at the end of the devotional. Let me hear from you if you have a response or suggestion. The next season is Advent, which begins Sunday, December 1, and I'll be here with some interesting stories and inspirational insights. I hope you'll join me! Now let's look at this week's Gospel reading:
A Meaningful Conclusion to the Story of Jesus in the Christian Year
On this Sunday, the theme of Christ the King reminds us that the Jesus we have been following all year, from birth to death to resurrection, is the revelation of God Himself. Put simply, knowing Jesus is how we know who God is.
In our passage this week Jesus appears before Pontius Pilate, governor of Judea, who also tries to understand who Jesus is. In his conversation with Jesus, Pilate is witness to a Divine mystery and profound truth.
Scripture: John 18:33-37 NIV
Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”
34 “Is that your own idea,” Jesus asked, “or did others talk to you about me?”
35 “Am I a Jew?” Pilate replied. “Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?”
36 Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”
37 “You are a king, then!” said Pilate.
Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
When Jesus Stood Before Pilate
The marble floor in Pilate’s headquarters still holds the night's chill as two kinds of authority face each other with the early dawn. Pilate's question cuts through the air:
"Are you the king of the Jews?"
It’s a political concern. Pilate wants to know if Jesus is a threat to Rome’s authority.
But Jesus responds with his own question: "Is that your own idea, or did others talk to you about me?"
Pilate recoils from this invitation. "Am I a Jew?" he retorts, retreating behind his role as Roman prefect.
But Jesus transforms the entire confrontation with one declaration: "My kingdom is not of this world."
In other words, Jesus poses no military threat to the Empire. However, Pilate seizes on the word kingdom and accuses Jesus by saying -- "You are a king, then!"
Again, Jesus deflects Pilate’s accusation -- “You say that I am a king.”
When Truth Has a Face
This verbal sparring with Pilate is about to end, however. Then comes the moment when Jesus changes everything. In response to Pilate’s accusations, Jesus does confess, but not to an insurrection. No, Jesus confesses the reason he is on this earth – the reason he was born.
"The reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth."
What does “testify to the truth” mean? Does it mean to be more honest, to not tell lies, to be upright. No, when Jesus uses the word truth here, he’s not talking about telling the truth, but something much deeper.
The word translated “truth” is the Greek word aletheia. It means “to make unhidden” or as we would say in English -- “to reveal.”
The truth that Jesus is revealing isn't about honest facts. It's about God's reality, previously hidden, now made visible in Christ. It’s the truth that for the first time in human history everyone can see God.
Think of a curtain being drawn back, revealing what was always there but couldn't be seen. Jesus is claiming that for himself. He is claiming that when people see him, God's nature and purposes are no longer hidden.
Now this divine truth – this revealed God -- in human form stands before Pilate. When Jesus says he came to testify to the truth, he's not just claiming to tell the truth. He's revealing that he himself is God – the true reality -- in human form. He is the True God, not a counterfeit or fake, but the real presence of God visible in our world.
Seeing the Reality of God
The idea of this revelation appears throughout John's Gospel. John describes what it means when God takes a visible form –
"The Word became flesh... full of grace and truth" – John 1:14 NIV
Then in John 14:9, Jesus reminds the disciples that he reveals the hidden Father --
"Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father"
And when the disciples seek reassure, Jesus tells then he is the path to God, he is the revealed God, and he is the life that God gives –
"I am the way, the truth, and the life" – John 14:9
Standing before Pilate, Jesus is the truth revealed – God in human flesh.
Truth Bigger Than Facts
But then Jesus seeks to engage Pilate personally in this conversation.
"Everyone on the side of truth listens to me," he says to Pilate.
It's an invitation that calls for a response even today. It’s a call to align ourselves not just with verifiable facts, but with God revealed in Jesus.
This clear view of God for all the world to see has never happened before. Not since the Garden of Eden, when God walked with Adam and Eve, has God revealed himself to all people. After sin alienated Adam and Eve from God, God only revealed himself to a few, and only in critical moments in his plan.
For instance, God invites Moses to come up to Him on Mount Sinai, but commands the people to stay back safely from God’s presence. Smoke and fire shrouds the mountain top from view, prohibiting the Israelites from seeing Moses in God’s company.
Centuries later when Solomon dedicates the Temple, God’s presence masks itself in a smoke-like cloud. God himself is hidden from the people gathered.
But now, in Jesus, things are different. God has sent him to preach and teach, and to reveal God’s presence directly to people. The word “incarnation” literally means “in the flesh” and that is who Jesus is – God in the flesh; or, as one writer put it, God with a human face.
When Truth Meets Our Moments
What does this truth mean to us today? Just this – if we want to know who God is, we need to look at Jesus. Look at what Jesus did, what he said, how he responded, what he valued, what he criticized, and how he gave himself completely to the world he loved.
More books than we could count have been written about the doctrine of God. The classical attributes of God are that God is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent.
But those descriptions don’t tell the whole story, true as they are. What’s missing is the one thing about God that we cannot learn from a book – God is a relational God. We exist for relationship with God, and God makes that relationship possible through Jesus.
It’s very hard to connect to abstract, philosophical concepts about God. But we can relate to God who eats with sinners and tax collectors, forgives a woman caught in adultery, welcomes little children, grieves with those mourning, and heals people no one else will even talk to, much less touch.
We can understand a God who speaks, who eats, and who gets tired. We know what that’s like because those are very human situations. The point of God sending Jesus was to show us who God himself is.
Like Pilate, we also encounter this revealed Truth, God-in-Christ. However, while Pilate faced Jesus in person, we meet him in different ways.
We encounter Jesus in worship, when scripture is read and proclaimed. We feel his presence when we pray, letting ourselves be heard by God. When we gather at the communion table, God is visible to us through Christ’s sacrifice represented in bread and wine. And, when we help others, we see Christ revealed in "the least of these."
Each of these moments presents us with the choice Pilate had: Will we engage personally with this revealed Truth or miss our opportunity? Will we let ourselves encounter the God who has made himself visible to us?
Truth That Transforms
The mystery of Christ's truth is this: as we encounter God revealed in Jesus, we ourselves can become points of revelation. Paul writes that we are being "transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory" (2 Cor 3:18). We can become places where God's hidden reality becomes visible in the world.
We're not just learning about things that are true. We’re engaging with Truth Embodied, God in the flesh. By doing so, we become windows through which others can glimpse what Pilate saw – God in Jesus relating to our world, our needs, our hopes, and our longing.
Jesus’s last words to Pilate were both a declaration and an invitation –
“Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” The question we must answer is “Are we listening?”
Prayer
Lord Jesus, you who stood before Pilate as Truth incarnate, help us recognize these moments when we too must choose between power and truth. Give us courage to align ourselves with your reality rather than comfortable falsehoods. Shape us through our small acts of truth-telling into people who reflect your Truth more fully. Make us citizens of your kingdom where Truth reigns in love. Amen.
For Reflection This Week
Monday: Notice moments when you're tempted to maintain professional distance from truth, like Pilate. What would it mean to engage personally instead?
Tuesday: Read John 1:1-14 slowly. Consider what it means that Truth became flesh and lived among us.
Wednesday: Where do you see conflict between power and truth in your world? How does Jesus's example guide your response?
Thursday: Practice seeing beyond the political or practical questions to the deeper Truth at stake in your decisions today.
Friday: Look for moments where truth might heal a relationship. Remember that Truth incarnate came to restore relationships.
Saturday: Review your week's choices between different versions of reality. Where did you align yourself with God's Truth? Where did you settle for counterfeits?
