Jesus is the Truth
As Christians, we claim that Jesus died and rose from the dead and brings eternal life, that he is “the way, the truth, and the life.” But someone may say, “how do you know that that is true?” “After all the Bible is 2,000 year old, how can it possibly be reliable?” “Maybe the disciples just made it all up to give them purpose, or maybe they believed it was true (even if it wasn’t).”
Let’s ask the question, “how can one know anything is true?” Like Pilate said to Jesus when Jesus affirmed he was a king who came to bring the truth (John 18:38), “what is truth?” Can we know something is true simply because we see it, taste it, touch it, feel it? How do you know your senses are telling you the truth? “Well, we have to believe something our senses are telling us, or what others are telling us, otherwise we couldn’t know anything is true.”
Let’s face it, most of what we accept as true are actually things we’ve never seen. Have you seen a virus? I doubt it, you believe it because someone told you and because other reliable sources have supposedly seen it, researched it, wrote on it, and taught about it. How do you know they are all telling you the truth? You believe based on faith in the person (or the sheer number of “expert” witnesses), the institution (scientific community), or perhaps even your own experience (you got sick even though you couldn’t see what caused it).
How is the truth of Jesus revealed in the Biblical record any different? Just because it’s older is it somehow less reliable? Consider that there were tens of thousands of believers before there was ever a New Testament account of Jesus’ death and resurrection (I.e. gospels). People believed simply based on the testimony of eye witnesses who has seen the risen Jesus alive. These eye witnesses touched Jesus’ nail scarred hands and side, they heard him speak to them. They saw him appear in a locked room and eat something (proving he wasn’t a ghost or spirit). Then they gave their very lives for the truth of what they saw and believed. We might say, “well if I saw Jesus risen from the dead I would believe as well, but until I see him, I won’t believe.” One disciple did say that, Thomas, and when Jesus appeared alive to him a week after his resurrection he believed, and Jesus said to Thomas (John 20:28) “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
In the 2,000 years since Jesus’ resurrection, literally hundreds of millions of people (perhaps billions) have become convinced of the truth revealed by the testimony of firsthand witnesses, as recorded in the Bible, and believed in Jesus as God’s Son who died and rose again so that we might have life. Yet our faith is more than just mental acknowledgment of something we hope and believe to be true with no actual grounding, it results in real, tangible experiences of God’s presence, his power, his forgiveness, peace and love. We have connected with our Creator. We are not afraid of death because we have an internal peace and assurance of our eternal destiny with God in heaven. This has become more than a truth accepted because of someone else’s testimony, it has been confirmed in our own experience. We have come to believe that Jesus is the truth, and this is the most certain truth we know, and it guides us in every area of our lives.