March 30, 2021

Daily Devotionals

march 30, 2021

This is the final week of Lent, traditionally called “Holy Week.” All of the devotions are centered on the Biblical events of this week.

Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”

“Is that your own idea,” Jesus asked, “or did others talk to you about me?”

“Am I a Jew?” Pilate replied. “Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?”

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.”

“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.”

“What is truth?” retorted Pilate. With this he went out again to the Jews gathered there and said, “I find no basis for a charge against him.

John 18:33-38

In the climactic scene of A Few Good Men as a grueling examination on the witness stand comes to an end, Colonel Nathan Jessep offers up the famous line, “You can’t handle the truth!” These words become the turning point of the trial, words that linger in the back of my mind and trouble me. The more I seek to understand certain things, the more I sometime question whether or not I am ready to face the truth.

At the end of their interaction in this passage, Pilate asks Jesus, “What is truth?” We can read that query and consider it simply to have been a flippant question, or we can imagine it to be the serious question a philosophy professor would ask his pupils. Rather than viewing those words from either one of these two different perspectives, John wants us instead to connect this question to an earlier statement Jesus had made: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Pilate needs to know Jesus’s answer about truth, even though he is not ready to understand it.

Accounts of the trial of Jesus in the Gospels point to His innocence and His faultless death, which we should certainly remember. In the midst of the trial, however, we can see subtle reminders of who Jesus really is. The answer to Pilate’s question is one that Jesus has already answered, both in His words to the disciples and in His earlier answer to the Roman governor: “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.” Both of these answers reveal a small part of the much larger picture of Jesus as the Messiah and as the Savior of all humanity, who even today seeks to be the answer to the question we also ask, “What is truth?”

For Reflection

Where in your life has Jesus redefined your understanding of the truth?

How can you be a witness to the truth of Christ in your life?

Prayer

Lord Jesus, even in the moment when You stood on the precipice of death, even death on a cross, You sought to reach us, to teach us, and to save us. We thank You that Your grace never fails, that Your love is more than our minds can comprehend, and that You have come to save us from the power of sin and of death. Help us to know each day that You are the truth and empower us to listen to you. Amen.

Rev. Scott Tucker

Pastor for Grand Adults

404-842-3172