John 19:7-15

7 The Jews insisted, "We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God."

8 When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid, 9 and he went back inside the palace. "Where do you come from?" he asked Jesus, but Jesus gave him no answer. 10 "Do you refuse to speak to me?" Pilate said. "Don't you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?"

11 Jesus answered, "You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin."

12 From then on, Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jews kept shouting, "If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar."

13 When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judge's seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement (which in Aramaic is Gabbatha). 14 It was the day of Preparation of the Passover; it was about noon.

"Here is your king," Pilate said to the Jews.

15 But they shouted, "Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!"

"Shall I crucify your king?" Pilate asked.

"We have no king but Caesar," the chief priests answered.



Dig Deeper

I was recently watching a police show on television in which a police officer had arrested a suspect and brought him in for questioning. Normally, you would expect the police officer to be in control of a situation like that and the suspect to be the nervous one, but this was not the case. The suspect was smart, calm, and completely in control. He seemed, in fact, to be one step ahead of the police, even knowing personal things about his arresting officer. As the questioning progressed, rather than him breaking down, getting scared, and giving up any information that he didn’t want to, it became apparent that he was more in control of the situation than the situation would seem to dictate. As the scene moved on, however, and the suspect remained cool, calm, collected, and in control, the police officer got more and more agitated. It eventually got to the point that as he tried repeatedly to shake the suspect and couldn’t do it, the officer was the one that became unnerved. Each conversation began a new clash between these two men, and with each scene, the man who should have been shaking was a rock and the man who should have been in control was obviously less and less so with each passing word.

As the questioning and conversation between Pilate and Jesus continues, we get the sense that this is more and more the case. Jesus is the one that should be scared, scattered, unnerved, and breaking down. Yet, he handles the scene with a calm, collective control that seems to unnerve Pilate. Pilate, on the other hand, has all the power, yet he can feel it slipping away between the political pressure, thinly veiled threats of his opponents, and the stately dignity of this man who should be begging for his life. The contrast between the two men clearly raises a question. Who really has the power here, just who exactly is in control?

The Jews officially want Jesus put to death for sedition against Caesar, because they know that this is a charge that will resonate in Rome and put Pilate in a position where he has to declare sentence against Jesus. Yet, in verse 7, they tip off the real reason that they want him dead. It was for blasphemy. Jesus had claimed, in no uncertain terms, that he was the Son of God, and according to their law, blasphemers like that needed to be put to death.

This son of God thing is a claim that deeply disturbs Pilate. Something about Jesus has already bothered him, including the dream that his wife had concerning this man (Matt. 27:19), but this nearly sends him over the edge. Romans were quite comfortable with the thought of their gods having union with a human woman and creating a son that was half human and half divine. This is a claim that would have disturbed Pilate deeply. He already senses that something is different about this man. Could this be it? He certainly doesn’t want to put himself in the position of angering any gods.

This mixture of fear and superstition drive Pilate back into to question Jesus, as we can imagine in a fearful and fevered pitch at this point. Where does he come from? Pilate wants to know if there is something to Son of God thing. Jesus’ response is puzzling at first, seeing as how he has been quite open with Pilate up to this point. Why does he not respond? Likely for the same reason that he wouldn’t answer the Jews directly as to whether or not he was the Messiah (Jn. 10:24). He simply couldn’t give a straight answer to that question based on their current understanding of the Messiah. In a similar way, Pilate was not in any position to understand if Jesus had answered him plainly. There was no way to answer that question under these circumstances and with the understanding that Pilate had.

This clearly annoyed Pilate, but we don’t get the sense of his power rising up within him, it seems more like desperation. Pilate is becoming increasingly unnerved by the control that Jesus has in this situation. We can imagine the voice in Pilate’s head screaming, "Who is this man? Why isn’t he afraid. Doesn’t he know I’m in charge here, not him?" Doesn’t he realize, Pilate asks Jesus directly, that He has the power to free or crucify him. Pilate has to pass off the responsibility of this case to others, but he ultimately knows that it rests with him. Jesus needs to just stop being in in so much control. He’s not playing the game the way it’s supposed to be played and it’s clearly getting to Pilate.

Once again, Jesus doesn’t play by the rules. He doesn’t humbly acknowledge Pilate’s power and ask for forgiveness for his unwarranted boldness in not answering this powerful man. He does acknowledge Pilate’s position of authority, but only in so much as it has been given him from God. Jesus strikes the same balance between God’s authority and governmental authority that Paul does in Romans 13:1-7. This should remind us to constantly seek to do God’s will but also to recognize that regardless of how evil or inept we might think a government is, it still has the authority to organize and rule that God has allowed it to have. Pilate has authority, but only that given him by God. He bears responsibility for that, but not as much Caiaphas, who has handed him over to Pilate. Pilate has been thrust into this position because of the authority given to him. Caiaphas ran headlong into that position by his own conscious decision.

We can only speculate what it was in Jesus’ response in verse 11 that made Pilate determined to free Jesus and John doesn’t tell us what measures he took in trying to free him, but evidently those efforts pushed the Jewish leaders into a corner and they come out swinging. They have been pushed to desperate measures and so they pull out their trump card. If Pilate frees this man, then they will take their case all the way to Caesar. The concept of being a friend to Caesar was a big thing in the ancient world. To not be a friend of Caesar was to be liable to any sort of reprisal that Caesar wished. With the execution of Senjus, Pilate’s mentor in 31 AD, Pilate was already on shaky ground in Rome, no doubt. He might have been afraid of the idea of Jesus being a Son of God, but he was more afraid of Caesar. The Jews had made their position clear and it was a powerful one. If he went against them and freed this blasphemer, they would go straight to Caesar and report that Pilate had freed a rebel leader who was claiming to be a king. That would surely put someone who was already in a tenuous position in a place that he did not want to be. Pilate did not choose to have this situation thrust in front of him, but he faced the same position that Jesus’ life puts all of humanity in. Would he choose the Messiah, the king that had come from the Creator or the ruler of the physical world? Jesus or Caesar? Would it be Jesus’ life or his own? If he chose to believe Jesus, he would lose everything, a position that Pilate was not prepared to make. Pilate’s personal feelings and fears may have led him to desire to free Jesus, but in the end, his love of his own life overcame his personal feelings and hesitations.

The final play of the Jews worked. Pilate is done with this whole situation. He has made up his mind. He brought Jesus out and sat down on the judge’s seat, a raised seat in the governor’s palace that overlooked spectators that would be outside in the courtyard, and gave Jesus over to the Jews wishes although it was the Romans who would carry out the execution. Here is your king, he says, in what we can only take in a mocking tone, as if to say, "this pathetic and bloodied individual is the closest thing to a king that you people will ever have. John is careful to connect this whole scene once again with the meaning and significance of Passover.

Pilate’s move of derision and disgust can only be seen by John as another one of his ironic statements. In declaring Jesus to the be the king of the Jews, he has spoken truly and prophetically. Is this really the king of the Jews? This statement ironically puts the Jews in a place that exposes the level of their opposition to Jesus and ultimately the God that they claim to serve. The Jewish Old Testament held that only God (Judg. 8:23; 1 Sam. 8:7) or his anointed representative was the king of Israel. The Shemoneh Esre (eighteen benedictions), a prayer recited by the Jews of Jesus’ day, declared "May you be our King, you alone [oh God]." The Jews, in John’s eyes, have been exposed. They boldly stand before the seat of judgment and deny the Lord’s anointed king. The choice was put to them plainly and they have defiantly answered, "We have no king but Caesar." The question that John turns directly towards us his readers is this, who is the world’s true ruler? The Jews, in his mind, have given their answer. What’s yours?



Devotional Thought

When faced with whom you are really going to follow, with who is really be your king, do you ever feel like you can identify with Pilate who is moved into a dangerous position of compromise, motivated by his own drive for self-preservation. Or can you identify with the chief priests, trying to push your own agenda, all the while unwittingly pushing yourself further away from the true God. Or do you identify with Jesus. Silently and calmly allowing God’s light to shine through your actions, firmly committed to His will regardless of the cost?