'Then led they Jesus from Caiaphas unto the hall of judgment: and it
was early; and they themselves went not into the judgment hall, lest
they should be defiled; but that they might eat the passover. Pilate
then went out unto them, and said, What accusation bring ye against
this Man? They answered and said unto him, If He were not a malefactor,
we would not have delivered Him up unto thee. Then said Pilate unto
them, Take ye Him, and judge Him according to your law. The Jews
therefore said unto him, It is not lawful for us to put any man to
death: That the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled, which He spake,
signifying what death He should die. Then Pilate entered into the
judgment hall again, and called Jesus, and said unto Him, Art Thou the
King of the Jews? Jesus answered him, Sayest thou this thing of
thyself, or did others tell it thee of Me? Pilate answered, Am I a Jew?
Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered Thee unto me:
what hast Thou done? Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world:
if My kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight, that I
should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is My kingdom not from
hence. Pilate therefore said unto Him, Art Thou a king then? Jesus
answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for
this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the
truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth My voice. Pilate saith
unto Him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again
unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in Him no fault at all. But
ye have a custom, that I should release unto you one at the passover:
will ye therefore that I release unto you the King of the Jews? Then
cried they all again, saying, Not this Man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas
was a robber.'--JOHN xviii. 28-40.
John evidently intends to supplement the synoptic Gospels' account. He
tells of Christ's appearance before Annas, but passes by that before
Caiaphas, though he shows his knowledge of it. Similarly he touches
lightly on the public hearing before Pilate, but gives us in detail the
private conversation in this section, which he alone records. We may
suppose that he was present at both the hearing before Annas and the
interview within the palace between Jesus and Herod, for he would not
be deterred from entering, as the Jews were, and there seems to have
been no other impediment in the way. The passage has three stages--the
fencing between the Sanhedrists and Pilate, the 'good confession before
Pontius Pilate,' and the preference of Barabbas to Jesus.
I. The passage of arms between the priests and the governor. 'It was
early,' probably before 6 A.M. A hurried meeting of the Sanhedrim had
condemned Jesus to death, and the next thing was to get the Roman
authority to carry out the sentence. The necessity of appeal to it was
a bitter pill, but it had to be swallowed, for the right of capital
punishment had been withdrawn. A 'religious' scruple, too, stood in the
way--very characteristic of such formalists. Killing an innocent man
would not in the least defile them, or unfit for eating the passover,
but to go into a house that had not been purged of 'leaven,' and was
further unclean as the residence of a Gentile, though he was the
governor, that would stain their consciences--a singular scale of
magnitude, which saw no sin in condemning Jesus, and great sin in going
into Pilate's palace! Perhaps some of our conventional sins are of a
like sort.
Pilate was, probably, not over-pleased at being roused so early, nor at
having to defer to a scruple which would to him look like insolence;
and through all his bearing to the Sanhedrim a certain irritation shows
itself, which sometimes flashes out in sarcasm, but is for the most
part kept down. His first question is, perhaps, not so simple as it
looks, for he must have had some previous knowledge of the case, since
Roman soldiers had been used for the arrest. But, clearly, those who
brought him a prisoner were bound to be the prosecutors.
Whether or not Pilate knew that his question was embarrassing, the
rulers felt it so. Why did they not wish to formulate a charge? Partly
from pride. They hugged the delusion that their court was competent to
condemn, and wanted, as we all often do, to shut their eyes to a plain
fact, as if ignoring it annihilated it. Partly because the charge on
which they had condemned Jesus--that of blasphemy in calling Himself
'the Son of God'--was not a crime known to Roman law, and to allege it
would probably have ended in the whole matter being scornfully
dismissed. So they stood on their dignity and tried to bluster. 'We
have condemned Him; that is enough. We look to you to carry out the
sentence at our bidding.' So the 'ecclesiastical authority' has often
said to the 'secular arm' since then, and unfortunately the civil
authority has not always been as wise as Pilate was.
He saw an opening to get rid of the whole matter, and with just a faint
flavour of irony suggests that, as they have 'a law'--which he, no
doubt, thought of as a very barbarous code--they had better go by it,
and punish as well as condemn. That sarcastic proposal compelled them
to acknowledge their subjection. Pilate had given the reins the least
touch, but enough to make them feel the bit; and though it went sore
against the grain, they will own their master rather than lose their
victim. So their reluctant lips say, 'It is not lawful for us.' Pilate
has brought them on their knees at last, and they forget their dignity,
and own the truth. Malicious hatred will eat any amount of dirt and
humiliation to gain its ends, especially if it calls itself religious
zeal.
John sees in the issue of this first round in the duel between Pilate
and the rulers the sequence of events which brought about the
fulfilment of our Lord's prediction of His crucifixion, since that was
not a Jewish mode of execution. This encounter of keen wits becomes
tragical and awful when we remember Who it was that these men were
wrangling about.
II. We have Jesus and Pilate; the 'good confession,' and the
indifferent answer. We must suppose that, unwillingly, the rulers had
brought the accusation that Jesus had attempted rebellion against Rome.
John omits that, because he takes it for granted that it is known. It
is implied in the conversation which now ensued. We must note as
remarkable that Pilate does not conduct his first examination in the
presence of the rulers, but has Jesus brought to him in the palace.
Perhaps he simply wished to annoy the accusers, but more probably his
Roman sense of justice combined with his wish to assert his authority,
and perhaps with a suspicion that there was something strange about the
whole matter--and not least strange that the Sanhedrim, who were not
enthusiastic supporters of Rome, should all at once display such
loyalty--to make him wish to have the prisoner by himself, and try to
fathom the business. With Roman directness he went straight to the
point: 'Art Thou the King of the Jews, as they have been saying?' There
is emphasis on 'Thou'--the emphasis which a practical Roman official
would be likely to put as he looked at the weak, wearied, evidently
poor and helpless man bound before him. There is almost a touch of pity
in the question, and certainly the beginning of the conviction that
this was not a very formidable rival to Caesar.
The answer to be given depended on the sense in which Pilate asked the
question, to bring out which is the object of Christ's question in
reply. If Pilate was asking of himself, then what he meant by 'a king'
was one of earth's monarchs after the emperor's pattern, and the answer
would be 'No.' If he was repeating a Jewish charge, then, 'a king'
might mean the prophetic King of Israel, who was no rival of earthly
monarchs, and the answer would be 'Yes,' but that 'Yes' would give
Pilate no more reason to crucify Him than the 'No' would have given.
Pilate is getting tired of fencing, and impatiently answers, with true
Roman contempt for subject-people's thoughts as well as their weapons.
'I ... a Jew?' is said with a curl of the firm lips. He points to his
informants, 'Thine own nation and the chief priests,' and does not say
that their surrender of a would-be leader in a war of independence
struck him as suspicious. But he brushes aside the cobwebs which he
felt were being spun round him, and comes to the point, 'What hast Thou
done?' He is supremely indifferent to ideas and vagaries of
enthusiasts. This poor man before him may call Himself anything He
chooses, but _his_ only concern is with overt acts. Strange to ask the
Prisoner what He had done! It had been well for Pilate if he had held
fast by that question, and based his judgment resolutely on its answer!
He kept asking it all through the case, he never succeeded in getting
an answer; he was convinced that Jesus had done nothing worthy of
death, and yet fear, and a wish to curry favour with the rulers, drove
him to stain the judge's robe with innocent blood, from which he vainly
sought to cleanse his hands.
Our Lord's double answer claims a kingdom, but first shows what it is
not, and then what it is. It is 'not _of_ this world,' though it is
_in_ this world, being established and developed here, but having
nothing in common with earthly dominions, nor being advanced by their
weapons or methods. Pilate could convince himself that this 'kingdom'
bore no menace to Rome, from the fact that no resistance had been
offered to Christ's capture. But the principle involved in these great
words goes far beyond their immediate application. It forbids Christ's
'servants' to assimilate His kingdom to the world, or to use worldly
powers as the means for the kingdom's advancement. The history of the
Church has sadly proved how hard it is for Christian men to learn the
lesson, and how fatal to the energy and purity of the Church the
forgetfulness of it has been. The temptation to such assimilation
besets all organised Christianity, and is as strong to-day as when
Constantine gave the Church the paralysing gift of 'establishing' it as
a kingdom 'of this world.'
Pilate did pick out of this saying an increased certainty that he had
nothing to fear from this strange 'King'; and half-amused contempt for
a dreamer, and half-pitying wonder at such lofty claims from such a
helpless enthusiast, prompted his question, 'Art Thou a king then?' One
can fancy the scornful emphasis on that 'Thou.' and can understand how
grotesquely absurd the notion of his prisoner's being a king must have
seemed.
Having made clear part of the sense in which the avowal was to be
taken, our Lord answered plainly 'Yes.' Thus before the high-priest, He
declared Himself to be the Son of God, and before Pilate He claimed to
be King, at each tribunal putting forward the claim which each was
competent to examine--and, alas! at each meeting similar levity and
refusal to inquire seriously into the validity of the claim. The solemn
revelation to Pilate of the true nature of His kingdom and of Himself
the King fell on careless ears. A deeper mystery than Pilate dreamed of
lay beneath the double designation of His origin; for He not only had
been 'born' like other men, but had 'come into the world,' having 'come
forth from the Father,' and having been before He was born. It was
scarcely possible that Pilate should apprehend the meaning of that
duplication, but some vague impression of a mysterious personality
might reach him, and Jesus would not have fully expressed His own
consciousness if He had simply said, 'I was born.' Let us see that we
keep firm hold of all which that utterance implies and declares.
The end of the Incarnation is to 'bear witness to the truth.' That
witness is the one weapon by which Christ's kingdom is established.
That witness is not given by words only, precious as these are, but by
deeds which are more than words. These witnessing deeds are not
complete till Calvary and the empty grave and Olivet have witnessed at
once to the perfect incarnation of divine love, to the perfect
Sacrifice for the world's sin, to the Victor over death, and to the
opening of heaven to all believers. Jesus is 'the faithful and true
Witness,' as John calls Him, not without reminiscences of this passage,
just because He is 'the First-begotten of the dead.' As here He told
Pilate that He was a 'king,' because a 'witness,' so John, in the
passage referred to, bases His being 'Prince of the kings of the earth'
on the same fact.
How little Pilate knew that he was standing at the very crisis of his
fate! A yielding to the impression that was slightly touching his heart
and conscience, and he, too, might have 'heard' Christ's voice. But he
was not 'of the truth,' though he might have been if he had willed, and
so the words were wind to him, and he brushed aside all the mist, as he
thought it, with the light question, which summed up a Roman man of the
world's indifference to ideas, and belief in solid facts like legions
and swords. 'What is truth?' may be the cry of a seeking soul, or the
sneer of a confirmed sceptic, or the shrug of indifference of the
'practical man.'
It was the last in Pilate's case, as is shown by his not waiting for an
answer, but ending the conversation with it as a last shot. It meant,
too, that he felt quite certain that this man, with his high-strained,
unpractical talk about a kingdom resting on such a filmy nothing, was
absolutely harmless. Therefore the only just thing for him to have done
was to have gone out to the impatient crowd and said so, and flatly
refused to do the dirty work of the priests for them, by killing an
innocent man. But he was too cowardly for that, and, no doubt, thought
that the murder of one poor Jew was a small price to pay for popularity
with his troublesome subjects. Still, like all weak men, he was not
easy in his conscience, and made a futile attempt to get the right
thing done, and yet not to suffer for doing it. The rejection of
Barabbas is touched very lightly by John, and must be left unnoticed
here. The great contribution to our knowledge which John makes is this
private interview between the King who reigns by the truth, and the
representative of earthly rule, based on arms and worldly forces.