Is Truth Relative? What Jesus Told Pilate About Truth
Short answer: No. In John 18:37-38, Jesus tells Pilate that he was born and came into the world to testify to the truth, and that everyone who is of the truth listens to his voice. Truth here is not a private preference or a cultural mood; it is something Jesus bears witness to and something his people recognize. The Bible repeatedly describes truth as God's own word and character: John 14:6 records Jesus saying, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me.” John 17:17 calls God's word truth itself. Scripture does not treat truth as something each person manufactures; it treats truth as something we receive, obey, and handle carefully. Pilate's skeptical question does not overturn what Jesus had just said.
The courtroom scene in John 18:37-38
John places this exchange inside a Roman trial. Jesus has been bound and brought before Pilate, the governing authority of the region. The charge against him is political: he claims to be a king. Pilate therefore said to him, “Are you a king then?” as John 18:37 records. The question is not abstract; it is the question of a governor deciding whether this prisoner threatens Caesar. Everything that follows depends on what kind of king Jesus claims to be and what kind of kingdom he brings.
Jesus does not deny kingship, but he redefines it. John 18:37 continues, Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this reason I have been born, and for this reason I have come into the world, that I should testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” His kingship is bound up with witness. He did not come primarily to seize a throne in Jerusalem but to tell the truth about God, about himself, and about the world he made.
John uses courtroom language throughout his Gospel. Jesus testifies, the Father testifies, the Spirit testifies, and the works of Jesus testify. Earlier in John, Jesus said his judgment is true because he is not alone but the Father is with him. The trial before Pilate is therefore a hearing about truth as much as about politics. Pilate believes he is judging Jesus, but in John's account Jesus is the reliable witness, and Pilate is the one being confronted with a claim he must answer.
This setting matters because it prevents us from treating truth as something merely philosophical. Jesus does not offer a theory of truth in the abstract; he stands in a concrete moment of accusation, power, and fear. He speaks of truth while his life is at risk. That is the setting in which he says he came to testify to the truth. His words are not a slogan but a statement of mission, made under pressure, before a man who could have him killed.
What Pilate's question actually reveals
John 18:38 then says, Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” After he had said this, he went out again to the Jews, and said to them, as John 18:38 says, “I find no basis for a charge against him.” The question is famous, but what follows it is often overlooked. Pilate does not wait for an answer. He asks what truth is and then walks out to continue the trial. His question is not the beginning of a sincere search; it is the response of a man who has already decided that the matter can be managed without resolving it.
Many readers hear in Pilate a modern voice. He sounds like a person who has seen too many claims and trusts none of them. But the Gospel of John has already told us that truth is not hidden from him. Jesus has just said that he came to testify to the truth and that those who are of the truth listen to his voice. Pilate is standing in front of the answer to his own question, and he turns away. His skepticism is not the humility of a seeker; it is the evasion of a judge who wants to get back to business.
This does not mean that every honest question about truth is unbelief. Scripture welcomes careful inquiry; 2 Timothy 2:15 tells believers to give diligence in handling the Word of Truth. But there is a difference between asking because you want to know and asking in order to avoid the claim being made on you. Pilate's question functions as dismissal. He does not say he cannot see; he simply declines to look, and then declares he finds no basis for a charge, as if the truth question were irrelevant to the case.
That pattern repeats in ordinary life. People often say that truth is relative not because they have examined the evidence but because the alternative would require something of them. If Jesus is the truth, then his voice has authority over my choices, my money, my relationships, and my self-understanding. Pilate's shrug is easier. But the text does not present the shrug as neutral; it presents it as a missed encounter with the one who is truth standing in the room.
Jesus does not treat truth as a preference
John's Gospel makes a sustained claim about Jesus and truth. In John 14:6, Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me.” This is not one truth among many that a person may accept or reject as a lifestyle choice. Jesus identifies himself as the truth. If that sentence is true, then truth is ultimately personal, not merely propositional, and it is located in a person rather than in a consensus.
This has an important implication for how Christians should argue. We do not defend truth as though it were our private possession or a cultural tradition we happen to prefer. We point to Christ. The claim is not that Christians are smarter or morally superior, but that God has spoken and acted in his Son. That is why the New Testament treats the gospel as news to be proclaimed rather than an opinion to be negotiated. The message stands or falls on whether it corresponds to what God has actually done.
At the same time, the Bible never separates truth from life. Jesus is the truth, and he is also the way and the life. Truth in Scripture is not cold information; it is the reality of God's saving work, which calls for trust and obedience. To know the truth is to be shaped by it. That is why 1 John 2:21 says, “I have not written to you because you don’t know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth.” Truth and lie are moral categories, not just factual ones.
So when someone says that truth is relative, a Christian can agree that our grasp of truth is partial and that we must be humble. But we cannot agree that truth itself changes with the observer. Jesus did not say he had a perspective on truth or a helpful angle on it. He said he came to testify to the truth and that he is the truth. Those are exclusive claims, and they are meant to be. A truth that can be reshaped to fit every person is not the truth Jesus spoke about.
Truth as God's word, not human consensus
Scripture locates truth in God's own speech and character. Psalm 119:160 says, “All of your words are truth. Every one of your righteous ordinances endures forever.” Notice that the psalm does not say God's words are true for some people or true in a particular era. It says all of them are truth, and it links that truth to ordinances that endure. The stability of God's truth is tied to the stability of God himself. What he has said does not expire when cultures change.
John 17:17 records Jesus praying, “Sanctify them in your truth. Your word is truth.” Again the identification is direct. God's word is truth, and it is the means by which his people are set apart. Truth in the Bible is not a neutral data set; it is the instrument of holiness. When we handle the word of truth carelessly, we do not merely make intellectual mistakes; we distort the means God uses to shape his people.
This is why 2 Timothy 2:15 says, “Give diligence to present yourself approved by God, a workman who doesn’t need to be ashamed, properly handling the Word of Truth.” The phrase properly handling suggests both careful interpretation and honest transmission. Paul does not tell Timothy to invent a message that suits his hearers. He tells him to handle what has been given. The task is stewardship, not creativity. The truth is already in the word; the workman's job is to present it accurately.
If truth were merely a human consensus, this language would make no sense. We do not give diligence to handle a consensus properly; we simply track what people currently believe. But God's word is truth whether or not anyone agrees. That is what gives the church confidence to speak when it is unpopular, and it is also what keeps the church from speaking on its own authority. We are bound to the text, not to the mood of the age.
Why the claim that truth is relative feels plausible
There are real reasons people say truth is relative, and Christians should understand them rather than simply mock them. We live in a time of many competing claims, and it is obvious that sincere people disagree about religion, morality, and meaning. We have all seen people use confident truth-talk to control others. We have all been wrong about something we once held firmly. These experiences produce caution, and caution about our own certainty is not the same thing as denying that truth exists.
The New Testament itself warns against false confidence. 1 John 2:21 addresses a congregation troubled by deceivers, and the apostle reassures them that they know the truth and that no lie is of the truth. He does not tell them to become skeptics. He tells them to hold on to what they have received. The existence of lies does not disprove the existence of truth; it presupposes it. A lie is only a lie because there is something it contradicts. The very concept of lying depends on a standard of truth.
Another reason the claim feels plausible is that we rightly want to be humble. But humility and relativism are not the same. Humility says that I may be wrong and that I must keep listening to God's word. Relativism says that no answer is really wrong, which is not humility but a different kind of certainty. In practice, relativism is impossible to live out consistently. The person who says truth is relative still insists on being treated fairly, still expects promises to be kept, and still objects to being lied about.
Christians can therefore acknowledge the partial nature of our knowledge without surrendering the reality of truth. Paul writes that we know in part, and that our knowledge will be completed. That is a call to teach with care and to listen well. It is not a warrant for saying that Jesus is one option among many. The same apostle who wrote about partial knowledge also wrote that there is one mediator between God and humanity.
What it means to be of the truth
Jesus ends his statement to Pilate with a description of his people: “Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:37). This is not a claim that only clever people or educated people receive him. It is a claim about belonging. To be of the truth is to belong to the truth, to be aligned with it, to have one's life oriented toward the God who speaks truly. Such people recognize the shepherd's voice when they hear it, just as Jesus taught earlier in John's Gospel.
This means that disputes about truth are never merely intellectual. They involve the heart. A person can have accurate information about Jesus and still refuse him, and a person with little education can hear his voice and follow. Jesus said his sheep hear his voice, and this is the same idea. The obstacle to receiving the truth is often not lack of evidence but love of darkness, as John says elsewhere. That is a moral problem before it is an academic one.
For the church, this has two consequences. First, we should never treat people who disagree with us as simply stupid. We should pray for them and speak with patience, remembering that we too were once blind. Second, we should never trim the truth to make it more acceptable. If people are of the truth, they will listen to Jesus' voice, and our job is to make that voice clear rather than to replace it with our own. Faithfulness to the text is the most loving thing we can offer.
It also means that the truth of the gospel is meant to be lived, not just discussed. If no lie is of the truth, as 1 John 2:21 says, then our conduct is part of our witness. A church that claims to hold the truth while practicing deceit undermines its own message. Jesus came to testify to the truth, and he calls his people to be people of the truth in their speech, their business, their families, and their worship.
How a Christian should answer the question today
When someone asks whether truth is relative, the first thing to do is clarify what they mean. Often the claim is really about humility, about the difficulty of knowing, or about the harm done by people who claimed certainty. Those are worth taking seriously. But if the claim is that no statement about God or morality can be true for everyone, then it contradicts what Jesus says about himself. John 14:6 is not a statement that can be true for some and false for others without becoming meaningless.
The second thing is to point to the evidence rather than to shout. Christians believe the gospel is true because of what God has done in history, and especially in the resurrection of Jesus. That claim can be examined. It is not a private feeling, and it does not depend on our sincerity. The apostolic writers appeal to what was seen and heard. Truth in the Bible is public and testable, even when it is not exhaustively provable.
The third thing is to live as people who belong to the truth. 2 Timothy 2:15 calls for diligence and honest handling. Psalm 119:160 speaks of God's words as truth that endures. John 17:17 ties truth to sanctification. A life shaped by truth is the strongest answer to the claim that truth does not matter. When Christians are honest, gentle, and consistent, they make the reality of truth credible in a way that argument alone cannot.
Finally, we should be honest where faithful Christians differ. There are genuine disagreements among believers about how some passages apply, and we should not pretend otherwise. But the disagreements are about how to apply a truth we share, not about whether truth exists. The question Pilate asked still hangs over every generation. The gospel's answer is not a shrug but a person: Jesus, who came to testify to the truth and whose voice his people hear.
Biblical fidelity check
John 18:37-38 establishes several things clearly. It establishes that Jesus understood his mission to include bearing witness to the truth, that he expected some people to recognize his voice, and that Pilate asked a question he did not stay to answer. It also establishes that Jesus' kingship is connected to truth rather than to political force. The passage does not tell us everything about the nature of truth, nor does it give a philosophical definition of truth. It gives us a person who claims to speak it.
A common misreading is to treat Pilate's question as the Bible's own position, as though the Gospel were endorsing the idea that truth cannot be known. The text does not do that. It presents Pilate as a man who asks and walks away, and it presents Jesus as the one who testifies. Another misreading is to use the passage to claim that anyone who sincerely believes something has thereby made it true. That contradicts the rest of John, where Jesus speaks of truth over against the lie and calls his followers to remain in his word.
Other passages that speak to John 18:37-38
Several Scriptures deepen this theme and are worth studying together. The apostle John returns to truth throughout his letters, including 3 John Bible Study: Fellow Workers for the Truth, where the church is commended for walking in truth. The Gospel's own claim about Jesus is unfolded in John 14:6 Meaning: Why Jesus Says He Is the Way, Truth, and Life. The opening of 1 John grounds truth in what was seen and heard, as examined in What Does 1 John 1:1 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application, and the same letter exposes the lie that denies our need for cleansing in What Does 1 John 1:8 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application.
Frequently asked questions
Does John 18:38 mean the Bible admits we cannot know truth?
No. The verse records Pilate asking, “What is truth?” and then going out without waiting for an answer. The Gospel does not comment in agreement; it simply reports what he did. Just a few verses earlier Jesus said he came to testify to the truth and that those who are of the truth listen to his voice. Pilate's question is presented as a dismissal, not as the narrator's conclusion about the knowability of truth.
If truth is not relative, why do sincere Christians disagree?
Christians share a conviction that God's word is true, but they sometimes differ about what it means or how it applies. Those differences are real and should be handled with patience. They do not prove that truth changes from person to person. They show that our knowledge is partial and that we need careful study, prayer, and correction. The Bible itself calls us to handle the word of truth accurately rather than to assume our first reading is always right.
How should I respond when someone says truth is relative?
Ask what they mean and listen carefully. Often the claim is about humility or about harm done by proud certainty, and those concerns deserve a respectful answer. Then gently point to Jesus, who did not offer a private opinion but claimed to testify to the truth. Speak with patience, live honestly, and trust that those who are of the truth will hear his voice, as John 18:37 says.
