Reference

John 18:33-19:16

Speaking of the Roman army’s brutality and conquest, the historian Tacitus said that the Romans “make a desert and call it peace.” In other words, Rome destroys towns, kills people, and ruins whole lands, and then calls that empty wasteland "peace" because no one is left to fight back. In 4 BC, just before his death, Herod the Great installs a golden eagle over the gate to the temple of Jerusalem, a symbol of Rome. Though Herod was himself Jewish, he practiced a highly compromised, politically advantageous, pragmatic faith. He had been installed as king by Rome and so Rome had his ultimate allegiance, and what better way to demonstrate that allegiance then by taking the symbol of Rome and placing it on the temple of the Jews. In a highly polytheistic society, this was not unusual—putting a symbol on one temple was just a recognition that this god should recognize the presence (and superiority) of the Roman gods. Afterall, your god apparently didn’t stop Rome from knocking your teeth in, so he must not be that powerful?

But the Jews arent like anyone else. They believe there is only one God, and that the gods of Rome are false gods. They also find Roman rule offensive, not just politically, but theologically—they are God’s chosen people and this is the land He promised to give them. When Rome rolls in and tells them that they are now a Roman province, it feels like they are denying God’s promises. Further, an image on the temple violates Moses’ command to not make any graven image. Two Jewish teachers pull the golden eagle down in the night and destroy it. In response, Herod burns them and all their disciples alive. Shortly after, Herod dies and leaves the debacle in the hands of his son, Herod Archelaus.

The young Herod Archelaus promises the people that he will be more tolerant than his father, who became increasingly brutal with age. For instance, just before this eagle incident, Herod had heard rumors that a rival ruler had been selected from the town of Bethlehem—only a child. But when he failed to discover the identity of this new political upstart, just to make sure there was no chance, Herod had all the male children of Bethlehem be put to death (see Matt 2:16-18). Archelaus knew that his father had died a deeply unpopular, tyrannical man. So he soothes the crowds, promises he will do better.

But, a few weeks later, during the Passover feast, as Jerusalem swells in size and pious Jews hear of the martyrdom of the men who saved the temple from defilement, a riot begins to ensue. Demands for justice, for a change of the high priest. When Archelaus sends his squad of Roman soldiers to calm the people, they are driven away with a flurry of stones. Archelaus panics and dispatches his entire army reserves on hand and troops and cavalry march through the streets and kill three thousand Jews, many within the temple. Passover is abruptly and tragically cancelled. Immediately after, Archelaus sails to Rome to be crowned as king, but in his absence the hatred towards him and Rome burns, and soon uprisings take place all over the country side, and one man—Athronges—a Jewish shepherd claims to be the messiah, and begins to practice guerilla warfare: assasinating Roman officials, burning palaces, looting Roman treasuries, and amassing a large following. Eventually, Rome has enough, and they send an entire imperial force to crush the uprising. And in retaliation, they crucify 2,000 rebels outside of Jerusalem.

Unbeknownst to Rome, and to Herod, the long prophesied King to come, the child Herod sought to kill, had escaped. On his way to Egypt, carried by Mary and Joseph, the infant Jesus survives—the greatest threat to kingdoms of this world comes a King not of this world. And in our text today, we will zoom forward in time to another Passover, another potential riot beginning to form to see the dramatic conflict between this King and the kingdoms of this world.

33 So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” 34 Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” 35 Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?” 36 Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” 37 Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” 38 Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”
After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, “I find no guilt in him. 39 But you have a custom that I should release one man for you at the Passover. So do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?” 40 They cried out again, “Not this man, but Barabbas!” Now Barabbas was a robber.

1 Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him. 2 And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe. 3 They came up to him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and struck him with their hands. 4 Pilate went out again and said to them, “See, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him.” 5 So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man!” 6 When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.” 7 The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God.” 8 When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid. 9 He entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, “Where are you from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. 10 So Pilate said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” 11 Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.”
12 From then on Pilate sought to release him, but the Jews cried out, “If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.” 13 So when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called The Stone Pavement, and in Aramaic Gabbatha. 14 Now it was the day of Preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, “Behold your King!” 15 They cried out, “Away with him, away with him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” 16 So he delivered him over to them to be crucified. - John 18:33-19:16

Pilate’s Authority

Everything points to Pilate’s authority in this scene.

His “headquarters” (the praetorium)—likely, King Herod’s old palace
He is the “governor” (prefect) over Judea
He interrogates Jesus
He has the power to release Barabbas
He has Jesus flogged
He reminds Jesus, He has the authority to release Jesus, or have Him crucified.

Yet, one also gets the sense of how fragile Pilate’s authority is here, right? You might get the sense from reading the gospel accounts that Pilate is more tolerant and understanding than he is. But two Jewish sources from outside the Bible tell us that Pilate had a severe reputation—he was greedy, brutal, cruel. One source tells us of his “continual murders of people untried and uncondemned, and his never ending, and gratuitous, and most grievous inhumanity.” (Philo) We get one snapshot of that from Luke’s gospel where we are told of an incident where we are told that Pilate mingled the blood of some Galileans with their sacrifices (Luke 13:1), presumably killing worshippers as they were making an offering.

So, why does Pilate appear so constrained in this section? He is afraid. Did you notice that in 19:8? What is Pilate afraid of?

Fear is an admission of power.

Who has power in this story? The crowd, Pilate, and Jesus

The Crowd

Pilate is a governor from Rome. After the debacles with Herod and his son, Rome removes the ability for Judea to be governed by a Jewish king (even if those kings were the ones that Rome had installed). Instead, they send these governors or prefects directly from Rome to preside over the area. It is not necessarily a glamorous or enviable job. Judea is a tiny province, flung far from Rome. Plus, its people are very strange. They circumcise their children, do no work on Saturday, have unusual food and purity laws, and claim to worship an invisible God who cannot be represented by symbol or image. Further, they (of course) deny the existence of any other god and are fiercely insistent on it.

When Pilate first comes into rule over Judea, his palace (which is right next to the temple—actually, overlooks the temple), he puts new Roman standards up with the image of Caesar on them. In Rome, Caesar is worshipped as a god—some of his title, which is imprinted on coins and standards, are pontifex maximus (high priest) and divi filius (son of a god). Suffice to say, the Jews find this deeply offensive to bring such blasphemous images into the holy city of Jerusalem, right next to the Temple. So, they march to Pilate’s palace and surround it, lying prostrate around the house, blocking doors, insisting that Pilate must remove the standards. When Pilate gets annoyed, he calls in his troops and tells the Jews that they can either accept the standards or he will kill them all. And in response, the Jews bare their necks and say they would rather die than accept the blasphemy of the standards. Alarmed at their religious devotion, Pilate backs down and removes the standards. These are no ordinary people Pilate is dealing with.

You get the sense of Pilate’s trepidation as he interacts with the Jews throughout the text. Pilate is convinced that Jesus is innocent, is striving to release Him, but is at the mercy of the crowd. Consider the fact that Pilate—who is a governing official there to keep the peace—releases Barabbas, an insurrectionist and murderer, and condemns an innocent man to death.

We don’t have the time to think through how Pilate could have spared Jesus and sought to maintain civil calm, but this does provide us a brief aside to consider the role of government. God has established government as a stabilizing force in society,

Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, 14 or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. - 1 Pet 2:13-14

We need a government who has the capacity to punish evil and praise the good, so we have courts, and police officers, and a military, and legislature, and mayors, and so on.

But notice how inverted this is with Pilate’s ruling on the release of Barabbas? He is a governor, sent by the emperor, and he is punishing the good, and praising the evil. Government is a God-given institution, but it is like the gates of a city—who mans the city gates really matters. If you open the gates for the enemies, and close them on your people, that good institution can be used for wicked things. And that is precisely what happens with Pilate. This reminds us why we ought to pray for those who are in our government, that they would be bound to the higher law of God, and when a law or case or opportunity to exercise political power comes to them, they would be shaped by God’s wisdom and justice and prudence—not just the voice of the crowd, nor their own base appetites. If they are there to “praise the good and punish the evil” then they must be able to know what is good and what is evil, and those moral categories are not decided by majority vote. They are established by God. Pilate was not being a commendable democrat by acquiescing to the choice of Barabbas.

We should pray that God would bless our country with lawyers, judges, mayors, governors, and presidents who fear God, believe the gospel, and are submissive to His Spirit—not because the government is the most important thing, but because the government should be there to create a stable, peaceful society where we can focus on the most important thing: the mission of the church, to make disciples, to plant churches, to evangelize the lost, to raise our children in the instruction of God.

Pilate

So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man!” 6 When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.” 7 The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God.” 8 When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid. - John 19:5-8

Why is Pilate afraid? Notice, we are told he was “even more” afraid—as in, he was already afraid, but now doubly so. I think there are two halves of Pilate’s fear. We will deal with the first here, and the second in the final point.

First, He fears a riot and what may happen to his career. The phrase “son of God” for some reason rattles him, and it is possible that—given the discussion about Jesus being a king and the threat of the crowd in verse 12: “If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar”—the title “son of God” is heard by Pilate as an attempt to style himself as a competing emperor.

There are different kinds of fear because there are different kinds of power.

Power over you physically—Pilate could fear for his life
Power over you socially—Pilate could fear for his career, his reputation

The kingdoms of this world are built on power, which is another way of saying, built on fear. Power seems like it is the force underneath everything else. This is the moral lesson behind Orwell’s 1984. 2+2=5 because Big Brother says so.

What should have Pilate done?

He should have taken the risk, and refused to condemn an innocent man.

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky.” - Lewis, Screwtape

Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; 43 for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God. - John 12:42-43

Do you desire this kind of power? Be mindful of how fragile it is. Pilate looks more like a hostage than a ruler, doesn’t he?

Those who live in the mouths of men die in the mouths of men. - Richard Sibbes

Power and authority to serve is a gift.

When one rules justly over men,
ruling in the fear of God,
4 he dawns on them like the morning light,
like the sun shining forth on a cloudless morning,
like rain that makes grass to sprout from the earth.

2 Sam 23:3-4

Jesus

Why else is Pilate afraid? He senses that Jesus is no ordinary man. Matthew tells us that during the trial, Pilate’s wife warns him not to condemn Jesus because she has a dream that warns her of Jesus’ status (Matt 27:19). Romans were deeply superstitious people, and it is possible that Pilate is open to the possibility that Jesus is a holy man of sorts, and when he is described as the son of God, it would have hit Pilate as a real possibility. It wouldn’t mean the same thing that the Jews would have meant by “son of God” but Pilate would have had categories for a divine man, a son of the gods.

He entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, “Where are you from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. 10 So Pilate said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” 11 Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.” - John 19:9-11

Everything is happening according to Jesus’ plan. He feels no need to worm his way into Pilate’s good graces. He does not beg for His life.

Jesus invites Pilate

36 Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” - John 18:36

The kings of this world flaunt their power and flex their muscles by making other people serve them, by destroying their enemies, really as a way of saying Look at my strength, my clout, my might, my grandeur.
- You create a cycle of power and revenge.
Jesus, who has more strength and grandeur than them all, is a humble servant who submits to death.

37 Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” 38 Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” - John 18:33-38

Jesus reveals true power in his bearing witness to the truth.