Verses 1-42
Chapter 19
19:1-16 They
brought Jesus from Caiaphas to the governor's headquarters. It was early
in the morning and they themselves did not enter into the headquarters,
in case they should be defiled; but they wished to avoid defilement
because they wished to eat the Passover. So Pilate came out to them and
said: "What charge do you bring against this man?" They answered him:
"If he had not been an evildoer, we would not have handed him over to
you." Pilate said to them: "You take him, and judge him according to
your laws." The Jews said to Pilate: "It is not permitted to us to put
anyone to death." This happened that there might be fulfilled the word
of Jesus, which he spoke in indication of the kind of death he was going
to die. So Pilate went again into his headquarters, and called Jesus,
and said to him: "Are you the King of the Jews?" Jesus answered: "Are
you saying this because you have discovered it yourself?. Or did others
tell it to you about me?" Pilate answered: "Am I a Jew? Your own
countrymen and the chief priests handed you over to me. What have you
done?" Jesus answered: "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom
was of this world, my servants would have fought to prevent me being
handed over to the Jews. But, as it is, my kingdom does not have its
source here." So Pilate said to him: "So you are a king then?" Jesus
said: "It is you who are saying that I am a king. The reason why I was
born and came into the world is that I should bear witness to the truth.
Every one who is of the truth hears my voice." "What is truth?" Pilate
said to him.
When he had said this,
he again went out to the Jews and said to them: "I find no fault in
him. You have a custom that I should release one person to you at the
Passover time. Do you wish me to release the King of the Jews for you?"
They shouted: "Not this man, but Barabbas." And Barabbas was a brigand.
Then Pilate took Jesus
and scourged him; and the soldiers plaited a crown of thorns, and put
it on his head. And they put a purple robe on him; and they kept coming
to him and saying: "Hail! King of the Jews!" And they dealt him repeated
blows. Pilate came out again and said to them: "See! I bring him out to
you, because I want you to know that I find no fault in him." So Jesus
came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate
said to them: "See! The Man!" So, when the chief priests and officers
saw him, they shouted: "Crucify him! Crucify him!" Pilate said to them:
"You take. him, and crucify him! For I find no fault in him." The Jews
answered him: "We have a law, and by that law he ought to die, because
he made himself out to be the Son of God." When Pilate heard this
saying, he was still more alarmed.
He went into his
headquarters again, and said to Jesus: "Where do you come from?" Jesus
gave him no answer. Pilate said to him: "Do you refuse to speak to me?
Are you not aware that I have authority to release you, and authority to
crucify you?" Jesus answered him: "You would have no authority against
me whatsoever, unless it had been given to you from above. That is why
he who betrayed me to you is guilty of the greater sin." From this
moment Pilate tried every way to release him; but the Jews kept
insistently shouting: "If you release this man, you are not Caesar's
friend. Every man who makes himself a king is an opponent of Caesar." So
when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out. He took his seat
on his judgment seat, in the place that is called the Pavement--in
Hebrew, Gabbatha. It was the day of the preparation for the Passover. It
was about twelve o'clock midday. He said to the Jews: "See! Your king!"
They shouted: "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 handed him over to them to be
crucified.
This is the most dramatic account of the trial of Jesus in the
New Testament, and to have cut it into small sections would have been to
lose the drama. It has to be read as one; but now that we have read it
as one, we shall take several days to study it. The drama of this
passage lies in the clash and interplay of personalities. It will
therefore be best to study it, not section by section, but in the light
of the actors within it.
We begin by looking at the Jews. In the time of Jesus the Jews
were subject to the Romans. The Romans allowed them a good deal of
self-government, but they had not the right to carry out the death
penalty. The ius gladii, as it was called, the right of the sword,
belonged only to the Romans. As the Talmud records: "Forty years before
the destruction of the Temple, judgment in matters of life and death was
taken away from Israel." The first Roman governor of Palestine was
named Coponius, and Josephus, telling of his appointment as governor,
says that he was sent as procurator "having the power of life and death
put into his hands by Caesar." (Josephus, Wars of the Jews, 2, 8, 1).
Josephus also tells of a certain priest called Ananus who determined to
execute certain of his enemies. Jews of more prudent mind protested
against his decision on the grounds that he had no right either to take
it or carry it out. Ananus was not allowed to carry his decision into
practice and was deposed from office for even thinking of doing so.
(Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 20, 9, 1). It is true that
sometimes, as, for instance, in the case of Stephen, the Jews did take
the law into their own hands; but legally they had no right to inflict
the death penalty on anyone. That was why they had to bring Jesus to
Pilate before he could be crucified.
If the Jews had themselves been able to carry out the death
penalty, it would have been by stoning. The Law lays it down: "And he
who blasphemes the name of the Lord, shall be put to death, all the
congregation shall stone him" (Leviticus 24:16).
in such a case the witnesses whose word proved the crime had to be the
first to fling the stones. "The hand of the witnesses shall be first
against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the
people" (Deuteronomy 17:7). That is the point of John 18:32.
That verse says that all this was happening that there might be
fulfilled the word of Jesus in indication of the kind of death he was
going to die. He had said that when he was lifted up, that is, when he
was crucified, he would draw all men to him (John 12:32).
If that prophecy of Jesus was to be fulfilled, he must be crucified,
not stoned; and therefore, even apart from the fact that Roman law would
not allow the Jews to carry out the death penalty, Jesus had to die a
Roman death, because he had to be lifted up.
The Jews from start to finish were seeking to use Pilate for
their purposes. They could not kill Jesus themselves, so they were
determined that the Romans would kill him for them.
But there were more things about the Jews than that.
(i) They began by hating Jesus; but they finished in a very
hysteria of hatred, howling like wolves, with faces twisted in
bitterness: "Crucify him! Crucify him!" In the end they reached such an
insanity of hatred that they were impervious to reason and to mercy and
even to the claims of common humanity. Nothing in this world warps a
man's judgment as hatred does. Once a man allows himself to hate, he can
neither think nor see straight, nor listen without distortion. Hatred
is a terrible thing because it takes a man's senses away.
(ii) The hatred of the Jews made them lose all sense of
proportion. They were so careful of ceremonial and ritual cleanness that
they would not enter Pilate's headquarters, and yet they were busy
doing everything possible to crucify the Son of God. To eat the
Passover, a Jew had to be absolutely ceremonially clean. Now, if they
had gone into Pilate's headquarters, they would have incurred
uncleanness in a double way. First, the scribal law said: "The
dwelling-places of Gentiles are unclean." Second, the Passover was the
Feast of Unleavened Bread. Part of the preparation for it was a
ceremonial search for leaven, and the banishing of every particle of
leaven from every house because it was the symbol of evil. To go into
Pilate's headquarters would have been to go into a place where leaven
might be found; and to go into such a place when the Passover was being
prepared was to render oneself unclean. But even if the Jews had entered
a Gentile house which contained leaven, they would have been unclean
only until evening. Then they would have had to undergo ceremonial
bathing after which they would have been clean.
Now see what the Jews were doing. They were carrying out the
details of the ceremonial law with meticulous care; and at the same time
they were hounding to the Cross the Son of God. That is just the kind
of thing that men are always liable to do. Many a church member fusses
about the sheerest trifles, and breaks God's law of love and of
forgiveness and of service every day. There is even many a church in
which the details of vestments, furnishings, ritual, ceremonial are
attended to with the most detailed care, and where the spirit of love
and fellowship are conspicuous only by their absence. One of the most
tragic things in the world is how the human mind can lose its sense of
proportion and its ability to put first things first.
(ii) The Jews did not hesitate to twist their charge against
Jesus. In their own private examination the charge they had formulated
was one of blasphemy (Matthew 26:65).
They knew well that Pilate would not proceed on a charge like that. He
would have said it was their own private religious quarrel and they
could settle is as they liked without coming to him. In the end what the
Jews produced was a charge of rebellion and political insurrection.
They accused Jesus of claiming to be a king, although they knew that
their accusation was a lie. Hatred is a terrible thing and does not
hesitate to twist the truth.
(iv) In order to compass the death of Jesus the Jews denied
every principle they had. The most astonishing thing they said that day
was: "We have no king but Caesar." Samuel's word to the people was that
God alone was their king (1 Samuel 12:12).
When the crown was offered to Gideon, his answer was: "I will not rule
over you, and my son will not rule over you: the Lord will rule over
you" ( 8:23).
When the Romans had first come into Palestine, they had taken a census
in order to arrange the normal taxation to which subject people were
liable. And there had been the most bloody rebellion, because the Jews
insisted that God alone was their king, and to him alone they would pay
tribute. When the Jewish leader said: "We have no king but Caesar." it
was the most astonishing volte-face in history. The very statement must
have taken Pilate's breath away, and he must have looked at them in
half-bewildered, half-cynical amusement. The Jews were prepared to
abandon every principle they had in order to eliminate Jesus.
It is a terrible picture. The hatred of the Jews turned them
into a maddened mob of shrieking, frenzied fanatics. In their hatred
they forgot all mercy, all sense of proportion, all justice, all their
principles, even God. Never in history was the insanity of hatred so
vividly shown.
Now we turn to the second personality in this story--Pilate.
Throughout the trial his conduct is well-nigh incomprehensible. It is
abundantly clear, it could not be clearer, that Pilate knew that the
charges of the Jews were a series of lies, that he knew that Jesus was
completely innocent, that he was deeply impressed with him, and that he
did not wish to condemn him to death--and yet he did. First, he tried to
refuse to deal with the case; then he tried to release Jesus on the
grounds that at the Passover a criminal was always released; then he
tried to compromise by scourging Jesus; then he made a last appeal. But
he refused all through to put his foot down and tell the Jews that he
would have nothing to do with their evil machinations. We will never
even begin to understand Pilate unless we understand his history, which
is set out for us partly in the writings of Josephus and partly in the
writings of Philo.
To understand the part that Pilate played in this drama we must
go back a long way. To begin with, what was a Roman governor doing in
Judaea at all?
In 4 B.C. Herod the Great died. He had been king of the whole of
Palestine. For all his faults he was in many ways a good king, and he
had been very friendly with the Romans. In his will he divided up his
kingdom between three of his sons. Antipas received Galilee and Peraea;
Philip received Batanea, Auranitis and Trachonitis, the wild unpopulated
regions of the north-east; and Archelaus, who at the time was only
eighteen years old, received Idumaea, Judaea and Samaria. The Romans
approved this distribution of the kingdom, and ratified it.
Antipas and Philip governed quietly and well; but Archelaus
governed with such extortion and tyranny that the Jews themselves
requested the Romans to remove him, and to appoint a governor. The
likelihood is that they expected to be incorporated into the large
province of Syria; and had that been so, the province was so large that
they would very probably have been left pretty much to carry on the way
they were. All Roman provinces were divided into two classes. Those
which required troops stationed in them were in the direct control of
the Emperor and were imperial provinces; those which did not require
troops but were peaceful and trouble-free, were in the direct control of
the senate and were senatorial provinces.
Palestine was obviously a troubled land; it needed troops and
therefore it was in the control of the Emperor. Really great provinces
were governed either by a proconsul or a legate; Syria was like that.
Smaller provinces of the second class, were governed by a procurator. He
was in full control of the military and judicial administration of the
province. He visited every part of the province at least once a year and
heard cases and complaints. He superintended the ingathering of taxes
but had no authority to increase them. He was paid a salary from the
treasury and was strictly forbidden to accept either presents or bribes;
and, if he exceeded his duties, the people of his province had power to
report him to the Emperor.
It was a procurator that Augustus appointed to control the
affairs of Palestine, and the first one took over in A.D. 6. Pilate took
over in A.D. 26 and remained in office until A.D. 35. Palestine was a
province bristling with problems, one which required a firm and a strong
and a wise hand. We do not know Pilate's previous history, but we do
know that he must have had the reputation of being a good administrator
or he would never have been given the responsible position of governing
Palestine. It had to be kept in order, for, as a glance at the map will
show, it was the bridge between Egypt and Syria.
But as governor Pilate was a failure. He seemed to begin with a
complete contempt and a complete lack of sympathy for the Jews. Three
famous, or infamous, incidents marked his career.
The first occurred on his first visit to Jerusalem. Jerusalem
was not the capital of the province; its headquarters were at Caesarea.
But the procurator paid many visits to Jerusalem, and, when he did, he
stayed in the old palace of the Herods in the west part of the city.
When he came to Jerusalem, he always came with a detachment of soldiers.
The soldiers had their standards; and on the top of the standard there
was a little bust in metal of the reigning Emperor. The Emperor was
regarded as a god, and to the Jew that little bust on the standards was a
graven image.
All previous Roman governors, in deference to the religious
scruples of the Jews, had removed that image before they entered the
city. Pilate refused to do so. The Jews besought him to do so. Pilate
was adamant; he would not pander to the superstitions of the Jews. He
went back to Caesarea. The Jews followed him. They dogged his footsteps
for five days. They were humble, but determined in their requests.
Finally he told them to meet him in the amphitheatre. He surrounded them
with armed soldiers, and informed them that if they did not stop their
requests they would be killed there and then. The Jews bared their necks
and bade the soldiers strike. Not even Pilate could massacre
defenceless men like that. He was beaten and compelled to agree that the
images should thereafter be removed from the standards. That was how
Pilate began, and it was a bad beginning.
The second incident was this. The Jerusalem water supply was
inadequate. Pilate determined to build a new aqueduct. Where was the
money to come from? He raided the Temple treasury which contained
millions. It is very unlikely that Pilate took money that was deposited
for the sacrifices and the Temple service. Much more likely, he took
money which was entitled Korban, and which came from sources which made
it impossible to use for sacred purposes. His aqueduct was much needed;
it was a worthy and a great undertaking; the water supply would even be
of great benefit to the Temple which needed much cleansing with its
continual sacrifices. But the people resented it; they rioted and surged
through the streets. Pilate mingled his soldiers with them in plain
clothes, with concealed weapons. At a given signal they attacked the mob
and many a Jew was clubbed or stabbed to death. Once again Pilate was
unpopular--and he was rendered liable to be reported to the Emperor.
The third incident turned out even worse for Pilate. As we have
seen, when he was in Jerusalem, he stayed in the ancient palace of the
Herods. He had certain shields made; and on them he had inscribed the
name of Tiberius the Emperor. These shields were what is known as votive
shields; they were devoted to the honour and the memory of the Emperor.
Now the Emperor was regarded as a god; so here was the name of a
strange god inscribed and displayed for reverence in the holy city. The
people were enraged; the greatest men, even his closest supporters,
besought Pilate to remove them. He refused. The Jews reported the matter
to Tiberius the Emperor, and he ordered Pilate to remove them.
It is relevant to note how Pilate ended up. This last incident
happened after Jesus had been crucified, in the year A.D. 35. There was a
revolt in Samaria. It was not very serious but Pilate crushed it with
sadistic ferocity and a plethora of executions. The Samaritans had
always been regarded as loyal citizens of Rome and the legate of Syria
intervened. Tiberius ordered Pilate back to Rome. When he was on the
way, Tiberius died; so far as we know, Pilate never came to judgment;
and from that moment he vanishes from history.
It is clear why Pilate acted as he did. The Jews blackmailed him
into crucifying Jesus. They said: "If you let this man go, you are not
Caesar's friend." This was, in effect: "Your record is not too good; you
were reported once before; if you do not give us our way, we will
report you again to the Emperor, and you will be dismissed." On that day
in Jerusalem, Pilate's past rose up and haunted him. He was blackmailed
into assenting to the death of Christ, because his previous mistakes
had made it impossible for him both to defy the Jews and to keep his
post. Somehow one cannot help being sorry for Pilate. He wanted to do
the right thing; but he had not the courage to defy the Jews and do it.
He crucified Jesus in order to keep his job.
We have seen Pilate's history; let us now look at his conduct during
his trial of Jesus. He did not wish to condemn Jesus, because he knew
that he was innocent; and yet he was caught in the mesh of his own past.
(i) Pilate began by trying to put the responsibility on to
someone else. He said to the Jews: "You take this man and judge him
according to your laws." He tried to evade the responsibility of dealing
with Jesus; but that is precisely what no one can do. No one can deal
with Jesus for us; we must deal with him ourselves.
(ii) Pilate went on to try to find a way of escape from the
entanglement in which he found himself. He tried to use the custom of
releasing a prisoner at the Passover in order to engineer the release of
Jesus. He tried to evade dealing directly with Jesus himself; but again
that is precisely what no one can do. There is no escape from a
personal decision in regard to Jesus; we must ourselves decide what we
will do with him, accept him or reject him.
(iii) Pilate went on to see what compromise could do. He ordered
Jesus to be scourged. It must have been in Pilate's mind that a
scourging might satisfy, or at least blunt the edge of, Jewish
hostility. He felt that he might avoid having to give the verdict of the
cross by giving the verdict of scourging. Once again, that is what no
man can do. No man can compromise with Jesus; no man can serve two
masters. We are either for Jesus or against him.
(iv) Pilate went on to try what appeal could do. He led Jesus
out broken by the scourging and showed him to the people. He asked them:
"Shall I crucify your king?" He tried to swing the balance by this
appeal to emotion and to pity. But no man can hope that appeal to others
can take the place of his own personal decision; and it was Pilate's
place to make his own decision. No man can evade a personal verdict and a
personal decision in regard to Jesus Christ.
In the end Pilate admitted defeat. He abandoned Jesus to the
mob, because he had not the courage to take the right decision and to do
the right thing.
But there are still more side-lights here on the character of Pilate.
(i) There is a hint of Pilate's ingrained attitude of contempt.
he asked Jesus if he was a king. Jesus asked whether he asked this on
the basis of what he himself had discovered, or on the basis of
information indirectly received. Pilate's answer was: "Am I a Jew? How
do you expect me to know anything about Jewish affairs?" He was too
proud to involve himself in what he regarded as Jewish squabbles and
superstitions. And that pride was exactly what made him a bad governor.
No one can govern a people if he makes no attempt to understand them and
to enter into their thoughts and minds.
(ii) There is a kind of superstitious curiosity about Pilate. He
wished to know whence Jesus came--and it was more than Jesus' native
place that he was thinking of. When he heard that Jesus had claimed to
be the Son of God, he was still more disturbed. Pilate was superstitious
rather than religious, fearing that there might be something in it. He
was afraid to come to a decision in Jesus' favour because of the Jews;
he was equally afraid to come to a decision against him, because he had
the lurking suspicion that God might be in this.
(iii) But at the heart of Pilate was a wistful longing. When
Jesus said that he had come to witness to the truth, Pilate's answer
was: "What is truth?" There are many ways in which a man might ask that
question. He might ask it in cynical and sardonic humour. Bacon
immortalized Pilate's answer, when he wrote: "What is truth? said
jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer." But it was not in
cynical humour that Pilate asked this question; nor was it the question
of a man who did not care. Here was the chink in his armour. He asked
the question wistfully and wearily.
Pilate by this world's standards was a successful man. He had
come almost to the top of the Roman civil service; he was
governor-general of a Roman province; but there was something missing.
Here in the presence of this simple, disturbing hated Galilaean, Pilate
felt that for him the truth was still a mystery--and that now he had got
himself into a situation where there was no chance to learn it. It may
be he jested, but it was the jest of despair. Philip Gibbs somewhere
tells of listening to a debate between T. S. Eliot, Margaret Irwin, C.
Day Lewis and other distinguished people on the subject, "Is this life
worth living?" "True, they jested," he said, "but they jested like
jesters knocking at the door of death."
Pilate was like that. Into his life there came Jesus, and
suddenly he saw what he had missed. That day he might have found all
that he had missed; but he had not the courage to defy the world in
spite of his past, and to take his stand with Christ and a future which
was glorious.
We have thought of the picture of the crowd in this trial of
Jesus and we have thought of the picture of Pilate. Now we must come to
the central character in the drama--Jesus himself. He is depicted
before us with a series of master-strokes.
(i) First and foremost, no one can read this story
without seeing the sheer majesty of Jesus. There is no sense that he is
on trial. When a man faces him, it is not Jesus who is on trial; it is
the man. Pilate may have treated many Jewish things with arrogant
contempt, but he did not so treat Jesus. We cannot help feeling that it
is Jesus who is in control and Pilate who is bewildered and floundering
in a situation which he cannot understand. The majesty of Jesus never
shone more radiantly than in the hour when he was on trial before men.
(ii) Jesus speaks with utter directness to us of his
kingdom; it is not, he says, of this earth. The atmosphere in Jerusalem
was always explosive; during the Passover it was sheer dynamite. The
Romans well knew that, and during the Passover time they always drafted
extra troops into Jerusalem. But Pilate never at any time had more than
three thousand men under his command. Some would be in Caesarea, his
headquarters; some would be on garrison duty in Samaria; there cannot
really have been more than a few hundred on duty in Jerusalem. If Jesus
had wished to raise the standard of rebellion and to fight it out, he
could have done it easily enough. But he makes it quite clear that he
claims to be a king and equally clear that his kingdom is not based on
force but is a kingdom in the hearts of men. He would never deny that he
aimed at conquest, but it was the conquest of love.
(iii) Jesus tells us why he came into the world. He
came to witness to the truth; he came to tell men the truth about God,
the truth about themselves, and the truth about life. As Emerson had it:
"When half-gods go,
The gods arrive."
The days of guessings and gropings and half-truths were gone. He
came to tell men the truth. That is one of the great reasons why we
must either accept or refuse Christ. There is no half-way house about
the truth. A man either accepts it, or rejects it; and Christ is the
truth.
(iv) We see the physical courage of Jesus. Pilate had him
scourged. When a man was scourged he was tied to a whipping-post in such
a way that his back was fully exposed. The lash was a long leathern
thong, studded at intervals with pellets of lead and sharpened pieces of
bone. It literally tore a man's back into strips. Few remained
conscious throughout the ordeal; some died; and many went raving mad.
Jesus stood that. And after it, Pilate led him out to the crowd and
said: "See! The man!" Here is one of John's double meanings. It must
have been Pilate's first intention to awaken the pity of the Jews.
"Look!" he said. "Look at this poor, bruised, bleeding creature! Look at
this wretchedness! Can you possibly wish to hound a creature like this
to an utterly unnecessary death?" But we can almost hear the tone of his
voice change as he says it, and see the wonder dawn in his eyes. And
instead of saying it half-contemptuously, to awaken pity, he says it
with an admiration that will not be repressed. The word that Pilate used
is ho (Greek #3588) anthropos (Greek #444),
which is the normal Greek for a human being; but not so long afterwards
the Greek thinkers were using that very term for the heavenly man, the
ideal man, the pattern of manhood. It is always true that whatever else
we say or do not say about Jesus, his sheer heroism is without parallel.
Here indeed is a man.
(v) Once again we see here in the trial of Jesus the spontaneousness
of his death and the supreme control of God. Pilate warned Jesus that he
had power to release him or to crucify him. Jesus answered that Pilate
had no power at all, except what had been given him by God. The
crucifixion of Jesus never, from beginning to end, reads like the story
of a man caught up in an inexorable web of circumstances over which he
had no control; it never reads like the story of a man who was hounded
to his death; it is the story of a man whose last days were a triumphant
procession towards the goal of the Cross.
(vi) And here also is the terrible picture of the silence of
Jesus. There was a time when he had no answer to give to Pilate. There
were other times when Jesus was silent. He was silent before the High
Priest (Matthew 26:63; Mark 14:61). He was silent before Herod (Luke 23:9). He was silent when the charges against him were made to Pilate by the Jewish authorities (Matthew 27:14; Mark 15:5).
We have sometimes the experience, when talking to other people, of
finding that argument and discussion are no longer possible, because we
and they have no common ground. It is almost as if we spoke another
language. That happens when men do in fact speak another mental and
spiritual language. It is a terrible day when Jesus is silent to a man.
There can be nothing more terrible than for a man's mind to be so shut
by his pride and his self-will, that there is nothing Jesus can say to
him that will make any difference.
(vii) Finally, it is just possible that in this trial scene
there is a strange, dramatic climax, which is a magnificent example of
John's dramatic irony.
The scene comes to an end by saying that Pilate brought Jesus
out; as we have translated it, and as the King James Version and Revised
Standard translate it, Pilate came out to the place that was called the
Pavement of Gabbatha--which may mean the tessellated pavement of marble
mosaic--and sat upon the judgment seat. This was the bema (Greek #968), on which the magistrate sat to give his official decisions. Now the verb for to sit is kathizein (Greek #2523),
and that may be either intransitive or transitive; it may mean either
to sit down oneself, or to seat another. Just possibly it means here
that Pilate with one last mocking gesture brought Jesus out, clad in the
terrible finery of the old purple robe and with his forehead girt with
the crown of thorns and the drops of blood the thorns had wakened, and
set him in the judgment seat, and with a wave of his hand said: "Am I to
crucify your king?" The apocryphal Gospel of Peter says that in the
mockery, they set Jesus on the seat of judgment and said: "Judge justly,
King of Israel." Justin Martyr too says that "they set Jesus on the
judgment seat, and said, 'Give judgment for us'." It may be that Pilate
jestingly caricatured Jesus as judge. If that is so, what dramatic irony
is there. That which was a mockery was the truth; and one day those who
had mocked Jesus as judge would meet him as judge--and would remember.
So in this dramatic trial scene we see the immutable majesty,
the undaunted courage and the serene acceptance of the Cross of Jesus.
Never was he so regal as when men did their worst to humiliate him.
We have looked at the main personalities in the trial of Jesus--the
Jews with their hatred, Pilate with his haunting past, and Jesus in the
serenity of his regal majesty. But certain other people were on the
outskirts of the scene.
(i) There were the soldiers. When Jesus was given into their
hands to be scourged, they amused themselves with their crude
horse-play. He was a king? Well then, let him have a robe and crown. So
they put an old purple robe on him and a crown of thorns round his brow;
and they slapped him on the face. They were playing a game that ancient
people commonly played. Philo in his work On Flaccus tells of a very
similar thing that the mob at Alexandria did. "There was a madman named
Carabas, afflicted not with the savage and beastlike sort of
madness--for this form is undisguisable both for sufferers and
bystanders--but with the quiet and milder kind. He used to spend his
days and nights naked in the streets, sheltering from neither heat nor
frost, a plaything of children and idle lads. They joined in driving the
wretch to the gymnasium, and, setting him aloft so that he could be
seen by everyone, they flattened a strip of bark for a fillet and put it
on his head, and wrapped a floor-rug round his body for a mantle, and
for sceptre someone catching sight of a small piece of the native
papyrus that had been thrown on the road handed it to him. And when he
had assumed the insignia of kingship as in theatrical mimes, and had
been arrayed in the character of king, young men bearing staffs on their
shoulders took their stance on either side in place of spearmen, mimic
lancers. Then others approached, some as if to greet him, others as
though to plead their causes, others as though to petition him about
public matters. Then from the surrounding multitudes rang forth an
outlandish shout of 'Marin,' the name by which it is said that kings are
called in Syria." It is a poignant thing that the soldiers treated
Jesus as a ribald crowd might treat an idiot boy.
And yet of all the people involved in the trial of Jesus, the
soldiers were least to blame, for they did not know what they were
doing. Most likely they had come up from Caesarea and did not know what
it was all about. Jesus to them was only a chance criminal.
Here is another example of the dramatic irony of John. The
soldiers made a caricature of Jesus as king, while in actual fact he was
the only king. Beneath the jest there was eternal truth.
(ii) Last of all there was Barabbas whose episode John tells very
briefly indeed. Of the custom of freeing a prisoner at Passover we know
nothing more than the gospels tell us. The other gospels to some extent
fill out John's brief picture and when we put all our information
together we find that Barabbas was a notable prisoner, a brigand, who
had taken part in a certain insurrection in the city and had committed
murder (Matthew 27:15-26; Mark 15:6-15; Luke 23:17-25; Acts 3:14).
The name Barabbas is interesting. There are two possibilities as
to its derivation. It may be compounded of Bar Abba which would mean
"son of the father," or it may be compounded of Bar Rabban, which would
mean "son of the Rabbi." It is not impossible that Barabbas was the son
of some Rabbi, a scion of some noble family who had gone wrong; and it
may well be that, criminal though he was, he was popular with the people
as a kind of Robin Hood character. It is certainly true that we must
not think of Barabbas as a sneak thief, or a petty pilferer, or a
burglar. He was a lestes (Greek #3027),
which means a brigand. Either he was one of the warrior brigands who
infested the Jericho road, the kind of man into whose hands the
traveller in the parable fell; or, perhaps even more probable, he was
one of the Zealots who had sworn to rid Palestine of the Romans, even if
it meant a career of murder, robbery, assassination and crime. Barabbas
was no petty criminal. A man of violence he might be, but his violence
was the kind which might well have a romance and a glamour about it and
make him the popular hero of the crowd and the despair of the law at one
and the same time.
There is a still more interesting thing about Barabbas. It is a
second name and there must have been a first name, just as, for
instance, Peter had been Simon bar-Jonah, Simon the son of Jonah. Now
there are certain ancient Greek manuscripts, and certain Syrian and
Armenian translations of the New Testament which actually give the name
of Barabbas as Jesus. That is by no means impossible, because in those
days Jesus was a common name, being the Greek form of Joshua. If so, the
choice of the crowd was even more dramatic, for they were shouting:
"Not Jesus the Nazarene, but Jesus Barabbas."
The choice of the mob has been the eternal choice. Barabbas was
the man of force and blood, the man who chose to reach his end by
violent means. Jesus was the man of love and of gentleness, whose
kingdom was in the hearts of men. It is the tragic fact of history that
all through the ages men have chosen the way of Barabbas and refused the
way of Jesus.
What happened to Barabbas no man knows; but John Oxenham in one
of his books has an imaginary picture of him. At first Barabbas could
think of nothing but his freedom; then he began to look at the man who
had died that he might live. Something about Jesus fascinated him and he
followed him out to see the end. As he saw Jesus bearing his Cross, one
thought burned into his mind: "I should have been carrying that Cross,
not he. He saved me!" And as he saw Jesus hanging on Calvary, the only
thing of which he could think was: "I should have been hanging there,
not he. He saved me!" It may be so, or it may not be so; but certainly
Barabbas was one of the sinners Jesus died to save.
Note On The Date Of The Crucifixion (John 19:14)
There is one great problem in the fourth gospel which we did not take
note of at all when we were studying it. Here we can note it only very
briefly, for it is really an unsolved problem on which the literature is
immense.
It is quite certain that the fourth gospel and the other three
give different dates for the Crucifixion, and take different views of
what the last meal together was.
In the Synoptic gospels it is clear that the Last Supper was the
Passover and that Jesus was crucified on Passover Day. It must be
remembered that the Jewish day began at 6 p.m. on what to us is the day
before. The Passover fell on 15th Nisan; but 15th Nisan began on what to
us is 14th Nisan at 6 p.m. Mark seems to be quite clear; he says: "And
on the first day of unleavened bread, when they sacrificed the passover,
his disciples said unto him, Where will you have us go and prepare for
you to eat the passover?" Jesus gives them instructions. Then Mark goes
on: "And they prepared the passover, and when it was evening he came
with the twelve." (Mark 14:12-17)
Undoubtedly Mark wished to show the Last Supper as a Passover meal and
that Jesus was crucified on Passover day; and Matthew and Luke follow
Mark.
On the other hand John is quite clear that Jesus was crucified
on the day before the passover. He begins his story of the last meal:
"Now before the feast of the Passover..." (John 13:1). When Judas left the upper room, they thought he had gone to prepare for the Passover (John 13:29). The Jews would not enter the judgment hall lest they should become unclean and be prevented from eating the Passover (John 18:28). The judgment is during the preparation for the Passover (John 19:14).
There is here a contradiction for which there is no compromise
solution. Either the Synoptic gospels are correct or John is. Scholars
are much divided. But it seems most likely that the Synoptics are
correct. John was always looking for hidden meanings. In his story Jesus
is crucified as somewhere near the sixth hour (John 19:14).
It was just then that in the Temple the Passover lambs were being
killed. By far the likeliest thing is that John dated things in order
that Jesus would be crucified at exactly the same time as the Passover
lambs were being killed, so that he might be seen as the great Passover
Lamb who saved his people and took away the sins of the world. It seems
that the Synoptic gospels are right intact, while John is right in
truth; and John was always more interested in eternal truth than in mere
historic fact.
There is no full explanation of this obvious discrepancy; but this seems to us the best.
19:17-22 So
they took Jesus, and he, carrying his Cross for himself, went out to the
place that is called the Place of a Skull, which is called in Hebrew
Golgotha. They crucified him there, and with him they crucified two
others, one on either side, and Jesus in the middle. Pilate wrote a
title, and put it on the Cross. On it was written: "Jesus of Nazareth,
the King of the Jews." Many of the Jews read this title, because the
place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in
Hebrew, in Latin and in Greek. So the chief priests repeatedly said to
Pilate: "Do not write, 'The King of the Jews.' But write, 'He said I am
the King of the Jews.'" Pilate answered: "What I have written, I have
written."
There was no more terrible death than death by crucifixion.
Even the Romans themselves regarded it with a shudder of horror. Cicero
declared that it was "the most cruel and horrifying death." Tacitus said
that it was a "despicable death." It was originally a Persian method of
execution. It may have been used because, to the Persians, the earth
was sacred, and they wished to avoid defiling it with the body of an
evil-doer. So they nailed him to a cross and left him to die there,
looking to the vultures and the carrion crows to complete the work. The
Carthaginians took over crucifixion from the Persians; and the Romans
learned it from the Carthaginians.
Crucifixion was never used as a method of execution in the
homeland, but only in the provinces, and there only in the case of
slaves. It was unthinkable that a Roman citizen should die such a death.
Cicero says: "It is a crime for a Roman citizen to be bound; it is a
worse crime for him to be beaten; it is well nigh parricide for him to
be killed; what am I to say if he be killed on a cross? A nefarious
action such as that is incapable of description by any word, for there
is none fit to describe it." It was that death, the most dreaded in the
ancient world, the death of slaves and criminals, that Jesus died.
The routine of crucifixion was always the same. When the case
had been heard and the criminal condemned, the judge uttered the fateful
sentence: "Ibis ad crucem," "You will go to the cross." The verdict was
carried out there and then. The condemned man was placed in the centre
of a quaternion, a company of four Roman soldiers. His own cross was
placed upon his shoulders. Scourging always preceded crucifixion and it
is to be remembered how terrible scourging was. Often the criminal had
to be lashed and goaded along the road, to keep him on his feet, as he
staggered to the place of crucifixion. Before him walked an officer with
a placard on which was written the crime for which he was to die and he
was led through as many streets as possible on the way to execution.
There was a double reason for that. There was the grim reason that as
many as possible should see and take warning from his fate. But there
was a merciful reason. The placard was carried before the condemned man
and the long route was chosen, so that if anyone could still bear
witness in his favour, he might come forward and do so. In such a case,
the procession was hatted and the case retried.
In Jerusalem the place of execution was called The Place of a Skull, in Aramaic, Golgotha (Greek #1115 and Hebrew #1538).
(Calvary is the Latin for the Place of a Skull.) It must have been
outside the city walls, for it was not lawful to crucify a man within
the boundaries of the city. Where it was we do not certainly know.
More than one reason has been put forward for the strange, grim
name, 'The Place of a Skull.' There is a legend that it was so called
because the skull of Adam was buried there. There is a suggestion that
it was because it was littered with the skulls of crucified criminals.
That is not likely. By Roman law a criminal must hang upon his cross
until he died from hunger and thirst and exposure, a torture which
sometimes lasted for days; but by Jewish law the body must be taken down
and buried by nightfall. In Roman law the criminal's body was not
buried but simply thrown away for the vultures and the crows and the
pariah dogs to dispose of; but that would have been quite illegal under
Jewish law and no Jewish place would be littered with skulls. It is much
more likely that the place received its name because it was on a hill
shaped like a skull. In any event it was a grim name for a place where
grim things were done.
So Jesus went out, bruised and bleeding, his flesh torn to
ribbons by the scourging, carrying his own Cross to the place where he
was to die.
In this passage there are two further things we must note. The
inscription on Jesus' Cross was in Hebrew, in Latin and in Greek. These
were the three great languages of the ancient world and they stood for
three great nations. In the economy of God every nation has something to
teach the world; and these three stood for three great contributions to
the world and to world history. Greece taught the world beauty of form
and of thought; Rome taught the world law and good government; the
Hebrews taught the world religion and the worship of the true God. The
consummation of all these things is seen in Jesus. In him was the
supreme beauty and the highest thought of God. In him was the law of God
and the kingdom of God. In him was the very image of God. All the
world's seekings and strivings found their consummation in him. It was
symbolic that the three great languages of the world should call him
king.
There is no doubt that Pilate put this inscription on the Cross
of Jesus to irritate and annoy the Jews. They had just said that they
had no king but Caesar; they had just absolutely refused to have Jesus
as their king. And Pilate, by way of a grim jest, put this inscription
on his Cross. The Jewish leaders repeatedly asked him to remove it; and
Pilate refused. "What I have written," he said, "I have written." Here
is Pilate the inflexible, the man who will not yield an inch. So very
short a time before, this same man had been weakly vacillating as to
whether to crucify Jesus or to let him go; and in the end had allowed
himself to be bullied and blackmailed into giving the Jews their will.
Adamant about the inscription, he had been weak about the crucifixion.
It is one of the paradoxical things in life that we can be
stubborn about things which do not matter and weak about things of
supreme importance. If Pilate had only withstood the blackmailing
tactics of the Jews and had refused to be coerced into giving them their
will with Jesus, he might have gone down in history as one of its
great, strong men. But because he yielded on the important thing and
stood firm on the unimportant, his name is a name of shame. Pilate was
the man who took a stand on the wrong things and too late.
19:23-24 When
the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his clothes, and they
divided them into four parts, a part for each soldier; and they took his
tunic. It was a tunic which had no seam, woven throughout in one piece
from the top. They said to each other: "Don't let's cut it up, but let
us cast lots for it, and settle that way who will have it." This
happened that the passage of scripture which says, "They divided my
clothes among themselves, and they cast lots for my raiment," might be
fulfilled. So, then, that is what the soldiers did.
We have already seen that a criminal was escorted to the place
of execution by a quaternion of four soldiers. One of the perquisites of
these soldiers was the clothes of the victim. Every Jew wore five
articles of apparel--his shoes, his turban, his girdle, his tunic, and
his outer robe. There were four soldiers, and there were five articles.
They diced for them, each had his pick and the inner tunic was left. It
was seamless, woven all in one piece. To have cut it into four pieces
would have been to render it useless, and so they diced again to see who
would possess it. There are many things in this vivid picture.
(i) Studdert Kennedy has a poem based on it. The soldiers were
gamblers; and so in a sense was Jesus. He staked everything on his utter
fidelity to God; he staked everything on the Cross. This was his last
and greatest appeal to men, his last and greatest act of obedience
towards God.
"And, sitting down, they watched him there,
The soldiers did;
There, while they played at dice,
He made his sacrifice,
And died upon his Cross to rid
God's world of sin.
He was a gambler, too, my Christ.
He took his life and threw
It for a world redeemed.
And ere the agony was done,
Before the westering sun went down,
Crowning that day with its crimson crown,
He knew that he had won."
There is a sense in which every Christian is a gambler, for every Christian must venture for his name.
(ii) No picture so shows the indifference of the world to
Christ. There on the Cross Jesus was dying in agony; and there at the
foot of the Cross the soldiers threw their dice as if it did not matter.
An artist painted Christ standing with nail-pierced hands outstretched
in a modern city, while the crowds surge by. Not one of them is even
sparing him a look, except only a young hospital nurse; and beneath the
picture there is the question: "Is it nothing to you all you who pass
by?" (Lamentations 1:12).
The tragedy is not the hostility of the world to Christ; the tragedy is
the world's indifference which treats the love of God as if it did not
matter.
(iii) There are two further points which we must note in this
picture. There is a legend that Mary herself had woven the seamless
tunic and given it as a last gift to her son when he went out into the
world. If that be true--and it may well be, for it was a custom of
Jewish mothers to do just that--there is a double poignancy in the
picture of these insensitive soldiers gambling for the tunic of Jesus
which was his mother's gift.
(iv) But there is something half-hidden here. Jesus' tunic is
described as being without seam, woven in one piece from top to bottom.
That is the precise description of the linen tunic which the High Priest
wore. Let us remember that the function of the priest was to be the
liaison between God and man. The Latin for priest is pontifex, which
means bridge-builder, and the priest was to build a bridge between God
and man. No one ever did that as Jesus did. He is the perfect High
Priest through whom men come to God. Again and again we have seen that
there are two meanings in so many of John's statements, a meaning which
lies on the surface, and a deeper inner meaning. When John tells us of
the seamless tunic of Jesus it is not just a description of the kind of
clothes that Jesus wore; it is something which tells us that Jesus is
the perfect priest, opening the perfect way for all men to the presence
of God.
(v) Lastly we note that in this incident John finds a fulfilment
of Old Testament prophecy. He reads back into it the saying of the
Psalmist: "They divide my garments among them, and for my raiment they
cast lots" (Psalms 22:18).
19:25-27 But
his mother, and his mother's sister, and Mary the wife of Clopas, and
Mary from Magdala, stood near the Cross of Jesus. So Jesus saw his
mother, and he saw the disciple whom he loved standing by, and he said
to his mother: "Woman! See! Your son." Then he said to the disciple:
"See! Your mother!" And from that hour the disciple took her into his
own home.
In the end Jesus was not absolutely alone. At his Cross there
were these four women who loved him. Some commentators explain their
presence there by saying that in those days women were so unimportant
that no one ever took any notice of women disciples, and that therefore
these women were running no risk at all by being near the Cross of
Jesus. That surely is a poor and unworthy explanation. It was always a
dangerous thing to be an associate of a man whom the Roman government
believed to be so dangerous that he deserved a Cross. It is always a
dangerous thing to demonstrate one's love for someone whom the orthodox
regard as a heretic. The presence of these women at the Cross was not
due to the fact that they were so unimportant that no one would notice
them; their presence was due to the fact that perfect love casts out
fear.
They are a strange company. Of one, Mary the wife of Clopas, we know nothing; but we know something of the other three.
(i) There was Mary, Jesus' mother. Maybe she could not
understand, but she could love. Her presence there was the most natural
thing in the world for a mother. Jesus might be a criminal in the eyes
of the law, but he was her son. As Kipling had it:
"If I were hanged on the highest hill,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
I know whose love would follow me still,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
If I were drowned in the deepest sea,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
I know whose tears would come down to me,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
If I were damned of body and soul,
I know whose prayers would make me whole,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!"
The eternal love of motherhood is in Mary at the Cross.
(ii) There was Jesus' mother's sister. In John she is not named, but a study of the parallel passages (Mark 15:40; Matthew 27:56)
makes it quite clear that she was Salome, the mother of James and John.
The strange thing about her is that she had received from Jesus a very
definite and stern rebuff. Once she had come to Jesus to ask him to give
her sons the chief place in his kingdom (Matthew 20:20),
and Jesus had taught her how wrong such ambitious thoughts were. Salome
was the woman he had rebuked--and yet she was there at the Cross. Her
presence says much for her and for Jesus. It shows that she had the
humility to accept rebuke and to love on with undiminished devotion; it
shows that he could rebuke in such a way that his love shone through the
rebuke. Salome's presence is a lesson to us on how to give and how to
receive a rebuke.
(ii) There was Mary from Magdala. All we know about her is that out of her Jesus cast seven devils (Mark 16:9; Luke 8:2).
She could never forget what Jesus had done for her. His love had
rescued her, and her love was such that it could never die. It was
Mary's motto, written on her heart: "I will not forget what he has done
for me."
But in this passage there is something which is surely one of
the loveliest things in all the gospel story. When Jesus saw his mother,
he could not but think of the days ahead. He could not commit her to
the care of his brothers, for they did not believe in him yet (John 7:5).
And, after all, John had a double qualification for the service Jesus
entrusted to him--he was Jesus' cousin, being Salome's son, and he was
the disciple whom Jesus loved. So Jesus committed Mary to John's care
and John to Mary's, so that they should comfort each other's loneliness
when he was gone.
There is something infinitely moving in the fact that Jesus in
the agony of the Cross, when the salvation of the world hung in the
balance, thought of the loneliness of his mother in the days ahead. He
never forgot the duties that lay to his hand. He was Mary's eldest son,
and even in the moment of his cosmic battle, he did not forget the
simple things that lay near home. To the end of the day, even on the
Cross, Jesus was thinking more of the sorrows of others than of his own.
19:28-30 After
that, when Jesus knew that everything was completed, he said, in order
that the scripture might be fulfilled: "I thirst." There was a vessel
standing there full of vinegar. So they put a sponge soaked in vinegar
on a hyssop reed, and put it to his mouth. When he had received the
vinegar, Jesus said; "It is finished." And he leaned his head back, and
gave up his spirit.
In this passage John brings us face to face with two things about Jesus.
(i) He brings us face to face with his human suffering; when
Jesus was on the Cross, he knew the agony of thirst. When John was
writing his gospel, round about A.D. 100, a certain tendency had arisen
in religious and philosophical thought, called gnosticism. One of its
great tenets was that spirit was altogether good and matter altogether
evil. Certain conclusions followed. One was that God, who was pure
spirit, could never take upon himself a body, because that was matter,
and matter was evil. They therefore taught that Jesus never had a real
body. They said that he was only a phantom. They said, for instance,
that when Jesus walked, his feet left no prints on the ground, because
he was pure spirit in a phantom body.
They went on to argue that God could never really suffer, and
that therefore Jesus never really suffered but went through the whole
experience of the Cross without any real pain. When the Gnostics thought
like that, they believed they were honouring God and honouring Jesus;
but they were really destroying Jesus. If he was ever to redeem man, he
must become man. He had to become what we are in order to make us what
he is. That is why John stresses the fact that Jesus felt thirst; he
wished to show that he was really human and really underwent the agony
of the Cross. John goes out of his way to stress the real humanity and
the real suffering of Jesus.
(ii) But, equally, he brings us face to face with the triumph of
Jesus. When we compare the four gospels we find a most illuminating
thing. The other three do not tell us that Jesus said, "It is finished."
But they do tell us that he died with a great shout upon his lips (Matthew 27:50; Mark 15:37; Luke 23:46).
On the other hand, John does not speak of the great cry, but does say
that Jesus' last words were, "It is finished." The explanation is that
the great shout and the words, "It is finished," are one and the same
thing. "It is finished" is one word in Greek--tetelestai (Greek #5055)--and
Jesus died with a shout of triumph on his lips. He did not say, "It is
finished," in weary defeat; he said it as one who shouts for joy because
the victory is won. He seemed to be broken on the Cross, but he knew
that his victory was won.
The last sentence of this passage makes the thing even clearer.
John says that Jesus leaned back his head and gave up his spirit. John
uses the word which might be used for settling back upon a pillow. For
Jesus the strife was over and the battle was won; and even on the Cross
he knew the joy of victory and the rest of the man who has completed his
task and can lean back, content and at peace.
Two further things we must notice in this passage, John traces
back Jesus' cry, "I thirst," to the fulfilment of a verse in the Old
Testament. He is thinking of Psalms 69:21. "They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink."
The second thing is another of John's hidden things. He tells us
that it was on a hyssop reed that they put the sponge containing the
vinegar. Now a hyssop reed is an unlikely thing to use for such a
purpose, for it was only a stalk, like strong grass, and at the most two
feet long. So unlikely is it that some scholars have thought that it is
a mistake for a very similar word which means a lance or a spear. But
it was hyssop which John wrote and hyssop which John meant. When we go
centuries back to the first Passover when the children of Israel left
their slavery in Egypt, we remember how the angel of death was to walk
abroad that night and to slay every first born son of the Egyptians. We
remember how the Israelites were to slay the Passover lamb and were to
smear the doorposts of their houses with its blood so that the avenging
angel of death would pass over their houses. And the ancient instruction
was: "Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood which is in the
basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood which
is in the basin" (Exodus 12:22).
It was the blood of the Passover lamb which saved the people of God; it
was the blood of Jesus which was to save the world from sin. The very
mention of hyssop would take the thoughts of any Jew back to the saving
blood of the Passover lamb; and this was John's way of saying that Jesus
was the great Passover Lamb of God whose death was to save the whole
world from sin.
19:31-37 Since
it was the day of preparation, so that the bodies should not remain on
the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a very important day) the
Jews asked Pilate to break their limbs, and to have the bodies removed.
So the soldiers came, and they broke the limbs of the first criminal,
and of the other who had been crucified with him. When they came to
Jesus, and when they saw that he was already dead, they did not break
his limbs. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and
immediately water and blood came forth. And he who saw it is a witness
to this, and his word is true. And he knows that he is speaking the
truth, that you also may believe. These things happened that the passage
of scripture which says: "His bone shall not be broken," should be
fulfilled. And again another passage says: "They shall see him whom they
have pierced."
In one thing the Jews were more merciful than the Romans. When
the Romans carried out crucifixion under their own customs, the victim
was simply left to die on the cross. He might hang for days in the heat
of the midday sun and the cold of the night, tortured by thirst and
tortured also by the gnats and the flies crawling in the weals on his
torn back. Often men died raving mad on their crosses. Nor did the
Romans bury the bodies of crucified criminals. They simply took them
down and let the vultures and the crows and the dogs feed upon them.
The Jewish law was different. It laid it down: "If a man has
committed a crime punishable by death, and he is put to death, and you
hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night upon the tree,
but you shall bury him the same day" (Deuteronomy 21:22-23).
The Mishnah, the Jewish scribal law, laid down: "Everyone who allows
the dead to remain overnight transgresses a positive command." The
Sanhedrin actually was charged to have two burying places ready for
those who had suffered the death penalty and were not to be buried in
the burying place of their fathers. On this occasion it was even more
important that the bodies should not be allowed to hang on the crosses
overnight, because the next day was the Sabbath, and the very special
Sabbath of the Passover.
A grim method was used to despatch criminals who lingered on.
Their limbs were smashed with a mallet. That was done to the criminals
who were crucified with Jesus, but mercifully he was spared that, for he
was already dead. John sees that sparing of Jesus as a symbol of
another Old Testament passage. It was laid down of the Passover lamb
that not a bone of it should be broken (Numbers 9:12). Once again John is seeing Jesus as the Passover Lamb who delivers his people from death.
Finally there follows a strange incident. When the soldiers saw
that Jesus was already dead they did not break his limbs with the
mallet; but one of them--it must have been to make doubly sure that
Jesus was dead--thrust a spear into his side. And there flowed out water
and blood. John attaches special importance to that. He sees in it a
fulfilment of the prophecy in Zechariah 12:10
: "They look on him whom they have pierced." And he goes out of his way
to say that this is an eye-witness account of what actually happened,
and that he personally guarantees that it is true.
First of all, let us ask what actually happened. We cannot be
sure but it may well be that Jesus died literally of a broken heart.
Normally, of course, the body of a dead man will not bleed. It is
suggested that what happened was that Jesus' experiences, physical and
emotional, were so terrible that his heart was ruptured. When that
happened the blood of the heart mingled with the fluid of the
pericardium which surrounds the heart. The spear of the soldier pierced
the pericardium and the mingled fluid and blood came forth. It would be a
poignant thing to believe that Jesus, in the literal sense of the term,
died of a broken heart.
Even so, why does John stress it so much? He does so for two reasons.
(i) To him it was the final, unanswerable proof that Jesus was a
real man with a real body. Here was the answer to the gnostics with
their ideas of phantoms and spirits and an unreal manhood. Here was
proof that Jesus was bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh.
(ii) But to John this was more than a proof of the manhood of
Jesus. It was a symbol of the two great sacraments of the Church. There
is one sacrament which is based on water-baptism; and there is one which
is based on blood--the Lord's Supper with its cup of blood--red wine.
The water of baptism is the sign of the cleansing grace of God in Jesus
Christ; the wine of the Lord's Supper is the symbol of the blood which
was shed to save men from their sins. The water and the blood which
flowed from the side of Christ were to John the sign of the cleansing
water of baptism and the cleansing blood commemorated and experienced in
the Lord's Supper. As Toplady wrote:
"Rock of ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in thee;
Let the water and the blood,
From thy riven side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,
Cleanse me from its guilt and power."
19:38-42 After
that, Joseph from Arimathaea, who because of fear of the Jews was a
secret disciple of Jesus, asked Pilate to be allowed to take away Jesus'
body, and Pilate gave him permission to do so. So he came and took his
body away. Nicodemus, who first came to Jesus by night, came too,
bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds in weight.
So they took Jesus' body and they wrapped it in linen clothes with
spices, as it is the Jewish custom to lay a body in the tomb. There was a
garden in the place where he was crucified; and in the garden there was
a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. So they laid Jesus
there, because it was the day of preparation for the Sabbath, because
the tomb was near at hand.
So Jesus died, and what had to be done now must be done
quickly, for the Sabbath was almost begun and on the Sabbath no work
could be done. The friends of Jesus were poor and could not have given
him a fitting burial; but two people came forward.
Joseph of Arimathaea was one. He had always been a disciple of
Jesus; he was a great man and a member of the Sanhedrin, and up to now
he had kept his discipleship secret for he was afraid to make it known.
Nicodemus was the other. It was the Jewish custom to wrap the bodies of
the dead in linen clothes and to put sweet spices between the folds of
the linen. Nicodemus brought enough spices for the burial of a king. So
Joseph gave to Jesus a tomb; and Nicodemus gave him the clothes to wear
within the tomb.
There is both tragedy and glory here.
(i) There is tragedy. Both Nicodemus and Joseph were members of
the Sanhedrin, but they were secret disciples of Jesus. Either they had
absented themselves from the meeting of the Sanhedrin which examined him
and formulated the charge against him, or they had sat silent through
it all. What a difference it would have made to Jesus, if, among these
condemning, hectoring voices, one voice had been raised in his support.
What a difference it would have made to see loyalty on one face amidst
that sea of bleak, envenomed faces. But Nicodemus and Joseph were
afraid.
We so often leave our tributes until people are dead. How much
greater would loyalty in life have been than a new tomb and a shroud fit
for a king. One flower in life is worth all the wreaths in the world in
death; one word of love and praise and thanks in life is worth all the
panegyrics in the world when life is gone.
(ii) But there is glory here, too. The death of Jesus had done
for Joseph and Nicodemus what not even his life could do. No sooner had
Jesus died on the Cross than Joseph forgot his fear and bearded the
Roman governor with a request for the body. No sooner had Jesus died on
the Cross than Nicodemus was there to bring a tribute that all men could
see. The cowardice, the hesitation, the prudent concealment were gone.
Those who had been afraid when Jesus was alive declared for him in a way
that everyone could see as soon as he was dead. Jesus had not been dead
an hour when his own prophecy came true: "I when I be lifted up from
the earth will draw all men to myself" (John 12:32).
It may be that the silence of Nicodemus or his absence from the
Sanhedrin brought sorrow to Jesus; but it is certain that he knew of the
way in which they cast their fear aside after the Cross, and it is
certain that already his heart was glad, for already the power of the
Cross had begun to operate, and already it was drawing all men to him.
The power of the Cross was even then turning the coward into the hero,
and the waverer into the man who took an irrevocable decision for
Christ.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)