If someone is in danger, it is probably better to speak the truth even if you haven't gotten the loving part down yet. Back to Pilate and Jesus, who may have an answer for us. He was a Roman through and through with the Roman distaste for religion and a high regard for rational thought. A definition of truth by the philosphers whom Pilate was reading would have named truth as an intellectual concept, an objective reality. And so had Jesus answered Pilate's question, the answer would probably not have made any sense to him.
Friends are true.
God is true. It is a moral and relational truth, not an intellectual one. But Pilate understood truth as a proposition, not as a person. So had Jesus answered had he told Pilate what he told his disciple Thomas, that HE is the Truth, Pilate probably would have laughed his head off. But there was one Greek philosopher who disagreed with the standard line on truth as objective rational thought.