The Judgment of Pilate

It was through the providence of God that God ordained Pontius Pilate to be the actor in this drama, and Jesus knew it. It's as if Jesus is saying to Pilate, Pilate, this isn't about you. It's not about your status.

It's not about your reputation with Rome. This is about God. Let me tell you how much power you have over Me. Zero.

Unless My Father gives it to you. We met Pontius Pilate last week, and this week we continue John's account of Jesus' trial, a trial that ends with Pilate handing Jesus over to be crucified. Welcome to the Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind, where we feature sermons from the preaching ministry of R.C.

Sproul. As we approach Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, you're hearing a short sermon series from Dr. Sproul, beginning with Jesus' betrayal and arrest and culminating with His glorious resurrection. If you'd like to consider these events in greater detail or survey the entirety of John's Gospel, then you can request R.C. Sproul's expositional commentary on John for a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. So let's return to this kangaroo court and see the actions of Pilate, the response of the crowds, and the important lesson that ultimately this was the decreed will of God.

Here's Dr. Sproul. We're going to continue this morning with our study of the Gospel according to St. John, and this morning's lesson will bring us to the conclusion of Jesus' trial before Pontius Pilate. And I'll alert you in advance that this segment of the trial I believe is saturated with irony, and it is replete with subtle nuances throughout that we'll be covering very quickly, and I trust that we won't miss them. With that in mind, I'd ask the congregation to rise for the reading of the Gospel. I'll be reading from John chapter 18 verse 39 through chapter 19 verse 16. But you have accustomed that I should release someone to you at the Passover. Do you therefore want me to release to you the King of the Jews? And then they all cried again, saying, Not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber. And so then Pilate took Jesus and scourged him. And the soldiers twisted a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they put on him a purple robe. And they said, Hail, King of the Jews!

And they struck him with their hands. Pilate then went out again and said to them, Behold, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no fault in him. And then Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate said to them, Behold the man. Now therefore when the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, saying, Crucify him, crucify him. Pilate said to them, You take him and crucify him, for I find no fault in him. And the Jews answered him, We have a law, and according to our law he ought to die because he made himself the Son of God. Therefore, when Pilate heard that saying, he was the more afraid, and went again into the Praetorium and said to Jesus, Where are you from? But Jesus gave him no answer. And then Pilate said to him, Are you not speaking to me? Do you not know that I have power to crucify you and power to release you? Jesus answered, You could have no power at all against me unless it had been given to you from above.

Therefore the one who delivered me to you has the greater sin. And from then on Pilate sought to release him. But the Jews cried out, saying, If you let this man go, you are not Caesar's friend, for whoever makes himself a king speaks against Caesar. And when Pilate heard that saying, he brought Jesus out and sat down in the judgment seat in a place that is called the Pavement, but in Hebrew, Gabbatha.

And it was the preparation day of the Passover in about the sixth hour. And he said to the Jews, Behold your king. But 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. Then he delivered him to them to be crucified.

And they took Jesus and led him away. He was ears to hear the word of God. Let them hear.

You may be seated. Let us pray. Oh God, it fills us with horror to even contemplate that your son, whom you have anointed to be a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, should be placed on trial by mortals, by fallen humanity when there was no fault in him. We recognize, oh God, that the wrong one was on trial in this episode. Grant to us eyes to see and ears to hear the significance of this drama that unfolded that day in Jerusalem. For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

Let your imagination be active for a moment. Suppose you were given a choice between two men, between Jesus of Nazareth and Osama bin Laden. I don't think you would even have to flip a coin, would you?

The choice would be so easy. And yet that's basically the kind of choice that the Jewish people faced that day in Jerusalem because as was the custom on the feast for one of the prisoners to be released, the option that the people chose survivors instead of Jesus. When Pilate was giving them an opportunity to do the right thing, instead they chose Barabbas. My text that I read this morning simply indicates that Barabbas was a robber. He's mentioned in all four gospels and the extent of his crimes is more extensive than we see here in John's bare mention of him. He was a man who committed robbery and murder in the course of a rebellion against Rome.

He was a man involved in terrorism. And the chief priests and the scribes had nothing but contempt for terrorists from their own people. And yet when the choice was given them between this notorious terrorist and Jesus, their hostility towards Christ was so profound that they clamored for the release of Barabbas, whose full name according to tradition was Jesus Barabbas.

And the name Barabbas can mean and probably did mean literally Son of the Father. Imagine that the people cried for the freedom of this Jesus, Son of the Father, rather than the Jesus who was ultimately the Son of the Father. Well chapter 19 says that in response to the screaming of the multitude, Pilate took Jesus again and scourged him. We looked at this passage on one other occasion, and I'll mention by way of repetition that the scourgings that were permitted by the Roman government as part of their penal system involved three different types.

The first type was a kind of whipping that was corrective that was painful but not debilitating, and people who committed minor crimes could be whipped, and that would be the extent of that. The second level was even more severe until there was then the final level of scourging, which did not take place until after a prisoner was sentenced to execution. And that scourging was the one that was most brutal, that used a leather thong embedded with pieces of metal, and the victim was scourged so viciously until their bones were made bare and their entrails were exposed, and the idea there was to beat them half to death in order to hasten their expiration on the cross. Now we note here in this first reference by John that Pilate had Jesus scourged takes place before he sentenced him to execution, whereas the synoptic gospels tells us that Jesus also was given the ultimate scourging that I've just described in its horrific dimensions. And in all probability what we have here are two scourgings, the lighter one first, as another last-ditch effort of Pilate to keep from condemning a man that he has publicly declared is innocent. And so to satisfy the bloodlust of the crowd he has him whipped, thinking maybe that will appease them, and then he can let Jesus go.

But look what happens. So Pilate took Jesus and scourged him, and the soldiers twisted a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they put on him a purple robe. And they said, Hail, King of the Jews, and struck him with their hands. Now in the history of the church, depictions of this event have been rendered by the greatest artists of the ages, trying to capture something of the physical agony of this crown of thorns, and few if any of them are accurate.

The thorns that were woven together into this crown were spikes that reached a length of 12 inches. Foot-long spikes were woven together and then driven into the temples of our Lord. And the whole purpose of this was for the sport of the soldiers to mock Jesus, and they throw this garment across his back with a color of royalty, purple, and they begin to give obeisance to him in their mockery, saying, Hail, King of the Jews, taking turns slapping him to whatever was his blind side, the next blow would come.

And the whole idea here was to make Jesus look not like a king, but like a court jester. And it's in this costume that Pilate once again brings him before the crowd. So Pilate went out again and said, Behold, I am bringing him out to you, that you may know that I find no fault to him. And then Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns, wearing the purple robe, and Pilate said to them, Eka homo. Look at him. Behold the man. We can't pry into Pilate's mind and extract from his brain exactly the intent of that famous phrase, Eka homo, that has come down through church history, loaded with such weighty theological import. It could be that Pilate was simply saying to those who were watching this spectacle, look at his humiliation. How can this one who is now adorned with the crown of thorns and being mocked with the spittle of the soldier sliding down his cheeks, how can that one be conceived by anybody as a threat? Look at him.

He looks like a clown. Isn't that enough? Let's be done with this. Maybe that's what Pilate had in mind. But even if he did have that in mind, we can't escape the invisible hand of providence that is working in this moment, which Jesus alludes to a little later, and we'll look at when that occurs. But what the theologians have found in the irony here is that what was standing in this costume of the fool was nothing less than the incarnation not only of God but of perfect humanity. This is what man was created to be.

This was the second Adam standing here in front of this crowd. And when Pilate said, behold the man, I doubt if he understood how loaded that statement was, because what they should have been doing is looking at this and saying, yes, here is man as God intended him to be, as God designed him to be, the man who has no fault in him. But whatever Pilate's intent, it had little impact on the mercy of the crowd. Therefore, when the chief priests and the officers saw him, now listen, listen to the sequence. Pilate says, echa homo, behold the man, look at him. The very next verse, and when they saw him, when they beheld him, they cried out saying, crucify him, crucify him. By this time, Pilate is beside himself with frustration, and he finally says, obviously in a sardonic manner, you take him. You take him and crucify him. Now Pilate knew very well they didn't have the authority to take him and crucify him. He couldn't really do that, but he's so flustered, so frustrated that the mob won't acquiesce to what he thinks should be done. He said, alright, then you do it, because I'm not going to do it, because I can't find anything wrong with this man. And the Jews said, well, we have a law, and according to our law, he ought to die because he made himself the Son of God.

Did you hear that? If you remember from the previous weeks, at the beginning of this trial, we saw that Jesus was taken to the Romans with the charge of being a pretender to the Roman crown, that he was being seditious, that his crime was political. When we knew all along that what was bothering the Jewish authorities was not the political overtones of Jesus' ministry but the theological overtones of his identity. It wasn't Jesus' politics that made them hate him. It was his theology they couldn't stand. But you see, they knew that they wouldn't get the time of day from a Roman magistrate if they brought a theological issue to them. So they trumped up the charge of sedition and all this business of kingship. And now when that doesn't work, they're saying, look, Pilate, we want you to kill him because our law prohibits people from making themselves equal with God, and so you do our work for us.

He ought to die. Strange, strange statement next from John, therefore when Pilate heard that, he was the more afraid. What's he afraid of? Maybe all this means, all John is trying to tell us is that when he hears this crowd changing gears now, coming up with a different charge, refusing to back off from their bloodlust, that Pilate now becomes more frightened by the power of this multitude and then goes back to Jesus to escape the wrath of the crowd.

Perhaps. But remember, he's just spent time alone with Jesus, and he's never had a prisoner in front of him in his life if there's anything like Jesus. And now Jesus' enemies are saying he calls himself the Son of God. I wonder what Pilate's thinking now. Uh-oh, if this guy's the Son of God, I'm really in trouble. And so he's starting to get nervous. His wife's having dreams we are not in the other accounts, and he's starting to shake in his boots. And so he runs back in, and the first question he asks Jesus is what?

Where are you from? Which indicates to me he really was terrified by the suggestion that Jesus may be more than a man. But Jesus gave no answer, and then Pilate said to him, are you not speaking to me? Don't you know that I have power to crucify you and the power to release you? Speak up!

Where are you from? I asked you. And Jesus just stands there like a lamb before his shears is dumb. He opened not his mouth. Pilate said, you better say something. He's not saying do you know who you're speaking to?

Do you know who you're not speaking to? I have power. I have the authority to have you crucified, and I have the authority to set you free. Jesus says basically is that right? Actually Pilate, you could have no power at all against me unless it had been given to you from above. Here we see the function of Pontius Pilate as a persona publicus. This is why he's elevated in status to be included in the Apostles Creed because it was through the providence of God that God ordained Pontius Pilate to be the actor in this drama, and Jesus knew it. It's as if Jesus is saying to Pilate, Pilate this isn't about you. It's not about your skin.

It's not about your status. It's not about your reputation with Rome or your peace with the Jewish citizenry here in Jerusalem. This is about God because you have to understand something, sir. Let me tell you how much power you have over me.

Zero, unless my Father gives it to you. Now again, when we see divine concurrence, we remember the episode between Joseph and his brothers when he confronted the brothers at the end, and the brothers are terrified that Joseph's going to execute them, and Joseph said, don't worry, I'm not going to punish you. You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good because out of your wickedness, much goodness will come to the world. This is Good Friday, folks.

This is the best thing that ever happened to us. Pontius Pilate has done the greatest service anybody has done with the perception perhaps of Judas, but their intent was wicked. Jesus is saying, Pilate, you're nothing. You're clay in my Father's hands. It's been ordained from the foundation of the world for you to do this what you're about to do, and you're doing it on your own free will because you have a wicked heart, and you are a slave to the public opinion and all the rest, but go ahead, do what you have to do because you're just doing what my Father has ordained that you do.

So go ahead. One who delivered me to you has the greater sin. We don't know who Jesus had in mind here. Was that Caiaphas?

Was it Annas? Was it the Jewish Sanhedrin? Was it Judas? But obviously, he came to his own, we are told, by John, and his own received him not. Notice also in passing that Jesus does talk about degrees of wickedness. All sin is not equally heinous. And in this case, there was a greater and a lesser sin.

The betrayal of the Jews of the precious blood of their Messiah into the hands of the Gentiles was a gross and heinous crime. Obviously, the lack of justice that is found in Pontius Pilate is also a sin, and it's a crime, but it's a lesser crime than the betrayal of his own people. And so he tells that to Pilate. He doesn't say to Pilate, you're guiltless in this.

You're a sinner, and what you're doing is wrong, Pilate, but not as wrong as what those who sent me to you have done. From that moment on, after this exchange, John tells us Pilate had one goal, to release him. From that moment on, from that second, Pilate sought to release Jesus, but the Jews kept crying out saying, if you let this man go, you are not Caesar's friend. By the year 75 AD, the phrase friend of Caesar was a formal title well established in Roman politics and protocol.

To be a friend of Caesar was to be accorded a certain status in the empire, and that status developed gradually, and we don't know at what point it became an official title, maybe as early as the trial of Jesus. But in any case, we know that Pilate had been appointed by the Emperor Tiberius, and we also know from Philo and from Josephus that Pontius Pilate had been tutored by a predecessor by the name of Sejanus, who was very high in the elite inner circle of Tiberius back in Rome. And Sejanus certainly was a friend of Caesar, and it was by his recommendation that Pilate was given this position over the Jews in Palestine. So now the Jews say, hey, you're not a friend of Caesar. And remember we looked before at how many times the Jews had appealed to Rome and how precarious was Pilate's job at this time. We don't know whether Jesus was condemned in 33 AD or in 30 AD.

Many think that it was 30, others take it as far as 33. We do know that in 31 AD Sejanus got in trouble with Tiberius, and Tiberius had Sejanus and his most intimate cohorts executed in Rome. Now let's just imagine for just a second that this conversation takes place after 31 AD, after the execution of Sejanus, the friend of Caesar.

It may be that the Jewish officials are saying, hey, remember your buddy Sejanus. You're next, Pilate, unless you do what we want you to do. For whoever makes himself a king speaks against Caesar. Therefore, when Pilate heard that, he brought Jesus out again and sat down in the judgment seat in a place that is called the Pavement in Hebrew, Gabbatha, and it was the preparation day of the Passover and about the sixth hour. And he said to the Jews, eka facilius, not eka homo, behold your king. And they screamed, take him away, crucify him. Pilate said, shall I crucify your king? And the chief priests answered, we have no king but Caesar, the ultimate betrayal of the ruling class of the Jews of the kingdom of God. We don't recognize any king here except King Caesar. So he delivered him to be crucified. And they took Jesus and they led him away.

That was R.C. Sproul on this Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind. Thanks for being with us. We're currently in the Gospel of John and you're hearing sermons that Dr. Sproul preached at St. Andrew's Chapel in Sanford, Florida. In his preaching, Dr. Sproul always had a way of finding the drama in the text and helping us re-examine passages that may have become all too familiar to us. And it's those sermons in John that formed the basis of his expositional commentary on John. You can own the hardcover edition of that commentary when you give a gift of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. You can slowly walk through this Gospel with R.C. Sproul or perhaps reflect only on the death and the resurrection of Christ. But either way, this is a resource to help you better grasp the Word of God. Request your copy until midnight at renewingyourmind.org. Be sure to join us next time as R.C. Sproul preaches on John's account of the crucifixion of Jesus. That's next Sunday here on Renewing Your Mind. .