Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

A >> Alexander Maclaren >> Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

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II. In verses 4-8 the scene changes again to without the palace, and
shows us Pilate trying another expedient, equally in vain. The
hesitating governor has no chance with the resolute, rooted hate of
the rulers. Jesus silently and unresistingly follows Pilate from the
hall, still wearing the mockery of royal pomp. Pilate had calculated
that the sight of Him in such guise, and bleeding from the lash,
might turn hate into contempt, and perhaps give a touch of pity.
'Behold the man!' as he meant it, was as if he had said, 'Is this
poor, bruised, spiritless sufferer worth hate or fear? Does He look
like a King or a dangerous enemy?' Pilate for once drops the scoff of
calling Him their King, and seeks to conciliate and move to pity. The
profound meanings which later ages have delighted to find in his
words, however warrantable, are no part of their design as spoken,
and we gain a better lesson from the scene by keeping close to the
thoughts of the actors. What a contrast between the vacillation of
the governor, on the one hand, afraid to do right and reluctant to do
wrong, and the dogged malignity of the rulers and their tools on the
other, and the calm, meek endurance of the silent Christ, knowing all
their thoughts, pitying all, and fixed in loving resolve, even firmer
than the rulers' hate, to bear the utmost, that He might save a
world!

Some pity may have stirred in the crowd, but the priests and their
immediate dependants silenced it by their yell of fresh hate at the
sight of the prisoner. Note how John gives the very impression of the
fierce, brief roar, like that of wild beasts for their prey, by his
'Crucify, crucify!' without addition of the person. Pilate lost
patience at last, and angrily and half seriously gives permission to
them to take the law into their own hands. He really means, 'I will
not be your tool, and if my conviction of "the Man's" innocence is to
be of no account, _you_ must punish Him; for _I_ will not.' How far
he meant to abdicate authority, and how far he was launching
sarcasms, it is difficult to say. Throughout he is sarcastic, and
thereby indicates his weakness, indemnifying himself for being
thwarted by sneers which sit so ill on authority.

But the offer, or sarcasm, whichever it was, missed fire, as the
appeal to pity had done, and only led to the production of a new
weapon. In their frantic determination to compass Jesus' death, the
rulers hesitate at no degradation; and now they adduced the charge of
blasphemy, and were ready to make a heathen the judge. To ask a Roman
governor to execute their law on a religious offender, was to drag
their national prerogative in the mud. But formal religionists,
inflamed by religious animosity, are often the degraders of religion
for the gratification of their hatred. They are poor preservers of
the Church who call on the secular arm to execute their 'laws.' Rome
went a long way in letting subject peoples keep their institutions;
but it was too much to expect Pilate to be the hangman for these
furious priests, on a charge scarcely intelligible to him.

What was Jesus doing while all this hell of wickedness and fury
boiled round Him? Standing there, passive and dumb, 'as a sheep
before her shearers,' Himself is the least conspicuous figure in the
history of His own trial. In silent communion with the Father, in
silent submission to His murderers, in silent pity for us, in silent
contemplation of 'the joy that was set before Him,' He waits on their
will.

III. Once more the scene changes to the interior of the praetorium
(vs. 9-11). The rulers' words stirred a deepened awe in Pilate. He
'was the more afraid'; then he had been already afraid. His wife's
dream, the impression already produced by the person of Jesus, had
touched him more deeply than probably he himself was aware of; and
now this charge that Jesus had 'made Himself the Son of God' shook
him. What if this strange man were in some sense a messenger of the
gods? Had he been scourging one sent from them? Sceptical he probably
was, and therefore superstitious; and half-forgotten and disbelieved
stories of gods who had 'come down in the likeness of men' would swim
up in his memory. If this Man were such, His strange demeanour would
be explained. Therefore he carried Jesus in again, and, not now as
judge, sought to hear from His own lips His version of the alleged
claim.

Why did not Jesus answer such a question? His silence was answer;
but, besides that, Pilate had not received as he ought what Jesus had
already declared to him as to His kingdom and His relation to 'the
truth,' and careless turning away from Christ's earlier words is
righteously and necessarily punished by subsequent silence, if the
same disposition remains. That it did remain, Christ's silence is
proof. Had there been any use in answering, Pilate would not have
asked in vain. If Jesus was silent, we may be sure that He who sees
all hearts and responds to all true desires was so, because He knew
that it was best to say nothing. The question of His origin had
nothing to do with Pilate's duty then, which turned, not on whence
Jesus had come, but on what Pilate believed Him to have done, or not
to have done. He who will not do the plain duty of the moment has
little chance of an answer to his questions about such high matters.

The shallow character of the governor's awe and interest is clearly
seen from the immediate change of tone to arrogant reminder of his
absolute authority. 'To me dost Thou not speak?' The pride of
offended dignity peeps out there. He has forgotten that a moment
since he half suspected that the prisoner, whom he now seeks to
terrify with the cross, and to allure with deliverance, was perhaps
come from some misty heaven. Was that a temper which would have
received Christ's answer to his question?

But one thing he might be made to perceive, and therefore Jesus broke
silence for the only time in this section, and almost the only time
before Pilate. He reads the arrogant Roman the lesson which he and
all his tribe in all lands and ages need--that their power is derived
from God, therefore in its foundation legitimate, and in its exercise
to be guided by His will and used for His purposes. It was God who
had brought the Roman eagles, with their ravening beaks and strong
claws, to the Holy City. Pilate was right in exercising jurisdiction
over Jesus. Let him see that he exercised justice, and let him
remember that the power which he boasted that he 'had' was 'given.'
The truth as to the source of power made the guilt of Caiaphas or of
the rulers the greater, inasmuch as they had neglected the duties to
which they had been appointed, and by handing over Jesus on a charge
which they themselves should have searched out, had been guilty of
'theocratic felony.' This sudden flash of bold rebuke, reminding
Pilate of his dependence, and charging him with the lesser but yet
real 'sin,' went deeper than any answer to his question would have
done, and spurred him to more earnest effort, as John points out. He
'sought to release Him,' as if formerly he had been rather simply
unwilling to condemn than anxious to deliver.

IV. So the scene changes again to outside. Pilate went out alone,
leaving Jesus within, and was met before he had time, as would
appear, to speak, by the final irresistible weapon which the rulers
had kept in reserve. An accusation of treason was only too certain to
be listened to by the suspicious tyrant who was then Emperor,
especially if brought by the authorities of a subject nation. Many a
provincial governor had had but a short shrift in such a case, and
Pilate knew that he was a ruined man if these implacable zealots
howling before him went to Tiberius with such a charge. So the die
was cast. With rage in his heart, no doubt, and knowing that he was
sacrificing 'innocent blood' to save himself, he turned away from the
victorious mob, apparently in silence, and brought Jesus out once
more. He had no more words to say to his prisoner. Nothing remained
but the formal act of sentence, for which he seated himself, with a
poor assumption of dignity, yet feeling all the while, no doubt, what
a contemptible surrender he was making.

Judgment-seats and mosaic pavements do not go far to secure reverence
for a judge who is no better than an assassin, killing an innocent
man to secure his own ends. Pilate's sentence fell most heavily on
himself. If 'the judge is condemned when the guilty is acquitted,' he
is tenfold condemned when the innocent is sentenced.

Pilate returned to his sarcastic mood when he returned to his
injustice, and found some satisfaction in his old jeer, 'your King.'
But the passion of hatred was too much in earnest to be turned or
even affected by such poor scoffs, and the only answer was the
renewed roar of the mob, which had murder in its tone. The repetition
of the governor's taunt, 'Shall I crucify your King?' brought out the
answer in which the rulers of the nation in their fury blindly flung
away their prerogative. It is no accident that it was 'the chief
priests' who answered, 'We have no king but Caesar.' Driven by hate,
they deliberately disown their Messianic hope, and repudiate their
national glory. They who will not have Christ have to bow to a
tyrant. Rebellion against Him brings slavery.

AN EYE-WITNESS'S ACCOUNT OF THE CRUCIFIXION

'And He bearing His cross went forth into a place called the
place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha: Where
they crucified Him, and two other with Him, on either side one,
and Jesus in the midst. And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on
the cross. And the writing was, JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE
JEWS. This title then read many of the Jews: for the place where
Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in
Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin. Then said the chief priests of the
Jews to Pilate, Write not, The King of the Jews; but that He
said, I am King of the Jews. Pilate answered, What I have written
I have written. Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus,
took His garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part;
and also His coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the
top throughout. They said therefore among themselves, Let us not
rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be: that the
scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, They parted My raiment
among them, and for My vesture they did cast lots. These things
therefore the soldiers did. Now there stood by the cross of Jesus
His mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas,
and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the
disciple standing by, whom He loved, He saith unto His mother,
Woman, behold Thy Son! Then saith He to the disciple, Behold thy
mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own
home. After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now
accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I
thirst. Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they
filled a spunge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it
to His mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He
said, It is finished: and He bowed His head, and gave up the
ghost.'--JOHN xix. 17-30.

In great and small matters John's account adds much to the narrative
of the crucifixion. He alone tells of the attempt to have the title
on the Cross altered, of the tender entrusting of the Virgin to his
care, and of the two 'words' 'I thirst' and 'It is finished.' He
gives details which had been burned into his memory, such as Christ's
position 'in the midst' of the two robbers, and the jar of 'vinegar'
standing by the crosses. He says little about the act of fixing Jesus
to the Cross, but enlarges what the other Evangelists tell as to the
soldiers 'casting lots.' He had heard what they said to one another.
He alone distinctly tells that when He went forth, Jesus was bearing
the Cross which afterwards Simon of Cyrene had to carry, probably
because our Lord's strength failed.

Who appointed the two robbers to be crucified at the same time? Not
the rulers, who had no such power but probably Pilate, as one more
shaft of sarcasm which was all the sharper both because it seemed to
put Jesus in the same class as they, and because they were of the
same class as the man of the Jews' choice, Barabbas, and possibly
were two of his gang. Jesus was 'in the midst,' where He always is,
completely identified with the transgressors, but central to all
things and all men. As He was in the midst on the Cross, with a
penitent on one hand and a rejecter on the other, He is still in the
midst of humanity, and His judgment-seat will be as central as His
Cross was.

All the Evangelists give the title written over the Cross, but John
alone tells that it was Pilate's malicious invention. He thought that
he was having a final fling at the priests, and little knew how truly
his title, which was meant as a bitter jest, was a fact. He had it
put into the three tongues in use--'Hebrew,' the national tongue;
'Greek,' the common medium of intercourse between varying
nationalities; and 'Latin' the official language. He did not know
that he was proclaiming the universal dominion of Jesus, and
prophesying that wisdom as represented by Greece, law and imperial
power as represented by Rome, and all previous revelation as
represented by Israel, would yet bow before the Crucified, and
recognise that His Cross was His throne.

The 'high-priests' winced, and would fain have had the title altered.
Their wish once more denied Jesus, and added to their condemnation,
but it did not move Pilate. It would have been well for him if he had
been as firm in carrying out his convictions of justice as in abiding
by his bitter jest. He was obstinate in the wrong place, partly
because he was angry with the rulers, and partly to recover his self-
respect, which had been damaged by his vacillation. But his stiff-
necked speech had a more tragic meaning than he knew, for 'what he
had written' on his own life-page on that day could never be erased,
and will confront him. We are all writing an imperishable record, and
we shall have to read it out hereafter, and acknowledge our
handwriting.

John next sets in strong contrast the two groups round the Cross--the
stolid soldiers and the sad friends. The four legionaries went
through their work as a very ordinary piece of military duty. They
were well accustomed to crucify rebel Jews, and saw no difference
between these three and former prisoners. They watched the pangs
without a touch of pity, and only wished that death might come soon,
and let them get back to their barracks. How blind men may be to what
they are gazing at! If knowledge measures guilt, how slight the
culpability of the soldiers! They were scarcely more guilty than the
mallet and nails which they used. The Sufferer's clothes were their
perquisite, and their division was conducted on cool business
principles, and with utter disregard of the solemn nearness of death.
Could callous indifference go further than to cast lots for the robe
at the very foot of the Cross?

But the thing that most concerns us here is that Jesus submitted to
that extremity of shame and humiliation, and hung there naked for all
these hours, gazed on, while the light lasted, by a mocking crowd. He
had set the perfect Pattern of lowly self-abnegation when, amid the
disciples in the upper room, He had 'laid aside His garments,' but
now He humbles Himself yet more, being clothed only 'with shame.'
Therefore should we clothe Him with hearts' love. Therefore God has
clothed Him with the robes of imperial majesty.

Another point emphasised by John is the fulfilment of prophecy in
this act. The seamless robe, probably woven by loving hands, perhaps
by some of the weeping women who stood there, was too valuable to
divide, and it would be a moment's pastime to cast lots for it. John
saw, in the expedient naturally suggested to four rough men, who all
wanted the robe but did not want to quarrel over it, a fulfilment of
the cry of the ancient sufferer, who had lamented that his enemies
made so sure of his death that they divided his garments and cast
lots for his vesture. But he was 'wiser than he knew,' and, while his
words were to his own apprehension but a vivid metaphor expressing
his desperate condition, 'the Spirit which was in' him 'did signify'
by them 'the sufferings of Christ.' Theories of prophecy or sacrifice
which deny the correctness of John's interpretation have the New
Testament against them, and assume to know more about the workings of
inspiration than is either modest or scientific.

What a contrast the other group presents! John's enumeration of the
women may be read so as to mention four or three, according as 'His
mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas,' is taken to mean one
woman or two. The latter is the more probable supposition, and it is
also probable that the unnamed sister of our Lord's mother was no
other than Salome, John's own mother. If so, entrusting Mary to
John's care would be the more natural. Tender care, joined with
consciousness that henceforth the relation of son and mother was to
be supplanted, not merely by Death's separating fingers, but by
faith's uniting bond, breathed through the word, so loving yet so
removing, 'Woman, behold thy son!' Dying trust in the humble friend,
which would go far to make the friend worthy of it, breathed in the
charge, to which no form of address corresponding to 'Woman' is
prefixed. Jesus had nothing else to give as a parting gift, but He
gave these two to each other, and enriched both. He showed His own
loving heart, and implied His faithful discharge of all filial duties
hitherto. And He taught us the lesson, which many of us have proved
to be true, that losses are best made up when we hear Him pointing us
by them to new offices of help to others, and that, if we will let
Him, He will point us too to what will fill empty places in our
hearts and homes.

The second of the words on the Cross which we owe to John is that
pathetic expression, 'I thirst.' Most significant is the insight into
our Lord's consciousness which John, here as elsewhere, ventures to
give. Not till He knew 'that all things were accomplished' did He
give heed to the pangs of thirst, which made so terrible a part of
the torture of crucifixion. The strong will kept back the bodily
cravings so long as any unfulfilled duty remained. Now Jesus had
nothing to do but to die, and before He died He let flesh have one
little alleviation. He had refused the stupefying draught which would
have lessened suffering by dulling consciousness, but He asked for
the draught which would momentarily slake the agony of parched lips
and burning throat.

The words of verse 28 are not to be taken as meaning that Jesus said
'I thirst' with the mere intention of fulfilling the Scripture. His
utterance was the plaint of a real need, not a performance to fill a
part. But it is John who sees in that wholly natural cry the
fulfilment of the psalm (Ps. lxix. 21). All Christ's bodily
sufferings may be said to be summed up in this one word, the only one
in which they found utterance. The same lips that said, 'If any man
thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink,' said this. Infinitely
pathetic in itself, that cry becomes almost awful in its appeal to us
when we remember who uttered it, and why He bore these pangs. The
very 'Fountain of living water' knew the pang of thirst that every
one that thirsteth might come to the waters, and might drink, not
water only, but 'wine and milk, without money or price.'

John's last contribution to our knowledge of our Lord's words on the
Cross is that triumphant 'It is finished,' wherein there spoke, not
only the common dying consciousness of life being ended, but the
certitude, which He alone of all who have died, or will die, had the
right to feel and utter, that every task was completed, that all
God's will was accomplished, all Messiah's work done, all prophecy
fulfilled, redemption secured, God and man reconciled. He looked back
over all His life and saw no failure, no falling below the demands of
the occasion, nothing that could have been bettered, nothing that
should not have been there. He looked upwards, and even at that
moment He heard in His soul the voice of the Father saying, 'This is
My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased!'

Christ's work is finished. It needs no supplement. It can never be
repeated or imitated while the world lasts, and will not lose its
power through the ages. Let us trust to it as complete for all our
needs, and not seek to strengthen 'the sure foundation' which it has
laid by any shifting, uncertain additions of our own. But we may
remember, too, that while Christ's work is, in one aspect, finished,
when He bowed His head, and by His own will 'gave up the ghost,' in
another aspect His work is not finished, nor will be, until the whole
benefits of His incarnation and death are diffused through, and
appropriated by, the world. He is working to-day, and long ages have
yet to pass, in all probability, before the voice of Him that sitteth
on the throne shall say 'It is done!'

THE TITLE ON THE CROSS

'Pilate wrote a title also, and put it on the cross.'
--JOHN xix. 19.

This title is recorded by all four Evangelists, in words varying in
form but alike in substance. It strikes them all as significant that,
meaning only to fling a jeer at his unruly subjects, Pilate should
have written it, and proclaimed this Nazarene visionary to be He for
whom Israel had longed through weary ages. John's account is the
fullest, as indeed his narrative of all Pilate's shufflings is the
most complete. He alone records that the title was tri-lingual (for
the similar statement in the Authorised Version of Luke is not part
of the original text). He alone gives the Jews' request for an
alteration of the title, and Pilate's bitter answer. That angry reply
betrays his motive in setting up such words over a crucified
prisoner's head. They were meant as a savage taunt of the Jews, not
as an insult to Jesus, which would have been welcome to them. He
seems to have regarded our Lord as a harmless enthusiast, to have had
a certain liking for Him, and a languid curiosity as to Him, which
came by degrees to be just tinged with awe as he felt that he could
not quite make Him out. Throughout, he was convinced that His claim
to be a king contained no menace for Caesar, and he would have let
Jesus go but for fear of being misrepresented at Rome. He felt that
the sacrifice of one more Jew was a small price to pay to avert his
accusation to Caesar; he would have sacrificed a dozen such to keep
his place. But he felt that he was being coerced to do injustice, and
his anger and sense of humiliation find vent in that written taunt.
It was a spurt of bad temper and a measure of his reluctance.

Besides the interest attaching to it as Pilate's work, it seems to
John significant of much that it should have been fastened on the
Cross, and that it should have been in the three languages, Hebrew
(Aramaic), Greek, and Latin.

Let us deal with three points in succession.

I. The title as throwing light on the actors in the tragedy.

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.

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