John 18:37-38; John 14:6

When people say “that’s your truth, not mine,” how do we discern what is true, and how can I know the Bible is true and that Christ is the only way to eternal life?

Pilate asked the question to Jesus’ face and walked out before the answer. Jesus had already given it: truth is not a mood or a possession but a person, and he is checkable.

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In short

Your truth usually blurs three different things: an experience, a preference, and a claim about reality. The first two really are personal. The third is true or false for everyone, and the existence of God and the resurrection of Jesus are claims of the third kind.
The slogan refutes itself. There is no truth for everyone is offered as a truth for everyone.
We discern truth the way Scripture tells us to: test it (Acts 17:11; 1 John 4:1), check it against what is real, against God’s Word, and against Christ, and watch its fruit over time.
The Bible’s truth stands or falls with one public event. Paul says that if Christ has not been raised, the faith is futile (1 Corinthians 15:17). Christianity made itself checkable on purpose.
Christ’s claim to be the only way is his own (John 14:6), not a later church’s. Every view excludes something, even the view that every religion is a road to the same God. The question is not whether to be exclusive but whose claim is true.
Evidence clears the ground; full persuasion is the Spirit’s work (Westminster Confession 1.5). Knowing is real without being exhaustive, and it can live alongside a prayer for help with unbelief.

The conclusions only. The reasons, the sources, and the places this page cannot settle the matter are below.

The question as it came to us

The question came to us while listening to a recording of Alisa Childers speaking at a women’s night at Traders Point, on what truth is and what it is not. She was naming a sentence everyone has heard, often from someone they love: that’s your truth, not mine. It sounds humble. It sounds kind. It usually ends the conversation.

And once it has been said, three questions are sitting on the table. Is there such a thing as truth that belongs to nobody, that is simply true? If there is, how would anyone tell it apart from a confident opinion, when every voice online sounds confident? And if a Christian says the Bible is true and that Jesus is the only way to eternal life, is that knowledge, or is it just our truth, held more loudly?

The questions have to be answered in that order. If there is no truth for everyone, the other two dissolve before they start: the Bible is true becomes I like the Bible, and Christ is the only way becomes Christ is my way. So this page starts where the slogan does, and then goes where it was trying not to go.

The answer in full

First, take apart the slogan, because it is doing three jobs at once. When someone says my truth, they usually mean one of three things. Sometimes they mean their experience: what happened to them, what it felt like, how it shaped them. That is genuinely theirs, and Christians of all people should listen to it, because Scripture is full of people telling God exactly what it felt like. Sometimes they mean a preference: a favorite hymn, a way of praying, a style of worship. That is personal too, and nobody needs to win it. But sometimes they mean a claim about reality: there is a God, or there is not; Jesus rose, or he did not. Claims of that kind cannot be yours or mine. A man either walked out of a tomb outside Jerusalem or he did not, and how anyone feels about it changes nothing about what happened.

Second, notice that the slogan cannot keep its own rule. There is no truth for everyone is a claim about truth for everyone. You should not impose your truth on others is a moral rule imposed on others. The relativism is never really relative; it is a very firm view held about everyone else’s views. That does not make the person saying it foolish. It usually means they are trying to be kind, and have been handed a tool that cannot do the job.

Third, discernment is commanded, not forbidden. Scripture never asks for blind belief. The Bereans were called noble because they were examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so (Acts 17:11), and the preacher they were checking was Paul. Test everything; hold fast what is good (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits (1 John 4:1). The tests Scripture gives are concrete: does it match what is real; does it contradict itself; does it agree with what God has already said; what does it say about Jesus; what fruit does it bear over time. The table and list below lay them out.

Fourth, on the Bible: Christianity staked everything on one public event, and said so. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins (1 Corinthians 15:17). Few faiths have staked themselves on something so checkable. Paul lists witnesses by name, adds more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive (15:6), which is an invitation to go and ask them. Luke writes that you may have certainty after having followed all things closely from those who were eyewitnesses (Luke 1:2-4). And the route from the resurrection to the whole Bible is short: if Jesus rose, his word carries God’s authority, and he treated the Scriptures as God’s Word (Scripture cannot be broken, John 10:35) and sent his apostles with the promise that the Spirit would bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you (John 14:26).

Fifth, on Christ as the only way: the claim is his, and every alternative makes one too. I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6). The apostles did not invent this later; they repeated it: there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12). It sounds narrow until you notice that every road ends at the same God is just as exclusive. It excludes everyone who thinks they do not, which includes Jesus. The real question is never whether to hold an exclusive view. It is whose view is true, and the one making this claim is the one who rose.

Last, how do you know? Not by proof in the mathematical sense, and not by a leap in the dark. By good evidence, honestly weighed, and by the witness of the Spirit, who does what evidence alone cannot. The Westminster Confession puts both in one sentence: by its own excellencies Scripture doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God, and yet our full persuasion and assurance of it is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit (1.5). Arguments clear the ground. The Spirit opens the eyes.

The gospel itself Nothing on this page is a secondary question. Whether truth exists, whether Scripture is God’s Word, and whether Christ is the only way to the Father are the foundation every other page on this site stands on, and a page that hedged them would not be a careful page but a different religion. What believers legitimately weigh differently is method: how much weight to give the historical evidence, and how to speak about the Spirit’s witness alongside it. The page holds the claims firmly and the method more loosely.

What is settled, and what is not

The left column is the historic Christian confession and is not up for negotiation on this site. The right column is where honest believers say they do not know, or where Scripture does not give us the answer we would like.

Settled, Scripture states it

Truth is real, and God is its source. God, who never lies (Titus 1:2). God is not man, that he should lie (Numbers 23:19). Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth (John 17:17). Truth is not something we make. It is something we receive, or refuse.
Jesus claims to be the truth, and the only way to the Father. I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6). For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5). The exclusivity is the Lord’s own claim, and a church that softens it is correcting him.
The faith stands or falls on a public, historical event. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins (1 Corinthians 15:17). Paul told a king that this has not been done in a corner (Acts 26:26). God himself has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead (Acts 17:31).
The Gospel writers present their work as testimony, not myth. For we did not follow cleverly devised myths... but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty (2 Peter 1:16). Luke wrote that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught (Luke 1:4). John wrote so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name (John 20:31).
Testing is commanded, and Scripture is the standard. Examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so (Acts 17:11). Test everything; hold fast what is good (1 Thessalonians 5:21). A claim that cannot survive being checked against what God has already said does not deserve to be believed, however warmly it is offered.
Full persuasion is the work of the Holy Spirit. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him (1 Corinthians 2:14). Evidence matters, and the Confession lists it, but it places full persuasion and assurance in the inward work of the Holy Spirit (Westminster Confession 1.5).
Truth is to be spoken in love, and never used as a club. Speaking the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). Always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15). The one who is the truth came full of grace and truth (John 1:14), and his people do not get to keep one and drop the other.

Not given in this age

How evidence and the Spirit’s witness combine in any one person. Some come to faith after years of weighing arguments, and some hear the gospel once and believe. Calvin calls the human proofs secondary helps to our weakness (Institutes 1.8.13) and the Spirit’s testimony the chief one. Scripture does not give us the proportions, and no one should demand the same road for everyone.
How God deals with those who never heard. There is no second road, and this page is not hinting at one: there is no other name (Acts 4:12). How God in his justice handles those outside the reach of the message is not given us as a formula; our page on whether Jesus died for all says more.
Every historical question about the text. Answers exist for most of the hard ones: parallel accounts that read differently, dates, places, copying variants. A few remain genuinely open, and honest scholars on the believing side say so. None of them touches the resurrection, and none of them is the reason anyone actually stays away.
Why one person sees and another does not. The same evidence, the same sermon, the same family: one believes and one walks away. Scripture speaks of the Spirit’s work and of hearts that suppress the truth (Romans 1:18), and it does not hand us the inside of anyone’s heart. It is never a reason for contempt, since every believer was once on the other side.

What my truth can mean, and how to test a claim

The table sorts the three things the slogan usually blurs. The list after it gathers the tests Scripture itself gives for telling truth from a confident opinion. Neither is a formula for winning an argument; both are for thinking clearly, and for listening well first.

Three things people mean by my truth

When someone says my truth	They may mean	Is it really theirs?
An experience	What happened to them, and what it felt like: grief, abuse, a hard church, an answered prayer.	Yes. Listen to it, and take it seriously. Scripture is full of people telling God exactly what it felt like (much of the Psalms is exactly that).
A preference	A taste or a way of doing things: a style of worship, a favorite translation, how they pray.	Yes, within what God has said. Nobody needs to win it.
A claim about reality	That God exists or does not, that Jesus rose or did not, that a thing is right or wrong.	No. Claims of this kind are true or false for everyone. A tomb was empty or it was not.

How to discern a truth claim

Gathered from Scripture’s own tests. Apply them to every claim, including the ones you already like and the ones you hear from a pulpit.

1. Does it match what is real? Truth tells it like it is. Paul pointed his hearers to things they could check: names, places, living witnesses (1 Corinthians 15:6). A claim that has to avoid the facts is in trouble.
2. Does it contradict itself? There is no truth for everyone fails here at once. So does any teaching that says yes and no to the same thing. God never lies (Titus 1:2), and his truth does not contradict itself.
3. Does it agree with what God has already said? The Berean test (Acts 17:11). Even a sign that comes true does not settle it: if the message is let us go after other gods, you shall not listen to the words of that prophet (Deuteronomy 13:3). Content outranks spectacle.
4. What does it say about Jesus? Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God (1 John 4:2). A teaching that shrinks him, replaces him, or makes him optional has failed the test that matters most.
5. What fruit does it bear over time? You will recognize them by their fruits (Matthew 7:16). Give it time, and hear the other side: The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him (Proverbs 18:17).
6. Am I willing to obey it if it is true? Jesus tied knowing to willing: If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God (John 7:17). Discernment is trained by practice (Hebrews 5:14) and asked for in prayer: If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God (James 1:5).

What the text says

The question was asked to Jesus’ face, and the asker did not wait for the answer Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice. Pilate said to him, What is truth? (John 18:37-38). Then he went back outside. Pilate’s question is the ancient form of that’s your truth: not a search, but a way of ending the conversation with the one person in the room who could have answered it.
Jesus had already answered it, and the answer was a person I am the way, and the truth, and the life (John 14:6). Not I teach the truth but I am it. Truth in Scripture is not finally a proposition you hold but a person you come to, which is why the same Gospel says grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (John 1:17) and that the truth will set you free (John 8:32).
The first your truth was spoken in a garden Did God actually say...? (Genesis 3:1), followed by the promise that you will be like God, knowing good and evil (3:5). The temptation was not to deny that good and evil exist, but to define them for oneself. Every age since has found its own words for the same offer.
Scripture names the drift, and describes it without sneering Everyone did what was right in his own eyes (Judges 21:25). Woe to those who call evil good and good evil (Isaiah 5:20). They exchanged the truth about God for a lie (Romans 1:25). Having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions (2 Timothy 4:3). None of this is new, and none of it is beyond the reach of grace.
Paul made the faith falsifiable, on purpose If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain (1 Corinthians 15:14). He then lists the witnesses, including Peter, the twelve, James, and more than five hundred at once, most of whom are still alive (15:6). You do not tell people where to find living witnesses to an event you made up.
The writers say they are giving testimony Luke writes from eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, having followed all things closely (Luke 1:2-3). Peter: we did not follow cleverly devised myths (2 Peter 1:16). John: which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes (1 John 1:1). These are the claims of people who expected to be checked.
Jesus’ view of Scripture follows from who he is Until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law (Matthew 5:18). Scripture cannot be broken (John 10:35). If the one who rose held the Scriptures to be God’s Word and authorized his apostles to speak for him (John 14:26), then confidence in the Bible is not a separate leap. It is taking the risen Christ at his word.
Testing is a command, and the standard is God’s Word Test everything; hold fast what is good (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world (1 John 4:1). God never asked his people to switch off their minds. He asked them to use them under his Word.
Even a true sign does not settle a false message Deuteronomy 13 imagines a prophet whose sign comes to pass, and who then says let us go after other gods: you shall not listen to the words of that prophet (13:2-3). Experience, however vivid, is checked by what God has said, not the other way round. That is the most practical line on this page.
The exclusive claim is also the open door There is salvation in no one else (Acts 4:12) is the narrowest sentence in the Bible and also the widest, because the one way is open to anyone: Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28). Many roads that each require you to arrive by your own effort would be worse news, not better.

How others have answered

Named only where the words were written about this passage. Quoted phrases are theirs; the summary around them is ours.

Augustine (On Christian Doctrine, II.18) Augustine’s rule for the Christian reading pagan authors is the reverse of your truth: let every good and true Christian understand that wherever truth may be found, it belongs to his Master. Truth is never anyone’s private property, not even the church’s. It is God’s, wherever it turns up, which is why a Christian can listen to anyone without fear.
John Calvin (Institutes 1.7-1.8, Beveridge’s translation) Calvin asks how we know Scripture is from God and answers that it is like asking how we tell light from darkness, white from black, sweet from bitter (1.7.2). He insists that the testimony of the Spirit is superior to reason (1.7.4), yet he gives a whole chapter to the evidence, which he calls secondary helps to our weakness (1.8.13). Both, in that order: the Spirit persuades, and the evidence serves.
The Westminster Confession (1.4-1.5) Scripture’s authority dependeth not upon the testimony of any man, or church; but wholly upon God (1.4). Its own heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God, and yet our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts (1.5). Evidence and the Spirit, held together in one sentence.
C. S. Lewis (Mere Christianity, 1952; God in the Dock), outside our stream Not Reformed, and we would part with him on more than one point, but he saw that Jesus’ claims close off the polite middle option of the great moral teacher: Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. Critics answer that a fourth option exists, that the claims are legend, and that is exactly why the historical evidence on this page matters. Elsewhere Lewis put the stakes plainly: Christianity is a statement which, if false, is of no importance, and, if true, of infinite importance.
Alisa Childers (Live Your Truth and Other Lies, 2022) The book behind much of what she teaches on this subject, subtitled Exposing Popular Deceptions That Make Us Anxious, Exhausted, and Self-Obsessed. It takes popular slogans like live your truth one at a time and argues that, for all their warmth, they put the self at the center and leave people carrying a weight they were never meant to carry. We heard her on this at Traders Point; we have not quoted the talk, because we would rather describe her argument than put words in her mouth from memory, and her book is the place to read it in her own words.
Our own view, labelled as ours Truth is real, it belongs to God, and it has a face. We hold that the Bible is God’s Word because the risen Christ held it to be, and that he rose because the evidence for it is better than the alternatives; and we hold, with the Confession, that what finally settles it in a heart is the Spirit, not the argument. We think the best way to answer that’s your truth is to agree warmly about experience and preference, ask gently which kind of claim is on the table, and then talk about Jesus, because every one of these questions ends at him.

Where it lands

Go back to the room where the question was asked. Pilate stands in front of a prisoner and says What is truth?, and the answer to his question is standing in front of him, bound, about to be handed over. Pilate walks out. That is the tragedy of the scene, and it is the shape of every that’s your truth: the conversation ends one sentence before the answer.

But notice what kind of answer it was. Truth, in the end, is not a tool for winning, and it is not a weight for carrying. It is a person, and a person can be known. The slogans of our day promise freedom by putting the self at the center: find your truth, live it, defend it. That turns out to be exhausting, because a truth you invent is a truth you have to hold up yourself. Jesus offers the opposite: you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free (John 8:32). A truth you receive holds you up.

And this is why the only way is not arrogance. If there were many ways, each would require something of the traveller: enough goodness, enough devotion, enough insight. One way, open to anyone, given rather than earned, is the only kind of way a sinner could actually use. No one comes to the Father except through me is a fence only if you were hoping to arrive some other way. For everyone else it is a door.

So the honest shape of it is this. Truth is real, and it is not yours or mine; it is God’s. We discern it by testing everything against what is real and against what God has said, and above all by asking what it says about Jesus. The Bible is true because the One who rose said so, and the evidence that he rose is good. And the One who is the truth is not waiting at the end of an argument. He is saying what he has always said: Come to me (Matthew 11:28).

What the passage does not settle

This page does not offer proof in the mathematical sense, and anyone who promises that is promising more than Scripture does. It offers good grounds: testimony, a public event, a book that has stood up to being checked, and the witness of the Spirit. Knowing on good grounds is real knowing. It is how you know your own history and the people you love.

It does not remove doubt, and it does not need to. At the resurrection itself, some doubted (Matthew 28:17), and the father who cried I believe; help my unbelief! (Mark 9:24) was not turned away. A believer with questions is not a failed believer; he is a normal one, and the Psalms give him words.

It does not settle how God deals with those who never heard, beyond the plain statement that there is no other name. It does not answer every historical question about the text, and the canon itself is worked through separately at why these 66 books.

And one warning, because truth has a history of being used as a club. A Christian who wins the argument about truth and loses the person has not understood the truth. It is a person, and he came full of grace and truth (John 1:14). The command is speaking the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), and the servant of the Lord is to be kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness (2 Timothy 2:24-25). If someone you love says that’s your truth, the first thing to do is listen to what they actually mean. The second is to tell them about Jesus. Winning is not on the list.

Questions to sit with

For reading this with someone else, a family, a study, or a friend who asked in the first place.

Think of the last time you heard that’s your truth, or said it. Was it about an experience, a preference, or a claim about reality? Did the conversation end there?
Read John 18:37-38 aloud. What do you think Pilate meant by his question, and why did he not wait for the answer?
Paul says that if Christ has not been raised, the faith is futile (1 Corinthians 15:17). Why would anyone stake a religion on something that could be checked? What does that tell you about the people who wrote it down?
Of the six tests in the list, which do you use least? Which claims do you tend to believe without testing because you already like them?
Who in your life would hear the only way as a fence, and who would hear it as a door? What would it take for you to say it to them in a way that sounds like the second?