Pilate therefore said to him, Thou art then a king? Jesus answered, Thou sayest [it], that I am a king. I have been born for this, and for this I have come into the world, that I might bear witness to the truth. Every one that is of the truth hears my voice.
Pilate, the Roman governor, asks Jesus if He claims to be a king. Jesus answers by naming the reason He was born. His reply raises three questions: what kind of King is He, what did He come to do, and who can hear Him?
Pilate hears a claim to royalty. The Lord does not drop that claim — but He points to where His kingdom comes from.
Its source and character were of a new, heavenly kind, one to which the idea of armed warfare was completely foreign. He does not give up His claim as King of Israel — that always stands — but He rises into a higher region, and declares that He came for something more than to reign on earth.
So His kingship is real. But reigning was not what He came into the world to do.
The Lord's positive answer leaves Pilate with an uneasy conscience. In real fact He is a king, being born and coming into the world, not to reign, but to bear witness to the truth. Here is true moral kingly character shown in lowly grace and rejection before the time of His reigning as King of kings.
Jesus says two things about His coming, not one. He was born, and He came into the world. Writers weigh that second phrase.
To come into the world He must have existed before that coming. And so we have His Godhead stated just as simply. We have the "I" who was born, and the "I" who came — the "I" of Bethlehem, and the "I" who was before Abraham. Yet He was the One who stood in human form and in lowly grace before Pontius Pilate.
Another writer pictures the scene from the judge's side of the room:
Who ever heard a prisoner speak like this before his judge? The One who spoke was a man, for He was born. But He came into the world for a purpose. He does not now say that He was sent.
If He is a King who is not reigning yet, what is He doing here? His answer names a present ministry that Israel's refusal did not interrupt.
For a time the unbelief of His nation held back His possession of the kingdom. But He shows that God's purpose had not failed in this. He had come into the world for other present work than to take His throne in Zion.
This truth is not a theory. It has a content, and hearing it calls for obedience.
He came to bear witness to the truth: to tell out what God is, in a world blinded and blighted by the devil's lie. He was the truth Himself... His kingdom is truth, there is no lie in it, and to hear His voice means to obey the truth, and to be in His kingdom means to be subject to Him.
The last sentence goes straight to the man doing the questioning.
The Lord appeals to the conscience of Pilate. Was he one who had come under the convicting power of the truth? All such hear the voice of the Lord. Sad to say, Pilate shows that the voice of Jesus had never reached his conscience or touched his heart. His flippant reply is: "What is truth?"
So who does hear His voice? Those who have already received life from God.
Those who heard the voice of the Son of God had divine life in them. He who is the truth gave them that life, and that made them "of the truth." These wonderful words were lost on Pilate. He had not the divine capacity to receive them.
Of everything in the Lord's life, Paul chose this scene to hold up before Timothy.
He makes no reference to His glorious resurrection or ascension, nor to any of the miracles He did, though each of them bore such rich testimony to His power and grace. He takes special notice instead of His conduct before the judge.
And nothing anyone could see backed up what He said:
Jesus witnessed the good confession before Pontius Pilate, that He was a king, without any mark of royalty about Him. His confession seemed contradicted by His appearance.
- Born — He was born, so He is fully man. He came, so He existed before Bethlehem.
- King — He never drops the title. But His kingdom is of a heavenly kind, so no one fought for Him.
- Came — His work now was not to take a throne. It was to bear witness to the truth, and tell out what God is in a world living under a lie.
- Heard — those who are "of the truth" have already received life from God. They know His voice, and hearing it means obeying it.
- Followed — Paul points Timothy to this confession, not to the miracles. Jesus made it with nothing royal in sight to back it up.
Pilate says to him, What is truth? And having said this he went out again to the Jews, and says to them, I find no fault whatever in him.
Pilate ends his talk with the Prisoner by tossing out a question and walking away before Jesus can answer. In the same breath he gives the only honest verdict of the whole trial. Commentators press two points here: what it means to ask about truth while Truth stands in front of you, and what it means to call the Prisoner innocent and then hand Him over anyway.
The question was not asked into empty air. One writer puts Pilate's question next to the Lord's own words and calls it a missed chance.
Pilate's question, so often asked before and since, shows that the world is utterly ignorant of the truth, and this because it is ignorant of the true God... What an opportunity Pilate missed! He asked, "What is truth?" and there before his eyes was Him who had said, "I am… the truth." Such is man in his greatness! Such is the world in its ignorance of God and His truth!
The clue to Pilate's state is not the question but what he did next — he broke off and left.
We may not know exactly what was in the Roman Governor's mind when he asked that question, but his actions show us his attitude to it. He broke off at this point. If he had really wanted to know the truth, an answer would have come from Him who came into the world to bear witness to the truth. If anything but indifference or scepticism had prompted the question, he would surely have waited for that answer. Attitude to the truth and attitude to Christ are much the same.
The Lord's previous sentence had already offered him a way past his own scepticism.
Yet here was a word that could get behind even such defences. If he did not know what truth was, he could at least know whether he was "of" it. And if a man must be true in order to know truth, maybe that lack was what made truth seem out of reach.
Pilate sat as judge. Finding the truth was his job, not an optional extra.
Pilate held the judge's authority, so his job was to find the truth and judge by it. But he asked, "What is truth?" in a flippant, sceptical tone. That showed how, in his mind, judgment had been cut off from righteousness. As a Roman judge he knew far too much about men and their lies, and he felt that chasing truth was chasing a mirage. That did not excuse his folly. The moment he asked his question, he turned his back on Christ and went out to the lying Jews.
The second half of the verse is Pilate's legal finding. Older translations word it "I find no fault in him."
Pilate questioned Jesus briefly, and his judgment was quick and sure. It was the only one he could have given, for so far there was no evidence of any crime and no charge against Him. So, as the man who administered Roman law, he told the impatient, waiting Jews, "I find no fault in Him at all." If that meant anything, it meant acquittal — the Prisoner released at once and the crowd sent away.
Instead of acting on his own verdict, Pilate looked for a way out.
In that case his only duty was to release Him. But instead of giving in to his conscience, he tries to strike a deal with it. Looking for what seems to him an escape from a hard situation, he puts the whole matter into the people's hands. So he makes it almost impossible to return to the right path he has left, and he openly declares himself to be not of the truth.
The religious leaders had already made their decision. Now the ruling power of the nations takes its turn, and the verse records the result.
The religious leaders of the Jewish nation having rejected Christ, the political leaders of the Gentiles are now put to the test. The blessed Lord is led before Pilate, with the result that government, which had been given to the Gentiles for the praise of that which is good, and the execution of judgment upon him that does evil (Romans 13:4), is used to condemn One in Whom, it is confessed, no fault can be found.
Pilate's finding also became one of several unlikely witnesses to Christ's perfection.
What do you think of the moral and spiritual state of a world that can refuse the threefold testimony then given to Jesus, the Man of Sorrows? Pilate says, "I find no fault in him"; the thief says, "This man has done nothing wrong"; the centurion says, "Certainly this was a righteous man." But He is crucified!
People still ask Pilate's question, and one writer names the tell-tale sign.
Pilate's saying, "What is truth?" showed he did not know what truth was. It is just what unbelievers say now. Their minds are always "open to truth," as they say, and that shows one clear thing — they do not have any... And if I have truth, I show my love of truth by keeping it.
- Truth present. Pilate asked what truth was while the One who said "I am the truth" stood in front of him — the answer was in the room.
- Truth dodged. He walked out before an answer could come. His leaving, not his words, showed indifference or doubt — and attitude to truth is attitude to Christ.
- Truth confessed. He found no fault. That was the only verdict the evidence allowed, and it meant the Prisoner should have gone free at once.
- Truth betrayed. He compromised with his conscience instead of obeying it, pushed the decision onto the crowd, and so showed he was not "of the truth."
- Truth vindicated. The judge, the thief and the centurion all said the same thing: the One they crucified was faultless.