We may consider it, first, in its bearing on Jesus' claims. He was
condemned by the priests on the theocratic charge of blasphemy, because
He made Himself the Son of God. He was sentenced by Pilate on the civil
charge of rebellion, which the priests brought against Him as an
inference necessarily resulting from His claim to be the Son of God.
They drew the same conclusion as Nathanael did long before: 'Rabbi,
Thou art the Son of God,' and therefore 'Thou art the King of Israel.'
And they were so far right that if the former designation is correct,
the latter inevitably follows.
Both charges, then, turned on His personal claims. To Pilate He
explained the nature of His kingdom, so as to remove any suspicion that
it would bring Him and His subjects into collision with Rome, but He
asserted His kingship, and it was His own claim that gave Pilate the
material for His gibe. It is worth notice, then, that these two claims
from His own lips, made to the authorities who respectively took
cognisance of the theocratic and of the civic life of the nation, and
at the time when His life hung on the decision of the two, were the
causes of His judicial sentence. The people who allege that Jesus never
made the preposterous claims for Himself which Christians have made for
Him, but was a simple Teacher of morality and lofty religion, have
never fairly faced the simple question: 'For what, then, was He
crucified?' It is easy for them to dilate on the hatred of the Jewish
officials and the gross earthliness of the masses, as explaining the
attitude of both, but it is not so easy to explain how material was
found for judicial process. One can understand how Jesus was detested
by rulers, and how they succeeded in stirring up popular feeling
against Him, but not how an indictment that would hold water was framed
against Him. Nor would even Pilate's complaisance have gone so far as
to have condemned a prisoner against whom all that could be said was
that he was disliked because he taught wisely and well and was too good
for his critics. The question is, not what made Jesus disliked, but
what set the Law in motion against Him? And no plausible answer has
ever been given except the one that was nailed above His head on the
Cross. It was not His virtues or the sublimity of His teaching, but His
twofold claim to be Son of God and King of Israel that haled Him to His
death.
We may further ask why Jesus did not clear up the mistakes, if they
were mistakes, that led to His condemnation. Surely He owed it to the
two tribunals before which He stood, no less than to Himself and His
followers, to disown the erroneous interpretations on which the charges
against Him were based. Even a Caiaphas was entitled to be told, if it
were so, that He meant no blasphemy and was not claiming anything too
high for a reverent Israelite, when He claimed to be the Son of God. If
Jesus let the Sanhedrim sentence Him under a mistake of what His words
meant, He was guilty of His own death.
We note, further, the light thrown by the Title on Pilate's action. It
shows his sense of the unreality of the charge which he basely allowed
himself to be forced into entertaining as a ground of condemning Jesus.
If this enigmatical prisoner had had a sword, there would have been
some substance in the charge against Him, but He was plainly an
idea-monger, and therefore quite harmless, and His kingship only fit to
be made a jest of and a means of girding at the rulers. 'Practical men'
always under-estimate the power of ideas. The Title shows the same
contempt for 'mere theorisers' as animated his question, 'What is
truth?' How little he knew that this 'King,' at whom he thought that he
could launch clumsy jests, had lodged in the heart of the Empire a
power which would shatter and remould it!
In his blindness to the radiant truth that stood before him, in the
tragedy of his condemnation of that to which he should have yielded
himself, Pilate stands out as a beacon for all time, warning the world
against looking for the forces that move the world among the powers
that the world recognises and honours. If we would not commit Pilate's
fault over again, we must turn to 'the base things of this world' and
the 'things that are not' and find in them the transforming powers
destined to 'bring to nought things that are.'
Pilate's gibe was an unconscious prophecy. He thought it an exquisite
jest, for it hurt. He was an instance of that strange irony that runs
through history, and makes, at some crisis, men utter fateful words
that seem put into their lips by some higher power. Caiaphas and he,
the Jewish chief of the Sanhedrim and the Roman procurator, were
foremost in Christ's condemnation, and each of them spoke such words,
profoundly true and far beyond the speaker's thoughts. Was the
Evangelist wrong in saying: 'This spake he not of himself?'